Embroidered Rose - Fortune's Rose Cloak

Among the many things I needed to get done the week or so leading up to Ozurr and Fortune stepping down, was working on the embroidered rose kit I had stashed away in a "safe place".  Turns out it was so safe, I almost forgot about it.

The rose is silk and wool with all gold work done by couching.  I did a double strand of gold to outline the petals and spent the better part of two evenings trying to remember what I was doing.  This was the second gold work piece I've done and I think it came out rather well.

Congrats, Fortune!

Queen for a Month - Feilinn's viking dress

After the Edward III and Thyra II World Tour #2, the sewing ladies of the Worshipful Company decided that each person was going to get a new fancy outfit in as if they were "Queen for a Month".  Thyra was my project manager and Marieta was my concept designer for this one.

What did I want?  Cute viking...and a wolf...also blue...and something that fit.

What this meant was we finally delved into my stash of fabric and made a full viking under dress and apron.  The main component of the apron was something termed "Fantasy Viking" in the SCA...I wanted a wolf design right on the apron.  I had found a design I liked on Pintrest from a million years ago (in which I also found examples of Thyra and Aikaterine in lovely viking dresses when they were queens).

This is where I confess this is my third/fourth embroidery project and biggest applique of the bunch.  I was taught how to do a split stitch specifically for this project.  I did all the hand embroidery for this with the exception of the sun detail on the wolf's collar (done by Thyra) and the eye detail (done by Marieta).  The wolf is 30% merino wool felt, layered on itself, and the apron is either a very light weight wool or very wool-like linen.  The design is based off a Fenris wolf design from the depths of Pintrest, edited to remove the rope fetters/shackles on the paws.  I kept the collar and leash to add color and movement.  The thin bits of felt were tacked down with fusing and pinned in place while I started the stitching process.  Dot details are (terrible) french knots.

Queen for a Month: Wolf Applique
Wool felt stitched with wool thread.

Yard stick shown for scale.

Close up of the stitching and detail work.  I have been told I have the tiniest stitches.  My favorite is the gold eye bead on the wolf.

Vigil Planning for Matthias - Part 2

Now that we had decided on the vigil garb, it was time to look for inspiration for the detail pieces - particularly the embroidery portion of the outfit.

Thyra and I sat down and looked for inspiration.  Off the bat, we decided that a group of people learning how to do German Brickwork stitch was not going to happen (because we like our friends and want to stay friends with them).

We stumbled upon this lady's blog in searching for inspiration: http://medievalartcraft.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html  There are lovely examples of her inspiration of polychrome tiles from a church in Burgendy.  More google searching led to information of this being a thing in various portions of Europe.


In Slovinia - http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/Slovakia/West/Bratislavsky/Bratislava/photo1450819.htm

In France - http://www.france-voyage.com/travel-photos/photos-brou-royal-monastery-2112.htm.  We also liked this from Kathy's blog - http://medievalartcraft.blogspot.com/2010/03/brick-stitch-pattern-20.html

In Germany (out of period restoration) - http://jsah.ucpress.edu/content/7/4/466. You need a subscription for the article, but a google search of the church will yield some nice pictures.

In Vienna - http://www.stephanskirche.at/. St Stephan's Cathedral roof is wonderful.

St Stephan's Cathedral.  Vienna, Austria

We did some initial sketching before deciding on a modified version of Kathy Storm's blog and embroidery pattern especially since we found examples of tiny M's in some of the brick work roofs.

Feilinn and Thyra get sketchy and toy with different ideas for trim!  You can see we started off with a comet theme since no one wanted to embroider unicorns.

With the planning done, it was off to the Worshipful Company for figuring out how to do this and get it sewn.  Marieta worked with Thyra to do the layout of the design with a pattern website I found (https://www.stitchfiddle.com/en),  There was much hand waving and magic (and swearing and throwing things I imagine) and *poof* we had silk, a pattern traced out, thread from Akaterine, and it was off to the races with our embroidery kits.  14 kits in all done by 13 people. It was decided to do a backstitch for the embroidery since there were so many pieces.  Three strings of silk floss were used.

Here is my work for one of the sleeves of the purple silk over tunic.

One done.  You can see the pattern traced out on the plastic medium as a guide.

Two of four done for the sleeve.

All four done.  My husband's truck keys inadvertently provided for scale.

Vigil Planning for Matthias - Part 1

It's been a good year for Darostur (my household) so far.  One peer elevation, and two elevations for members of Edward's personal household in which Darostur helped with.  Well, let's not stop there! I had gotten word this was on the horizon like eight months or so ago.  As as Vice President of the Matthias Fan Club, I may have done a dance when I got the official confirmation he was going to be elevated to the Chivalry.

The big trick with organizing this thing was timing.  First it was Pennsic, then OMG NOT PENNSIC, the maybe GNEW, then sometime "hand wave"....nope definitely GNEW.  Since we had gotten the heads up well in advance, my personal mission start working early and not get sucked into the false sense of security that we had so much time...we'll get to it.  (like most people do every year for Pennsic prep)

I have the benefit of working with Thyra so we could chat during lunch about evil plans and logistics.  The first order of business was working out vigil garb.  Since Thyra knows everyone, she put out some feelers for suggestions on garb in the 14th C time frame for German/Austrian clothing.

Thyra's thoughts on the matter were discussed on our seeeecret Facebook page entitled "Dance Garb" because no one would think Thyra talking about dance garb would be anything other than what it was.. Oh ho!  Not the case!  See below for her thoughts on garbing Matthias.

Thyra:

-Targeting early 14th C Austrian
-From one source: "To a large extent 14thC is pan European so sources like fashion in the age of the black prince or woven into the earth are great."
-Related to that, fitted cotes are lovely, but we have to work off of measurements and I don't want it to look ill-fitted.
-Contrary to that, 14th C German/Austrian pictures show either plate armor + cloak (not an option) or loose tunics. Plus side, we know he likes wearing loose tunics.

- Here's a source that looks promising:
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/5709/20826/

We decided that the kneeling guy was going to be our go-to inspiration for the garb portion of "Dance Garb".  And so it begins.....

Queen's favors- Caoilfhionn II

The call for embroiderers always needs to be answered especially when it comes to queen's favors.  Having worked hard in two reigns, I got to see how much it means to someone to be given a favor by sitting royalty.  Spoiler alert: seriously makes a person's day.  I've seen a lot of people tear up and be very moved by a seemingly simple thing.

Once again, the good idea train (lead by conductor Marieta) stopped by to hand me a pile of favors to work on.  I started working on favors at Coronation and then put them off to work on scrolls and Cassandra's Laurel coat.  I picked them up now and again as a fiddley thing to do while watching TV and to relieve stress.

All of the two tailed mermaids (melusine) were done using the reverse chain stitch,  I ended up doing about 7 or 8 favors with another unfinished one still in my bag I hope to have done before they step down.  All in all, it helped me feel more confident in my embroidery skills and it was fun.

Compass Star - Cassandra Grey's Laurel Coat

This was my second embroidery project (finished for Yule December 2015).

I was convinced to help out with the laurel coat for Cassandra Grey's elevation since it was sold to me as a "small embroidery project".  Well..that and I couldn't say no. :)

Duchess Aikaterine spearheaded this project of a coat fitting for a middle class Elizabethan woman that incorporated Cassandra's compass rose design.  Each person would be given a kit to work on and they would later be appliqued onto the coat.

Aikaterine's design schematics

Aikaterine's finished applique.  Setting an amazing example for the rest of us.

I learned SO MUCH doing the embroidery for this like:

• Metal thread is a pain
• Couching! 
• Beading
• How to be sneaky with a group of 10+ people

The finished coat was paneled for Athena's Thimble and we were given competency for Free Embroidery, Applique, and Metalwork.

Some last minute finishing work was done the day off by the group right before the panel and before court.  Epic teamwork by all!

Go team sneaky embroidery!

I will post a picture of my individual star at a later date.  This is one I didn't get a chance to do progress pictures of.  On the plus side, everyone signed their names into the embroidery so we could keep track of them. Photos to come!

Embroidered Rose -Caoilfhionn's Rose Cloak

At Pennsic I was convinced to go to an Athena's Thimble guild meeting and panel a counted cross stitch Tyger's Cub I was working on.  I've done cross stitch since I was young so it wasn't a huge deal for me.  My first "official" project was handed to me while a bunch of people were over my place watching football.  It was to embroider a rose for a small cloak for Princess Caoilfhionn's (soon to be Queen Caoilfhionn II) at coronation.

Once I got over the "I'm making something for the queeeeeeeeeeeen" panic, I sat down and did it.  It's very simple and took inspiration from Anastasia de Monte's embroidered rose for the same cloak with keeping it simple.  I learned the reverse chain stitch for this and learned "back stitch" was actually the right name for my straight lines.

The tiny arrow points to my rose.

The finished cloak with all roses attached.