Background

Here's a picture of the back of the embroidery, and the pictures I based the design on.

Pelican embroidery

Here's some pictures of the pelican in progress and just before I finished it in January. I'm quite pleased with it, the gold rapidly improved from after the first corner where it was a little uneven. I especially like the way the direction of the stitches gives shape and a kind of feathery look to the birds.

The gold couching was very, very, very slow, and pulled the original circular shape into an oval. The brick pattern was a little hard to keep up consistently. In the end I drew lines every 5 mm and skipped one to get 1 cm bricks. Then I looked and skipped 5 mm to the side depending on how the pattern fit the shape. You can see the lines on the bottom picture.

I made a few felt tip drawings to work out the shading (how much blue where). On a next bird I'd like to use a bit more blue.

The first picture with the black outline was the trial piece, and very useful, since I learned to omit the black outline... I also decided not to use a stem stitch, but split stitch on the outside of the design, and practiced the gold couching.

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)

Tabletweaving

I'm learning double face tabletweaving, and am working out plans to make garters. In the pictures are the front and back view of the design.

I put the design in Guntram's Tabletweaving Thingy, which was surprisingly easy!

I'm using DMC Petra cotton no. 5. The band will be 14 tablets wide. Each garter will be made up as follows:

3 cm solid color for attaching the buckle

2 cm solid before the design starts

a set of 3 leaves

2 x 2 picks solid

1 castle

2 x 2 picks solid

a set of 3 leaves

solid color until the total length of the garter is 71 cm

I've calculated the length of the warp for weaving 4 garters at a time, since that lenght will hopefully be managable to set up.

4 x 71 = 284

20 % loss = 57

50 cm

Total lenght 391 cm

Hm, the total length on the sheet I worked it out on comes to 4.40 m, why?

We've decided to switch the weft color, to see the effect and to mark the beginning and end of each garter. If one color weft looks much better than the other we might change our minds about this.

Challenge

As part of the A&S 50 challenge I am working on several linnen tunics, getting practice at handsewing and finishing them.

I made two for the children, and that went pretty well, even though they still aren't completely finished. Part of my goals for the challenge is to really finish things, so I guess I'll take these with me on the drive to Italy this summer to finish all the seams.

Right now I'm racing the clock to finish the linnen dress I am making for myself, so I can spend the weekend (with predicted temperatures between 25 and 30 C) in linnen in stead of wool. A good reason to work hard, but so far it's going one step forward, 5 steps back.

I originally cut the linnen a couple of years ago, but only started putting it together this past winter. When I started putting in the sleeves, it turned out that they were too narrow, so I've had to go back and make new ones. Now those are finished, and I started putting them in, and it turns out I've been stupid finishing the seams connecting the middle to the sides. I'll have to put up a diagram to show this, but in the end, the only elegant solution was to take out the two seams at the back that had already been finished, so I can fold them over in the other direction :(

Anyway, I'm getting lots of practice in handsewing and finishing linnen seams...So, fingers crossed I'll be able to post a picture of the three of us in new linnen tunics; sewn together, but not completely finished...

Finished illuminations

I copied the design for these a few (well, several!) years ago, and kind of forgot about them, then we got back into painting stuff and now they are finished!

The design came from a book of hours made around 1470. In the original, the square in the middle is filled with a picture of the annunciation, which I left out to leave room for a text.

The gold is gold leaf on a modern acrylic based glue. Almost all the paint (except for the red and pink) was made by Bertrik using a gum arabic base and terra verde pigment for the green, ochre pigmenst for the yellow and azurite (?) for the blue. I did the lining with a modern fine liner with permanent ink.