Lady Eyja Gunnarsdottir shares her striking entry for the category: 12. A garish flag, to be the aim of every dangerous shot. An item of heraldic display.
“This is the first item of personal heraldry I have created, using yellow, blue, and red cotton to ensure a ‘garish’ colour. ‘Gyronny Or and azure, in pale three keys fesswise gules’.
Once we are out of plague isolation I will affix it to a dowel and cord for display.”
As a companion piece to the “M&M” dress, Meisterin Christian enters a beaded brustfleck as an accessory her persona may have owned, made, used, or gifted in the category “With scarfs, and fans, and double change of bravery, With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knavery.”
Persona period inspiration and use:
Christian is a woman of the court in early 16th C Saxony. Clothing of women of this court are recorded in art of the time, most notably (but not exclusively) in the portraits of Lucas Cranach.
The Brustfleck (Breast piece) or Brusttuch (Breast cloth) is the decorated piece that covered the front openings of clothing, over the linen layer, found in many styles, in early to mid 16thC German women’s clothing, including the clothing of Saxony.
Brustflecks for Saxon court gowns of this period are generally made from brocade and are variously decorated with slashing, pearls, and embroidery. Pearl embroidery could be in geometric or floral/pictorial designs.
Christian has a number of brustflecks, but not a floral/pictorial one. I’ve been meaning to do one of these for ages, but I’m fairly inexpert at embroidery, and there were times in the past where obtaining small real pearls was difficult and expensive. This brustfleck was made for the M&M dress (one of the illustrated dresses has a floral/pictorial brustfleck, while the other has a geometric design).
Design, Materials and Construction:
Design: the particular design here is copied from the dress of Emilia in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s portrait of Sibylla, Emilia and Sidonia of Saxony, 1535. This is a fairly common design, with scrolling flowers and two heraldic dolphins. I am a member of the Order of the Dolphin of Caid, in fact I received two Dolphins, so this design seemed appropriate.
Materials: the Brustfleck is from made from a gold metal thread and black silk brocade (matching that of the dress guards), interlined with linen canvas, and is lined with fine linen.
Construction: the brocade was interlined with canvas. The design was simplified and modified to fit the size of the brustfleck and the available pearls. The design was transferred to the fabric, the embroidery is done in several sizes and shapes of freshwater pearls, and outlined in fine gold cord. The whole was then lined with linen.
Reference:
I have promised to be a generous consort to Sir Radbot von Borg and, on learning that he lacked suitable items to bring to table, I have begun work to rectify that.
I made a ratbag and ratkerchief, to go with a feast kit set (rat-marked market wallet, trencher, cutlery roll, bag and napkin) I presented to Sir Radbot at Coronation. The kerchief is of linen with a simple lace edging; the bag is linen with ties in his livery colours. Both bear an embroidered rat as a charge from Sir Radbot’s arms.
2 bags, made by Lady Katherine Stewart – the first for a Mouseguard, the second with the Baronial Tower
With thanks to Sir Callum, who provided these images.
The two top images are Sir Callums personal arms, some of his awards are on the hood. Made using a variety of techniques.
Something to cover the mundane – Lady Katherine Stewart. One of those bags you get goodies in at shows, with the writing on it covered with applique
And a lovely gift, made by Lady katherine for Sir Callum
For the category – Something to mark territory, Lady Amabilia submits this cushion.
The Embroidery is done using blackwork techniques, with 2ply navy blue silk thread on uneven natural linen.
This entry is presented for the categories Child’s Play: Out of Your Comfort Zone (Embroidery), One Metre Material Project (linen and lace), Give What You Get, and Togs, Togs, Undies.
Meisterin Christian says:
I have been interested in the lovely late 16thC linen shirts with silk insert embroidery stitches, but alas this is too late for the clothes I wear in the SCA. I decided to make one for my goddaughter for 2017 Midwinter Coronation, both as a gift to her and also as an experiment to learn more about these shirts and their construction. I was also looking for a project to take with me on a 4WD camping trip at Easter. (What I should have taken was the Skjoldehamn hood (although I hadn’t even thought about making it at that point), as trying to hand sew a white linen shirt outdoors in crepuscular light and a windy, wet, muddy environment was not ideal.)
I worked from several extant women’s smocks and boys shirts in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion 4, and a girl’s smock pattern in the Tudor Tailor. As the child was only 2 years old I had to scale down the extant patterns in size, but still leave room for growth as the event was some months away. There was always a chance that her growth would not be linear and the smock would either swamp her or be too small (I had backup plans for either scenario). Also chances were, that given the pace of growth for toddlers and the number of SCA events each year, she might also only be able to wear the smock once.
The extant shirts and smocks are made of white tabby woven linen in various thread counts. I made this shirt from less than 1 metre of such linen; offcuts from one of my own smocks. I imagine that women in period, who we know often made shirts and smocks for their family (even if tailors or servants made their other clothes), would have used remnants in the same way for their children.
Each pattern piece in the original was hemmed first, with narrow (~3mm) hems and then the pieces were sewn together with the coloured silk in a decorative stitch. Due to the light and mud (see above) the hems done in the field weren’t always 3 mm, but once back in the real world the later hems were nice and tiny. There is no reference in Janet Arnold to the stitch used to hem the originals so I used a simple whip stitch with a white linen hand sewing thread; these stitches are essentially invisible in the completed piece.
Due to the less than optimal sewing conditions outdoors, the many small pattern pieces, and the danger of losing pins in the muddy grass, I loosely slip-stitched the hemmed pieces together before stitching the pieces together permanently with the insertion stitches. Given the child is generally energetic, it seemed a little reinforcement to the slightly fragile embroidery stitches might be a good idea. It’s entirely possible that this could have been done in period; the tacking stitches are also virtually invisible in the completed garment.
For the insertion stitches (that join the garment pieces together) I decided not to use silk because of the cost (since the child might only wear the shirt once) and because a toddler’s clothes are likely to need some serious laundering. I substituted DMC embroidery thread, which I was assured would be colour fast even in nappy-soaking chemicals (so far, so good). Having surveyed the silk colours of extant garments in Janet Arnold, I tended to a crimson, and with the help of the child’s mother and other godmothers selected a colour we all liked. Late period embroidery is definitely outside my comfort zone. Having looked at the embroidery on various extant garments, and searched for information on period techniques, I experimented with a few until I found stitches that I liked. Some of the extant shirts also have decorative embroidery on parts of the garments other than the seams (e.g. sleeves), and/ or also alongside the insertion work on the seams. Given the child may only wear the shirt once or twice, I decided the additional work was probably not warranted.
The remnants I had were not enough to cut the sleeves in one piece so I had to piece them. I’m sure this would not be uncommon in period for economic reasons. Initially I planned to put the additional seam at the back of the sleeve where it would not be obvious, but then I decided to make a feature of it by putting it at the front and embroidering the seam which would add interest if the shift was worn with an open front sleeve. I started my embroidery here. I decided I really liked the alternating triple stitch buttonhole stitch so I played around with the stitch until I found a technique that produced the right look and was easy to maintain in a steady stitching rhythm. I sewed a couple of inches and decided that it was too large a scale for such small garment, so unpicked it and went to double stitches. Once I’d sewn the whole seam I realised it was really red and overwhelming, and then recalled a shirt that had a white linen thread stitched over the insertion silk embroidery on one shirt, and for which I’d thought – why would you do that? Why use practical white linen thread decoratively on top of red silk? Now I wonder if the embroiderer thought as I did that there was too much red in that stitch, and it needed more contrast from the white. The stitch was also (comparatively) very slow and used a lot of thread, so I decided it wasn’t going to work for the whole shirt. I decided to change to a single alternating stitch for the rest of the shirt. Its not clear if different insertion stitches were used in different parts of the same shirt, but it is clear that decorative embroidery used a variety of stitches on the same garment, so I went with the change. It also made more of a feature of the centre front sleeve seams. After some experimentation I chose a pretty standard looking insertion stitch (essentially an alternating blanket stitch with another stitch into the intersection to “knot it off”).
The body and sleeves were gathered into a collar and cuffs to make the smock more comfortable for the wearer. For the same reason I choose to attach a flat band of lace to the collar and cuffs. I briefly contemplated making the lace, but since the child might only wear this once, that seemed unwise. Ties at the cuffs and collar in the original garment were inserted through sewn eyelets, but I figured a toddler would have those out and lost within minutes, so instead I sewed soft tape ties on as neck and wrist closures.
Her Excellency writes to inform of her appearance in a morality play at Canterbury Faire. This falls into the categories Break A Leg, and Out Of Your Comfort Zone.
Additionally, these throne and kneeling cushions, submitted as Show Us Your Arms, Give What You Get and Embellish It.
The kneeling cushions of Southron Gaard were looking a little tired after 20 or so years of service, and did not have the augmentation of the arms of Caid on them, as that was granted to us when we moved to Lochac. Her Excellency charted and worked the augmentation, and Meisterin Christian dis-assembled the old cushions, washed the embroidered tops, attached the augmentations, and reassembled them with nice bright red velvet, so they looked as good as new, and ready for another 20 years service.
This delightful piece of embroidery from Her Excellency Ginevra is for the categories Here Be Monsters, Show Us Your Arms, and Give What You Get.
Her Excellency says:
This depiction of my arms is worked with silk thread, on silk, in split stitch (with thanks to Melissa for teaching me) and is 1.5 inches high. It’s been given to Mistress Rowan, to be part of the Broiderers Guild of Lochac Banner.
