Banner Project I: The Devil In The Details

"Perhaps you'd consider changing your arms slightly?"

Here are the topics I'm currently chewing on:

1. Initial digging indicates that most banners of this ilk were appliquéd by laying a cord along the edge where the charge meets the ground fabric, and couching that down to attach the layers (rather than using blanket stitch or the like).  Shall I use gold cord for the whole thing, or a plain-colored cord for some parts of the motif? Gold would sure be shiny, though I'm not sure I have enough for all those gorram daisy petals.
2. Semy (semée), the powdering of charges across a field, can be depicted in one of two ways: either pretending as if the charges are part of the ground fabric, so that if the spacing means that you're cutting a charge in half, then you only put half the charge there; or by treating them as whole charges so that if one would get cut off based on the pattern + the edge of the ground, you just don't put anything there.  Both styles are found in period (here's an article, if you're curious to know more).  I feel as if the part-of-ground-fabric method is more Frenchified--classically, the old arms of France which are a semée-de-lis (rather than the three fleur-de-lis we're used to now) are usually depicted in that style--but I'm a little worried about my capability to make that work neatly along the edges of the fabric, so I'm presently inclined to stick to full charges only.
3. The threaded needle looks awfully lonely on the central bend.  A charge, if not blazoned otherwise, is depicted "proper", which in the case of a needle is "straight up and down".  I can increase its visual impact by giving it more of a thread tail artistically dangling, and I will, but I am flagging it as a concern.
4. I wonder if I oughtn't put some kind of weight (another rod pocket, or a strip of heavy canvas as interfacing, or something) along the bottom of the banner to help keep it hanging straight?



The arms of France until 1376

5. Dear OmniGraffle: your documentation for how to evenly space objects across a canvas is shit.  This is a basic function.  Get with it.

Today's docket is chiefly full of housekeeping chores (read: put a whole bunch of crap we never use into tubs and shift it into the building's shared storage space; also get a jump on the week's food production) so I don't know if I shall make any production headway today, but ideally I'd like to at least position and start attaching the bend.