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| ""You can't put it together again unless you've torn it apart first." --Vallista proverb |
The part several days have not been productive on the sewing front for a concatenation of reasons, which culminated in a disintegrated bookshelf, piles of books stacked everywhere, piles of cables in all directions, and less organization of my fabric & notions than when I'd started. Still, I had opportunity for a little bit of portable handwork on Friday, where I began my piece of a project related to the banner--to wit, embroidered daisies for the Laurel cloak (or coat, in this case).
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| "Marguerite" page from the Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany, c. 1505 |
The reference image given for this project is from Les Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne, illuminated between 1503 and 1508. As you see, it's not exactly the basic daisy we know from field and roadside; there's a purple-burgundy-ish rim around the outside of the petals that fades into a hint of pink, rather than just plain white. This seems like a job for needle-painting, which is a very common 14th-century (and later) embroidery Thing, and I really needed to learn it therefore, so why not start now?
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| Needle-Painting loves me, it loves me not... |
The usual stitch for needle-painting is long-and-short stitch. This looks like it ought to be tolerably simple--make some stitches long and some stitches short, and change colors so the long bits of color 2 run into the short bits of color 1, thus giving you the shading you want--but I am finding it challenging, to say the least. I expect that, as usual, the way to succeed is the same way you get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. In the meantime, though, three hours of painstaking labor ended me up with two petals, looking rather as if they were colored by an eight-year-old child. Fortunately (?), with so many petals on a single motif, there's a decent chance that by the time I get to the last two, I may have developed some small skill in this field.
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| It looks strangely like my wireframe diagram. I'm so confused. |
After this diversion, I went on to make some advances in the banner department; finished stitching the bend down, cut out the daisy shapes, and placed & pinned them onto the ground. I had intended to cut out the daisy centers and appliquéing them to anchor the main daisy part before stitching all the petal details; but after the last round of hilarity, I wonder if I didn't ought to baste the daisies down first.
Usually, when I find myself debating whether to do a thing or not, the right choice is whichever one I have the most resistance to. And I'm waiting on the gold velvet for the daisy centers anyways.
Grump.
The other task available right now is doing the needle charge on the bend; which involves spelunking in ye boxe of scrappes (i.e., making even more mess in the office/workroom). Though, this has the advantage of forcing me to re-examine the scrap box...of which there are actually two...and come to a conclusion of how much scrap one can sensibly accommodate in a 1-BR apartment.
Bonus Link: an astonishingly fine needle-painted portrait of Charles I of England. You'd think it was painted with actual brushes.
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