Embroidery!

I started a roundel with pelican to go on a cloak - to be used in November, which means that I have a serious deadline, and that I won't be able to post this for a while... Possibly this will turn out to be a practice piece if we come to different decisions on the size of the roundel and material to use.

It's been a long time since I did any embroidery, and I've never gotten much beyond small and half researched projects, so I'm a bit daunted. I expect to learn much, and sincerely hope the result will be worthy of its recipient...

For the design of the pelican we looked at the Luttrel psalter and the Pienza cope. All 14th ct Pelicans look like generic birds, with nests on trees...

This site has lots of pictures of medieval pelicans.

Based on these pictures I drew a design. I took two layers of white cotton/linnen mix and stuck them together with vliesofix (iron on fabric glue on a role) and put it in a frame.

I'm not entirely sure yet of the technique to fill in the shapes; some variation of . I'm starting with the outlines in black stem stitch (a double strand of dmc floss).

Questions/learning points I've run into so far:

-what base fabric should I use? If a strengthening layer of fabric is used, how should the layers be attached?

-a stem stitch should go in the right direction through a curve; from left to right along the inside of the curve.

-it's quite hard to do stem stitch on the frame (and I lose the tension); am I doing something wrong?

-looking at outlines; which part of the design should have a black outline and which bits shouldn't.

-should the outlines be done first (like I'm doing now, or is afterwards actually better (this is what Racaire seems te be doing on the wallhanging project)