Quick and Virtuous: Queen's Favors

Straightforward.  We like that.

It is the custom in the SCA (particularly in the East Kingdom, but I think it's pretty universal?) for a queen to have a tangible object with a particular design or badge specific to her that she can give to people who she wants to recognize outside the formalized awards framework.  Her Champions will have them, of course, but they can be given out for any other reason she sees fit.  These usually take the form of a "belt favor"*--a rectangle of fabric that folds over (or has a loop to be threaded upon) one's belt--and her chosen design will be on the front of it; most often in embroidery.  And since each reigning queen will need a lot of them, and since they're often embroidery, we usually end up pitching in as time permits.

I wanted some work that could be purely execution (as opposed to thinky-planny) as I came down off the banner project and some other stresses, and conveniently about that time the favor specs for Her Incoming Majesty got posted, so I reckoned as how that might fit the bill, as well as being a Generally Neighborly Thing To Do.  And, even more conveniently, I realized I had some leftover golden-yellow linen that was really too small to do anything else with, so I ran off as many "blanks" as I could fit out of the fabric (16, as it happened), and spent an evening tracing the pattern onto them all.  Not that I figure to do that many of them, gaah!  But I can take them to a local group meeting and give them out to others as a pre-made package, which--having been on the recipient end of similar efforts--I can vouch for as a good way to increase production.  

The specs, as you see above, are pretty blissfully simple: outline the design in black on a gold background.  One has the option of filling in the keys in a golden-yellow color as well, but a) I didn't think I could find a color that wouldn't look weird in contrast to the background, and b) since the specs don't call for any kind of backing or lining I wanted to make the reverse side as un-messy as possible.  So, I stuck to outlining.

For stitch choice, I had a moment of thinking double-running stitch, because it looks the same on both sides, also an advantage when you don't have a lining; but I haven't done it before and it's a counted stitch, and I wasn't sure this design would work terribly well as a counted pattern.  The smart people can probably convert it, but that sort of gets away from the Not Thinky Planny objective, so I chose stem stitch instead.

Result:

Even though the silk thread I was using was incredibly catchy and annoying, this went amazingly fast.  I finished almost the entire design in one watching of The Mummy (now on Netflix!) (and part of that was just getting accustomed to the stitch).  Obviously I could use some more practice; the first Roman numeral isn't quite as crisp as I'd like, and there's clearly a knack to using stem as a filling stitch; but on the whole it was almost like a vacation.  I'll be OK with doing a couple more if I can't farm out all the blanks I've set up.  

This has also relaxed my brain enough that I can start clearing some other items in the Pending queue, several of which are owed to other people.  First priority is re-lining the Banner Of Doom and getting it back to its owner; then I have some curtains I promised to hem for someone, um, months ago; and I can buckle down for the Summer Sewing Season.



* For the clarification of non-medieval readers: this custom is 100% ahistorical.  There are some literary references to ladies giving sleeves, veils, or rings to their favored knights, but few references in the historical record, and no references at all to tokens of this ilk.