parlstickare

Hello poor neglected blog! If you have been following my other blog, you know that my life has been through some major changes last year. I've quit my job, moved back to Sweden and am now a PhD student in historical archaeology!

What with the move and the (still...) ongoing unpacking, there has been way less crafting done than what I would like to. That said, I'm still working on the wedding cushion (so much guilt over the delay!!!), and have done most of a phone bag I'm making for a friend.


A flower in progress on the wedding cushion. Click on the thumbnail to see the other (finished) flower peeking out behind it.


I'm happy with the flower on a phone bag, but the heart is giving me trouble: the width of the yarn makes it awkward to do a grid pattern inside it - it's either too spaced out or much too close.

Winter teased me a bit by going away and then coming back again. It's only a couple of degrees at night now, and I'm glad I didn't get around to putting away my winter coat - I will probably need it tomorrow.

Crafting is going slowly. I haven't touched the wedding cushion for a few weeks - I busy helping a workmate for her upcoming wedding. Nothing too elaborate or time consuming: just taking up the hem of her dress and making a sash out of the offcuts. The fabric is a bit flimsy, so the sash (as it will be in eyesight of everybody, as opposed to the hemline) will have to be sewn by hand. A bit tedious, but at least I can turn off my brain while doing it.

Next Thamesreach revel is costume and sewing themed, and I have a plan: I need to make new hose, and this time I want to try In Deme Jare Christi's tutorial. I should have some wool suitable for hose somewhere in the stash, and I definitely have cotton for the toile. With any luck I will have nice hose for the summer revels and events.

This year I finished the Thamesreach bunting! It took a long long time, but it was so worth it in the end. Not saying I'm volunteering to do more of the same kind, mind you. I've only come slightly further on the split stitch griffin for the shot glass pouch since last year, but, well, the bunting was definitely the primary thing on the to-do list.

I've also come a fair bit on the wedding cushion (no pictures, since I forgot to pack the connection cord between the camera and the computer), but it won't be finished before I go back to the UK. I hope to have it done by March, so I could send it to them in time for their wedding anniversary. Fingers crossed...

Plans for 2016 include finishing the wedding cushion, doing a small woollen embroidery phone pouch for a friend, and finishing the griffin shot glass pouch. I would like to practice making tassels and turks head's knots to go with a 14th century brickstitched pouch, but that is low on the priority list for now.

The wedding cushion is progressing slowly. My plan for working on it in the evenings has failed, since one side effect of my medicine for an ear infection apparently is increased tiredness. I can barely do my full hours at work, and when I get home all I can manage is a simple dinner and some light internet browsing, perhaps a chapter or two in a book (re-read only, and nothing complicated). I hope once this week is done that I will be back to normal.

I've embroidered during conferences, in cafés, would have embroidered in the park but it's getting a bit cold for that now, but still, it's not going as quickly as I would have wanted it to. I blame too many other things to do in combination with sheer laziness and internet temptations. But every stitch I take is one closer to the finish. I hope I can have a few evenings when I can do nothing but sit in the sofa, listening to an audiobook or podcast and just embroider one or two hours.

Spotted on the New Book Display shelves in the fabulous* Sackler library in Oxford (dealing with archaeology, classics and art history):

Gitte Hansen, Steven P. Ashby and Irene Baug (eds) (2015) Everyday products in the Middle Ages. Crafts, consumption and the individual in northern Europe c. AD 800-1600. Oxbow Books.

I’ve heard about this book for a while now, but was waiting to see it in the flesh, as it were, before deciding to buy or not. And it seems like a highly useful book if you are interested in basic consumer goods, its production, the craftspeople and the consumers in Medieval northern Europe. The list of contents is up at the publisher, and it has quite a variety in its topics, from general articles on craftspeople, to pottery and glass imports, leather working, bone and antler working, textiles, stone working, iron production and blacksmithing.

*: not because it’s particularly fancy – it’s not – but because they have so much useful and interesting stuff.

The heraldic bunting is finally finished! Both sides of my personal arms are stitched together and the group arms are also done. Those are not embroidered, as it was way easier to appliqué the wavy fess (= horisontal band) and just embroider the laurel wreath. I like the Thamesreach arms. Simple, yet effective in evoking the association to London, i.e. the Thames bisecting the city.


My personal arms and Thamesreach's arms

The question now is what I'll do next. I have several items on the to-do list. I could start work on a brickstitched pouch for a friend (she's naalbinding me a pair of mittens, and I think she's almost done by now) or I could start on my friends' wedding cushion. The plan is to have something to do during idle moments on a conference next month, so nothing too minute that requires really good light (thus, the shot glass griffins are not suitable). Neither project can be started straight away: I have to decide on pattern and colours for the pouch, and do the final pattern drawing and transfer the pattern of the wedding cushion. At least I have a few weeks to decide.

Thanks to a kind person who has uploaded the entire Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries on youtube, I'm not only updated with season 3, but have finished all the vair parts of the heraldic embroidery, and have started on the red bend! Whee!!!

I've finished the upper half of the vair pattern on the bunting, and started on the lower half. Can this be finished for the July revel???? I certainly hope so, but I'm also fully aware of my hope for having it done for the March revel...

In other good news, we started the big silk painting project at the last revel. All the labours of the months, upscaled and painted on silk to be hung in front of the windows in our meeting hall. We drew the outlines of ten pictures. Next step is painting gutta on the outlines, then start the actual silk painting. I've never done silk painting before, so it will be a challenge but also very fun.

The SCA shire I'm playing in, Thamesreach (i.e. London) has a long set of bunting with the members' arms on interspersed with the Thamesreach arms. It looks really neat and is also a way to remember people who moved elsewhere. Most are either painted or sewn/appliqued.

I wasn't quite sure how to do mine, since my arms are complicated, with a background in vair (small pieces of white and blue). First I thought I could paint them, but seeing another member's painting going a bit pearshaped when the paint ran outside the borders made me re-think that idea. My second option was appliqué but when I had done the first quarter I looked at it and wasn't satisfied. The colours looked flat and the appliqué had scruffy edges despite careful stitching.


The appliqué follows the post-medieval way to depict vair, with a pattern made of rectangles and triangles. The medieval version is a rounded shape, but the tiny edges at the bases are impossible to do with appliqué.


Even using the later version, it was a very fiddly process, with small stitches. You had to be careful so it wouldn't unravel, particularly at the points. I had first tried putting anti-ravel liquid on the edges, but that would make it impossible for the holes from the needle to close up afterwards.

So I went back to my trusted needlework. Klosterstitch or split stitch would be more accurate time-wise, but since couched work ("bayeux-stitch") is immensly more economic with the amount of thread needed, I chose that instead. One panel of vair took me about half an hour to do (keep in mind that the fabric is ordinary cotton so there is a high threadcount compared to normal embroidery linen), but the result looks so much better that I don't mind the extra time. All you need is a couple of evenings with something mindless on the tv or a couple of podcasts and you can get a lot done.



Heraldic beasts comes in two versions: the ones with a different colour of their claws, teeth, tongue and genitals (where applicable) and the ones that are entirely single-colour. Adding a new colour felt like overkill when I designed my arms - particularly since vair as a background increases the total number of colours to four. Single colour can make the animal very plain, so I added some lines to indicate the three-dimensionality of the animal.


And what a difference it made!



Ta dah!

Now all I have to do is another one for the other side of the bunting...


ETA: colour references for DMC cotton: blue: 147, white: 2, red: 321, yellow: 726.