Old work: The Tablero game board

I was asked to post about this, so here I go. This is my first SCA embroidery, and about fourth embroidery in my life, if one does not count that monstrosity from fifth grade at elementary school. I have a vague memory of making this around 1999.

It was a dark and stormy night, like always, when I got a sudden idea of after a couple of mundane cross stitch embroideries to try a stitch I had seen pictures of years ago. I grabbed a piece of cloth and some thread that I had and started stitching. I don't remember how long it took to make this. I tried many different stitches out of my head, no sources or anything, and added pieces of fabric to it as I went stitching. After it was finished, I tried to write a documentation for it, with mixed results.

Cotton on linen, at least 8 different stitches, mainly satin stitch and bokhara couching. 32x32cm

The whole game board with dice. My husband made the dice from rose wood.

A close up near the centre.

A detail from one of the corners. There are seams under the light brown embroidery.

The back side. Quite neat, if I say so myself. There is not a single knot in this work. Now I need a lot of coins to start playing! There is a drinking game version of the game, so I have 7 neat little cups made out of rose wood to finish this set.

I have entered this in Arts and Sciences competitions a couple of times. I have got critique because of it being an embroidered game board, when those were supposed to be made out of wood, and because of the lack of knots (!).

Fit for champions

This is a commission from Her Majesty Eleanora von Ratzeburg, Queen of Drachenwald. These Dancing champion badges will be attached to arm bands. They are both 10cm across and embroidered on linen with silk thread using split stitch.

Both still on the frame. (My new frame that I got from Aarnimetsä. I love it!)

A close-up of one of the dragons.

I could not keep myself from playing with the split stitch a little. It reflects light differently if worked in different angles, and it produces a subtle shading if looked from the side.

Now I'll give these to Lady Magdelena Grace Vane, who will finish the arm bands. New pictures when that is done.

My New Eye-Dazzling Silk Tent

I'm slowly getting started with my new "garberobe". Here is something I finished yesterday after some stitching frenzy.

First a basic under layer. Wool. The pattern is Herjolfsnes nr 39 with lacing added to the front. The sleeves are done without gussets, a mistake I will not repeat. The next one I'll make shall be more tight-fitting. This one doesn't give any support for the bust.

Then the outer layer. Machine embroidered silk, linen lining. The pattern is somewhat similar to the one above, except for the sleeves, of course. I had to cut it differently to get the embroideries parallel to each other, though. I was so careful not to make it too small, that it became way too big and is like a tent. It's too wide under the arms and at the back. I wonder how could I best fix it. Do I have to open it up and take it in at the seams or would some lacing on the sides be enough? Would that even be period for an outer layer? Or should I just get a pretty belt?

Here you can see the sleeves a little bit better. The veil is a fast fix for the pictures, usually I wear a little more elaborate one with a chin piece.

This must be the most comfortable garb I have ever had. Perhaps I shall keep it as it is, the tent and all?

A Christmas present

I wanted to make a christmas present for a friend of mine. He really likes the drum playing skeleton by Hans Holbein (see for example this page, detail in here.), so I embroidered him a needle roll. (He makes awesome garb, by the way.)

Cotton on linen with split stitch and whatever stitch for detail.

The other side, where you keep your needles, is wool, there is a couple of layers of it to make it thicker.

The strings ended up being a little bit too short, but one can still tie it up, so no harm done. He recieved his gift and liked it. And I liked making it. It was a new experience. I've never embroidered line drawings this fine before and the details made it hard to transfer the design on the fabric, but the result looks much better than I had hoped for. This took all together two days to make.

Nothing is more fun than giving presents!

A very worthy lady in Aarnimetsä got elevated to the Order of the Laurel last weekend. Vivat! I wanted to make her a present. My package of silks arrived late, so I had only 9 days to make the pouch I was planning to do. I did it in 8 days! Go me! I must have some super powers.

Here are a couple of pictures. Green, orange, black and yellow silk on linen, gold thread (Not real gold, but very similar to it in feel) couched with red silk, glas beads sewn with white silk. The seams are sewn with waxed white linen thread. Stitches: Split stitch, surface couching, laid work. The braids over the seams (I don't know it's name) and the cords were also made with the same silk threads.

My short visit to Aarnimetsä was wonderfull. I met many dear old friends, and made some new dear friends as well. My luggage was delayed in Amsterdam and it must have crawled through northern Europe to get to me, only four hours before I headed home again. Great. At least I got it quickly out of the plane at home. I had to give my two classes without my notes, but they went quite well anyway.

Ja siellä kaikilla oli niin mukavaa...

Proud Mama

I am so proud of my little daughter! She is five years old, and this is the first time that I gave her a piece of fabric, a needle and a thread. She has used a needle before, but only on paper with mixed results. She likes to draw and paint, mainly princesses and pegasi. So, here is what she came up with! Tadah!

She embroidered a pegasos and a cat! The only thing I helped her with was to get more thread and opening a couple of knots. There was no drawing or patterns on the fabric, this is purely free hand. Her next project is a swan surrounded with stars that I drew on a piece of cotton. Embroidery - So easy a child of five can do it!

Renaming the Brown Silk

Here is the first sleeve embroidered. I hereby rename "The Brown Silk" as "The Gold Garb".

I embroidered all the flowers in all of the pieces first, because I'm not sure if I have time to embroider everything in time. Now I do the sleeves first and assemble the garb before embroidering the rest. The garb will not look too incomplete if I do the embroidery symmetricaly. I might not use this at Aarnimetsä Academy though, because I would like to reserve the wow-factor to when it is all done.

Oh. How long will this take? If I work hard and don't do much else, I can embroider a sleeve in two to two and a half days. That means that I'll be doing some embroidery for a long time, even though I know I'm fast.