Thursday 30 August 2007

That´s alenn

My Name is Alenn von Horn and I am a member of the Shire of the Two Seas in Hamburg, Germany. I have been in the Shire for 1 year and am new to the Sca. I have done crafts like crochet, embroidery and sewing since I was 6 years old, but I took a break from crafts in the ´90s. I started again before joining the Shire.

At first I made a pilgrim pouch in satin stitch on linen and after that I made a second pouch with satin stitch on wool





At the moment I am working on a cross stitched table cloth and some little patches .

Tuesday 28 August 2007

Embroidery Challenge II: Son of Embroidery Challenge

Thats right everyone!
The second embroidery challenge will begin on September 1st and run for one year (Racaire and I haven't finished our wall hangings yet, but since there was alot of interest shown in the next challenge we decided to start challenge II as planned:-) )! This time everyone who is interested may participate. We are stressing both research and embroidery, and as last time, at least 50% of the project must be done in a stitch not normally used by you.
This time around we are going for a more functional theme : things to keep you warm! The item embroidered must also be made by you, and can be anything from blankets to hats, gloves to stockings, coats to cloaks! The blog is already up and running, so for more info you can look here:
If you wish to participate in this year's challenge, you can email either me or racaire, both of our email addresses are on the blog. Research and sewing can take place in the project time, so don't wait! To get an idea of how the challenges are run, you can also look at the blog for the first challenge (the wallhanging challenge) : http://wallhanging.blogspot.com/
Several people approached me at Nibelungan about participating in this project and said that they weren't on the DM-L, so please, if you know someone in your group that would be interested, please let them know!
Anya

Monday 27 August 2007

Coptic patches







I made these patches for my laurel and her husband when they became prince and princess of Northsheild (so it was a while ago :-) ) They are reproductions of originals from the 6th century. The angel patches were worked from the original, which is in the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece (it was two blocks from my house). I even got to go back into the museum library and use the original publication for research! The partridge patch is from an original which is in Trier. For this one I worked from pictures in various books. Both were done using silk embroidery thread. All of it is in split stitch except for the outside border of the partridge patch. The Angel patches won the early period competition at Pennsic and the partridge patch won the last a&s fair (before we switched to the year long competition format). Anyhow, thought I'd throw these up here! If anyone is interested I can post photos of the original ones too.
Anya

Sunday 19 August 2007

Wallhanging project - some extra time

...short information concerning the wallhanging project:
'Anya and I decided to take some extra time because of the big size of our wallhanging projects, other projects that have to be finished and normal life, work,...'

Thursday 16 August 2007

Eufemia's Star Dress

by the way - maybe some of you remember Anya's posting


and the pictures of the lovely stars she embroidered...

... and today it came to my mind that I made a photo of Mistress Eufemia wearing the dress with the stars applied to it at Midsummer Coronation in Finland last year - I think it looks really great!!

:)

Saturday 4 August 2007

Ingrid's blackworked collar and cuffs

Hello again. I finished the set of collar and cuffs that I was embroidering for my friend Ingrid, and I thought I should share the results here with you.

I am using a linen ground fabric which (by happy chance) is an even weave fabric. This is the best kind as it makes the geometric patterns nice and squared like they are supposed to be. The thread I've been using is Gütermans silk sewing thread, and each stitch is taken over two threads of my ground fabric. I am using Holbein stitch (also called double running stitch), which makes a single unbroken line in two passes of the running stitches. So the entire embroidery is reversible - save for a few less than perfect anchorings of my thread.

The pattern is one drafted by Viscountess Helwig Ulfsdotter from a photo in Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd which I had saved from one of her classes. As always there are adjustments to be made at the edges of the embroidery and for the collar I closed the two rows of embroidery up in as seamless a way as possible at either edge. Since the cuffs are made up of a single row of my pattern I let those ends curl back in on itself to prevent too much white space happening.

Finally, here are photos of the finished embroidery. (Click for large versions)
16th C Blackwork embroidery for Ingrid, collar and cuffs (July 2007)16th C Blackwork embroidery for Ingrid, collar and cuffs (July 2007)16th C Blackwork embroidery for Ingrid, collar and cuffs (July 2007)