Saturday 27 September 2008

Embroidery - Meisterinne Eleanora von Ratzeburg (Germany / Hamburg)


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Meisterinne Eleanora von Ratzeburg recently joined our embroidery guild - she is very busy and therefore I am very glad that she found some time to take photos of her new embroidery.

If you would also like to try some beadwork, I can highly recommend following homepage:
Medieval Beads.com

Monday 22 September 2008

SUCCESS!

I finished the badge I was working on and presented it to my love, Sir Franz von Hohenklingen. It met with much praise and wonder. I think he rather liked it. It turns out the double-headed eagle was part of his arms and thus I added. I split-stitched the double-headed eagle, the fleur-de-lis and field behind the fleur-de-lis. Then I couched the purpure field. It worked up fairly quick as it was half couched and came out fairly nice. Not my sharpest looking to date, but I'm mostly pleased.

Sunday 21 September 2008

Rakonczay's new tapestry

Rakonczay finished his tapestry:

~ Verdure with Arms of Rakonczay Gergely ~

...very lovely work - please follow the link above

Monday 15 September 2008

new roundel finished :)


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...and again a roundel for Anya's cloak finished - now I need 9 more roundels :)

Sunday 7 September 2008

Dragon's Needle Embroidery Guild - Members

If you do not want your SCA name and/or group to be listed here,
please contact the
guild head

New members of the Dragon's Needle Embroidery Guild - September:

~ added 07.09.2008: ~

39) Eleanora von Ratzeburg (Central)


additional information:
Guild Head: Lady Racaire
Aarnimetsä - region guild head: Lady Eilgri Beccan
Central - region guild head: Lady Racaire
Insulae Draconis - region guild head: Lady Jahanarabanu Vivana
Nordmark - region guild head: fru Renika Rikardsdottir
(South: no members until now)

Yis Racaire
Dragon's Needle Embroidery Guild Head

Progress!

Today started as a sleepy Sunday, but did not stay that way long. I went downstairs about 1300 and popped in Order of the Phoenix, ok it was already there! During the movie, I enjoyed a nice sugar free swiss mocha and finished three treadling repeats! That means I wove another 6 inches and moved the warp along again! The last week has seen this done twice, so I've woven a foot in the last week. If I keep this up, I'll have an entire yard done by the end of the month. Continuing this same amount of progress, I'll have the two yards I need for this section done by the end of October! I'm really hoping that I can keep this up and get the next section on the loom by the end of this year. I need three sections total. I know this section will take the longest, as once I get this done I should have everything down pat!

But wait there's more, I actually got these six inches done in less than 2 hours. I also hemmed Lady Salonge's cloak, so it is effectively done! I say effectively as I've just embroidered her sun-in-splendour on the back. We've talked about adding her lion on each side at the bottom later. I think we'll probably work on this summer '09 when she doesn't need to be wearing it often!

Finally, I also finished the outline on the second roundel for Odo's hood! I also took the paper pattern off the fabric. I tested a new theory on how to do this. I sparyed the paper down thoroughly, which made getting the paper off go much faster. I think this is a good option for designs that don't have very intricate lines, but I think for many of the other roundels, the dry method will work better. This is due to the fact that the wet paper and silk are difficult to separate in very small areas, such as around the calon cross and the axe heads.

I hope you will all forgive me for not having photos of all this progress, as I've been busy completing stages of projects!

Namaste,
Jahanara

Embroidery - Lady Gunhild von Brunswik


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...my gentle friend Gunhild (a member of the shire Aventiure - Germany / Hamburg) allowed me to take photos of her embroidery projects during my stay in Hamburg this weekend and also to share this photos with you - please visit my flickr account to see all photos I made of her work.
Best regards
Racaire

Tuesday 2 September 2008

Announcement: local guild head for Nordmark elected

Dear gentle members of the Dragon's Needle Embroidery Guid!

I am very happy to announce that the embroidery guild of Nordmark met at medieval week in the fair barony of Styringheim this august and fru Renika Rikardsdottir was elected as local head for Nordmark and as thus is responsible for contacts with the Dragon Needle Embroidery Guild.

Yours in Service
Racaire
Guild Head Dragon's Needle Embroidery Guild

additional information:
Guild Head: Lady Racaire
Aarnimetsä - region guild head: Lady Eilgri Beccan
Central - region guild head: Lady Racaire
Insulae Draconis - region guild head: Lady Jahanarabanu Vivana
Nordmark - region guild head: fru Renika Rikardsdottir
(South: no members until now)

Dragon Needle Embroidery Guild - Newsletter September 2008

Dear honourable Lords and Ladies, gentle members of the "Dragon Needle Embroidery Guild" & "-eMail Group"!!

I am very happy to forward this message from our gentle Kingdom A&S Minister to you:

_____~*~ message from the Kingdom A&S Minister Mistress Jaelle of Armida ~*~____

Unto the members of the Dragon's Needle Guild from Jaelle of Armida, Kingdom Minister of Arts and Sciences,

Lady Racaire has kindly allowed me this space to in the guild newsletter. I just want to thank all of you for your hard work and dedication in advancing fiber arts. I say fiber arts, for I know that many of you do more than embroidery. But if you do one art, or many, you are our kingdom's most active guild, and I am very pleased with what you both as individuals and as a guild are doing. It is through people like yourselves that our kingdom prospers and grows.

Special thanks are due to Lady Racaire and her two hard-working deputies, Ladies Jahanara and Eilgri. You are all doing a wonderful job. Please keep up the good works!

Thank you all once again,
Jaelle

____~*~ end of message ~*~____

Many thanks to Mistress Jaelle for her kind words and also for her great help with the registration of our guild badge, also to Lady Jahanara and Lady Eilgri for their hard work and all other members who contribute and show their work so freely and give us a glimpse at the beautiful projects that the great artisans of our lovely kingdom are working at -- please keep on showing your work and inspiring us.

...another month passed by and some very interesting things happened -- recently Lady Jahanara and I started the A&S50 blog to make it easier to keep track of the projects of the artisans who are participating in the A&S 50 challenge and I started to work at my first draft of a new guild charter.
Dame Christian de Holacombe from the West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild contacted me and was so nice to provide some information about the West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild for our newsletter -- I think that's a great closure for our newsletter.

...and now what you are really waiting for - some guild information:

Guild Membership Roll:
At the moment we have 38 members :)

Guild Badge:
Mistress Jaelle was so kind to inform me that our guild badge went out on a kingdom internal letter of intent in July and we will keep you informed (please keep your fingers crossed -- there is a good chance that we might have a registered guild badge about February next year)

Guild Charter:
Now I am getting an overview of the existing guild charters that are available on the internet and I am also working at my first draft -- not an easy task but still in progress.

Dragon's Embroidery Workshop:
I would love to see more embroidery projects (already finished or still in progress) or needlework / sewing projects that you think have relation to embroidery and it would be great to get to know more about your embroidery and sewing evenings and maybe to see some photos of your meetings,...
If you would like to join the Workshop please don't hesitate to contact me, I am very looking forward to see your work and would really love to send you an invitation for the blog :)

Upcoming Events:
I would love to get to know about your embroidery, needlework or sewing events/ evenings/ afternoons - regardless if small or big events, please let me know or please post them at the Dragon's Embroidery Workshop blog :)

Misc.:
- "Something to keep you warm" Project/Challenge (new deadline: December!)
- "Embroidery Workshop Blog" if you would like to join the Workshop, please don't hesitate to write me an eMail! :)
- A&S 50 Challenge - it would still be great to see more artisans from our beautiful kingdom joining this challenge.
- A&S 50 Challenge Drachenwald Blog - ...a blog where the participants of the A&S 50 Challenge living in Drachenwald may share their works, ask questions, encourage each other and generally support one another along the way.

____~*~ ...and now a brief information about the West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild provided by Dame Christian de Holacombe ~*~____

Greetings, good cousins!

Racaire has encouraged me to introduce you to the West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild and to say a few words about what we're doing.

The West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild was founded in A.S. 16 (1983), and revived in A.S. 28 (1992). Our charter says that we research, teach and encourage all the arts that are produced with a threaded needle. The Guild is run by a Guild Minister and the Guild Patrons (several past Ministers), and we have meetings at least three times a year at West Kingdom events. I've been the Deputy Minster and Chronicler for several years. We sponsor a track of classes at West Kingdom Collegium (university) and many of our members teach classes at their local Principality, Barony and Shire events as well. We also do at least two group projects a year, which generally involve making things for our King and Queen to give as gifts. Recently we created two large kneeling carpets for Court, which you can see pictures of on our website.

Our main Guild website is at: http://www.bayrose.org/wkneedle/
Here you can see our Charter, our programs, photos of members' work, and a list of available articles and back issues from our quarterly newsletter, _Filum Aureum_ ("The Golden Thread").

The most recent _Filum Aureum_, and other Guild news, is regularly posted on our Yahoo Groups mailing list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WKneedle

Anyone from any Kingdom is welcome to join our list and explore our photo albums and files. The list is mostly for Guild announcements and news, so it's not usually very busy -- just a few posts per month.

The newsletter is in the Filum Aureum folder in our Files section:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WKneedle/files/Filum_Aureum/

We just published issue #34 on Blackwork, which contains articles exploring the "roots" of blackwork in Islamic Egypt and has two full pages of pattern charts. There are also online template files for charting your own blackwork.
____________________________________________________________

O (Dame) Christian de Holacombe, OL - Shire of Windy Meads
+ Kingdom of the West - Chris Laning
http://paternoster-row.org - http://paternosters.blogspot.com
____________________________________________________________

____~*~ end of information ~*~____

Many thanks to Dame Christian de Holacombe for this interesting information -- if you would like to know more about the West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild please don't hesitate to send me an eMail and I will forward it to her.

Yours faithfully
Racaire
Dragon's Needle Embroidery Guild Head

New Badge...

Well, I'm at it again. I have other projects to work on, but I'm making another Arms badge. Only this time I have a good excuse. I met a nice man and am making it for him. Since I strongly doubt he will log onto this page or even knows of its existence, I'm pretty certain it is safe to post what I am doing.

This time I learned my lesson. There is no way in heck I am split-stitching the whole thing like the last two. I am split-stitching the fleur-de-lis and probably the field behind them, unless I can find a better and different stitch for the latter. The main area is going to be couched.

The fleur-de-lis were an attempt at free-hand drawing. I'm not an artist. However I did not have my stencil paper, as my father was driving me to the airport and I was too eager to start this project. So hopefully it's okay.

The other issue is the double headed eagle in the top left. It will be insane to stitch it. If I do, it will also be split-stitched, as it will be so small and fine on the piece. I am calling the gentleman in a bit to see if that is on his registered arms or if it's something he added when he got a patent or something. If it's legit, I'll figure it out.

The goal? Finish it by Nibelungen when I next see him. EEK!

Himiltrude

Monday 1 September 2008

Roundel for Odo's Hood


I'm not far behind Racaire, as I've just finished the first roundel for Odo's Hood! I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I have however, decided to try the next roundel in a much finer silk thread. This one looks fine, however it is not rich enough for the look I am trying to achieve. This hood is intended to be that quiessential medieval status symbol. The other roundels are also much more detailed. I have my doubts as to whether this detail can be achieved with this thread, so I'm moving to a 60/2 silk. This obviously means the embroidery will take longer, but I think the results will be worth it.

This roundel shouldn't be to obviously out of place, as it will be in the back center, and is a symbol of our past, so it seems appropriate that it be less fine and different thread.

I'd appreciate any comments or critiques.
Cheers,
Jahanara