Banner Project I: Mission Accomplished

Working As Designed

After a frenzied amount of work Thursday and Friday evenings, there was no more time to whiten the sepulchre, and so the banner was launched on Saturday morning.  In the photo above, you can see it hanging in front of the vigil tent.  

It bugs me that you can see a tiny bit of the lining hanging down--I wanted to hang it overnight to get the fabric weights worked out, and then tack the lower edge of the lining out of sight.  However, we had a bunch of emergency sewing to do for the ceremony itself, and therefore I downgraded this requirement from "important" to "nice to have", whereupon it fell right off the back of the project truck.

Anyways, the recipient expressed her great happiness with the banner, and that's the important thing.  (You can read her account of the whole day here.  In fact, just read her blog.  You need more 16th century French in your life.)

Lessons learned:

• Always apply some form of fray-checking.
• With multi-layer motifs like the daisies, attach the center before basting the outer parts.  Ended up with a lot of pooched daisy petals.
• ...but still baste before going over the outer edges of a motif.
• I need to pad my time estimates even more than I have been.  -_-;;;;
• It's as helpful to have an embroidery frame for something this scale as it does for fine work.  (Though, you couldn't use a traditional hoop because it would mark the velvet; so it'd have to be the thing where you baste it to backing fabric and lace THAT to a frame.  What a *$@& pain.)

Next up: making an 1840s ball gown for me, and a Napoleonic-era 95th Rifles uniform for my lovin' man, for a Halloween wedding we are attending.  D: