Brickwork notebook cover

I just finished the stitching on a small notebook cover that I've been working on. I wanted to do another piece that was bigger than my little pattern swatches. I bought some tiny composition notebooks and am going to make some notebook covers. This is the first. Next step, sewing it together.

Today, you get a pretty picture :)

Event: Bryn Gwlad 30th Year

I actually got to go out to SCA! Hooray! Rachel and I day tripped the Bryn Gwlad 30th year event and it was lots of fun :) Life is finally settling down a little, and this is the first SCA anything I've made it out to in a long while. It was my first camping event since I've moved to Ansteorra and I'm glad I got to go. The site was wonderful, the people friendly, and the event smoothly run.

I'm at a strange point on projects where I have several in the pipes, but none finished recently. On the bright side, I'm making progress on several fronts and will have some stuff done soon. Some random things I'm working on
Armor:

• Coat of plates: Front and back finished, side plates cut. I need to rivet the side plates and finish the buckles.
  
• Helm: My $10 helm is starting to look like a $20 helm ;) I've ground off the worst of the crud and need to work on the finishing.
  

Embroidery:

• Finished pattern for next critters and need to transfer it to fabric.
  
• Nearly finished with brickwork for a small notebook cover.
  
• Nearly finished with stitching up the next pattern.
  
• Need to finish sewing up gold work scissors case.
  

All of which only leaves you with the promises of pretty pictures in the future, but no pretty pictures today.

Gryphon complete!

I've finished my little guy :)




Also, I forgot to post earlier, but here is the original inspiration for this particular critter. Its plate 272 in the Kroos book. Plate 271 has a gryphon almost exactly like this one. They are both part of a larger repeating border. I picked the colors from what few color pictures I've seen of similar pieces (none available of this particular critter). It seems that the void work patterns are usually done in white, while the rest is usually done in brightly mixed colors. Also, the stitching direction (horizontal or vertical) varies by piece as well. I haven't really seen any rhyme or reason to which way it goes. I started this one vertical before I realized that the piece that I was working from was horizontal. Oh well, it still works :)

Fill stitches completed!

I've finished the fill stitches for the little guy! I've had lots of little time increments lately, so it has moved quickly. Next is the outlining, which should give it some more definition. I don't have my next critter set up yet, though I have a couple of them outlined. I haven't had any good blocks of time to actually setup the next one, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

As an aside, I have to once again marvel at what beautiful backs this style of stitching makes! Here's the back of the critter:

More Critter Progress

Its been a crazy summer, both for family and work, so I haven't had any free time to do much of anything. Things finally slowed down a little this week, so I am happy to post progress on my critter. I'm hoping that the slow down will mean that I can actually get out to my local group as well.

Critter progress

I've decided to start work on some bigger stuff, so I've began work on one of the border critters a few weeks ago. In the tapestries it seems fairly arbitrary whether the fill stitches are vertical or horizontal, so I went with vertical because I like it better (and maybe its more common). I don't have any color photos of this specific little guy, but I have some very similar ones that I'm using as a reference. Things have been busy, so its slow going, but here is the beginnings:

C Belt Prototype

My son is slowing down on the teething, so I'm finally getting a little sleep again. This has given me just enough energy to get back to armoring myself. This afternoon I sat down and made a prototype c-belt for my leg harness. Eventually I want to make myself a nice leather one, but this one is a rough draft in duck cloth left over from my coat of plates. It feels nice and stable, and seems comfortable. I'm looking forward to hanging some legs on it this week and see how it wears. Anything is better than the loaner belt that I've been wearing, since it doesn't really fit!