Finishing touches

I let my little dragon sit on the frame for a short bit and finally added a few finishing touches. They pale yellow I used for the claws and teeth was so light that they didn't show up, so I added a pink outline for contrast. The maroon I used for outline, didn't give the kind of contrast I wanted on his back, so I added some white as highlight. About halfway through the swirls I wished that I'd used the pink, but it was too late. I absolutely hate picking out stitches - especially wool! So, here he is, my ferocious little dragon is all finished up.

Stitch along dragon

Previously

• First post on stitch along
• Second post on stitch along

Here are some updates on my stitch along progress. Cute little dragon starts to come together

Technically, he is done here, but I will probably keep futzing about. I think that the maroon outline looses some of the detail and will need highlights. Also, I may add some detail highlights to the claws, because the yellow is so light that you can hardly see them.

Progress on stitch along dragon

Previous Post on Dragon stitch along

I'm really enjoying this stitch along. Bayeux stitch is one of those things that I've been meaning to do for quite some time. I think the hardest part of this project is staying patient with stitching progress. Fortunately, we had an SCA demo this weekend and I got a nice chunk of time to get some stitching in.

The outlining stitches always make such a difference! They are enormously satisfying, since you can begin to see the project really take shape. Stitch on!

Stitch along dragon

I'm a huge fan of the blog Opus Anglicanum. I really love her both her design work and her stitching. So, when she put together a stitch along for a Bayeux stitch dragon, I just couldn't resist. If you are interested, the materials kit is in this post and the stitch-along starts here.

I started my project off by trying a new design transfer method - quilter's mesh. I picked some up recently at a clearance store for very cheap and it seems like a neat option. Here is the mesh and the dragon template I downloaded.

I traced the template using a Sharpie permanent marker and it traced pretty easily.

Here is what the mesh looks like with our cute little dragon drawn on.

I have a nice Micron pen that I use for embroidery, but the tip is small and too stiff to work well with the mesh. The mesh holes have just enough depth to snag the pen tip a little, over and over. Instead I went with the Sharpie felt tip and it worked really well. When you lift the mesh up, you get a nice little dotted line to trace.

Here is the design with all the dots connected and the lines smoothed out a bit. My little dragon is ready for stitching!

Pontification

This has been mentioned on another blog that I follow, but I thought that I'd second the notion. Please enjoy the charts and make pretty stuff with them. I'm putting them out there for people to use and I enjoy the thought that somebody else might enjoy them.

Also, there's probably going to be a little overlap between me and other folks charting the same genre of stitching. That's just fine with me :) Some of it is a delay between charting, stitching, and posting. Some of it is loosing track of who has done what. I'm not going to get my feathers ruffled over it and I hope that others feel the same. I will compile the patterns in a pdf for easy download at some point in the near future, maybe when I hit the 15 mark.

I debate whether patterns are too similar to chart again and have really followed my whimsy on it. Part of it is whether or not I want to use the pattern. I've got some color pictures now and was thinking of stitching some samples from those, so I'm probably going to chart some stuff that is similar just so that it matches what I'm going to put together. The little w's from pattern 13 are very similar to other little w's I've done, but the interlock differently and that piqued my interest. Whimsy...

Organizing the blog

I took the plunge and added labels to the posts so that it would be easier to find things. Now you can click on the label "charts" to get all of the charts, without having to thumb through things. It occurred to me that I was accumulating posts and needed to organize them a little for both myself and my readers. I was impressed with how easy Blogspot's software made it. Way to go on user functionality :)

Candlemas!

Candlemas approaches and I need to get cracking! I told the fiber arts guild that I would enter the A&S show. Fortunately I've done several good chunks of work on my documentation already, so life isn't too bad. I am finishing up another stitching pattern sample and then I think that I'm going to piece the samples together for display. I will have nine from the same tapestry so that's perfect for a 3x3 layout. The good news is that I have lots of examples of this style of stitching pieced together like a quilt top and used as a hanging or alter cover, so I can use some quilting skills for the next round of construction. And yes, I even have examples that we know were pieced together in period ;) .

I have been so behind on everything for a couple of months now my stitching (and correspondances) have suffered greatly. My fabulous sister got me an OTT light for xmas, so the stitching is much easier on my eyes and I tend to have less color confusion.

Soon... another pattern will be posted :)

Finished moving!

I have finally finished moving from Meridies to Ansteorra, and now have internet again :) I finished another sample in transit, so I will get that up soon. Also, I managed to get some more scans of my favorite source book, so I have plenty to keep me busy for a while. I'll try to start including more information with the patterns about the sources, now that I've got copies of the correct pages. Thanks for the comments and feedback, I enjoy reading them :)

Introduction

My name is Helene and I currently live in the Barony of South Downs in the SCA Kingdom of Meridies. This blog is to track my progress in the A&S 50 challenge. For more information on the challenge, check out the web page at http://artsandsciences50.org/ and the yahoo group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AandS50ChallengeCommunity/

I am taking the depth challenge for the A&S 50 with a focus on embroidery. A while back I found "A Stitch Out of Time" and made a small project from it. The article is by Master Richard Wymarc and is a fantastic piece. Since then I've gotten into a style of 14th and 15th Century German counted thread embroidery which uses the brick stitch.

Though Master Richard Wymarc found few examples of this type of embroidery at the V&A, I have found a copy of " Niedersächsiche Bildstickereien des Mittelalters" by Renate Kroos, which has several nice examples. I have decided to begin the challenge by charting and stitching samplers of the geometric patterns used as fill in these pieces. After I get a number of the patterns done, I plan to move on to stitching up several of the full pieces.