Hemming Populace Banners

I've been busy, but there's not lots of pretty pictures for hemming six banners. I snip, clean off threads, roll the brocade, stitch, and repeat. I am currently hemming banner number five, so there is an end in sight. Well, an end to hemming anyway. I will still need to cut and sew the loops to for the banners to hang from. I've also begun plotting banner stands, so that I can display them. Progress!

Populace banners

I've been on a banner kick lately and I had some left over brocade, so I decided that Giant Sparkly Banner needed some friends. The project was born and I am working on six populace banners - two each for Ansteorra (kingdom), Bryn Gwlad (Barony), and for Hellsgate (shire with Bryn Gwlad). These little banners have been moved around my house stacks several times in various states of completion, but finally I got a picture of all of them together. Last night I finished backing them all with canvas and now all I have left is gobs of hand sewing to roll the hems and close out the raw edges. Anyway, here they are, starting to look fairly spiffy!

Production on these was fairly simplified since I was aiming to actually finish them this year. I wanted a look that would complement Giant Sparkly Banner, but they aren't competition pieces, so bring on the sewing machine and quilter's hacks! The black is a sturdy cotton velvet with a very short pile. It's a very pretty velvet, but it's best feature is that a test swatch passed the ironing test - on high heat. That means I can do all sorts of fun things with it.

First, I fused a tear-away stabilizer to the back of the brocade. The brocade is pretty, but it would never hold up to the abuse I was about to heap out without some help. I cut out the and fused the velvet charges to the brocade using Heat-N-Bond. I wanted something that could pass for hand embroidery at a distance, so skipped the traditional fusible+satin stitch option. My machine has a nice blanket stitch option, so I used a narrow blanket stitch and stitched down the edges for each of the charges.

Any banner that is going to sit next to Giant Sparkly Banner is going to need a little pizazz, so I dug out my left over gold twist. I couched the gold twist around all of the edges by hand, on top of the blanket stitch. The result is nice. The gold twist makes a nice contrast border for the velvet and adds some sparkle, while also covering up any stray machine stitching that wasn't exactly flush with the edge of the charges.

I left the fused stabilizer on the back, which made the stitching for the couching quick work. I didn't need a hoop or frame, since my tension was perfect. The lightweight tear-away stabilizer didn't hamper my the needle work at all. Below you can see the back of the pieces with visible machine work in black and hand work in gold.

Overall, this was a great approach to get maximum bang for my time. I started to feel like the project was dragging, but then realized that there were six of these things! After the embroidery was all finished, I ironed out the pieces, squared them off, and cut the canvas backing. This part was all classic quilter's skills, except I had a stack of brocade, which is less cooperative than quilter's cottons. Again, I found that you can never have too many binder clips and there is always a use for more. After taming the wild brocade and squaring things off I managed to actually hit my target of a width of 12 inches for the banners (although some of my hems will be very small). In another stunning development, when I finally hung them up, the charges are all lined up correctly. I kind of held my breath on that one, because no matter how much you plan and check and re-check you always fear that something weird would happen. Will one be out of vertical alignement? horizontal alignment? upside down? I kind of just stood there and stared for a bit when they turned out just fine. Hooray!

Actual rivets

Pretty rivets were a fail. After a few tests, they just didn't hold up to abuse. I decided to quit looking for something prettier and go with the tried and true combination of roofing nails and washers in order to get the job done. Sir Maelgwyn taught me this approach when we were working on my coat of plates and now I share it with you, my dear readers, in the picture below.

The sequence is from right to left for no reason other than that is the angle that I took the picture.

1. First make a hole an pop the nail through.
2. Slide the washer over the nail. The tighter the fit on the washer, the less rattling around and jumping you get. This washer is probably too loose, but it's what I had on hand.
3. Clip the nail fairly close to the washer. You don't want it flush, since you need some metal to spread out for the rivet. I've got some handy metal shears for this that work well and help you develop your forearm strength.
4. Hammer down the nail into a nice rivet. You can use the flat part of the hammer to spread the metal and the rounded part to shape it into a nice even dome.

And finally, here is progress on the legs.

Riveting news!

I've been looking for some pretty rivets since the planning stages of my armor upgrades.  I want something pretty, but don't have the budget for the super nice historical replicas.   These are my favorite thus far.  They are cheap and if you squint really hard, they look kind of rose or flower-ish.   The metal is a decent thickness, so they should hold up ok.  I think that they will look fairly nice.  I am almost at the riveting, so unless I find a better option before I finish drilling holes, these are it!

Pouncing Armor!

When we last left my leg armor, I was getting the splints together.  After cutting them out on the Beverly shears, I handed them off to Master Jovian.  He was kind enough to grind the edges smooth for me.  Above you can see the now not-jagged splints ready to go.



I hate getting rivet holes to line up and dealing with plastic and leather shifting about, so I have decided to eliminate the problem with copius amounts of contact cement.  The contact cement probably wouldn't survive fighter practice, but it will hold things together long enough for me to drill and rivet with minimal fuss.  Here is my sticky, gooey progress.



Once the contact cement cured, I placed all the splints in their proper position.  This felt a bit like a surgical procedure, since one false move and the plate is stuck forever.  Well, probably not forever, but there is no wiggle room with dropping the plates.  Contact cement does it's job well and the one splint that I tried to re-position would not budge even the slightest.

Some of my projects have extensive plans that go into great details.  Many have "the magic happens here" steps that lead to creativity, innovation, and occasionally weeping.  For some reason, my magic step here was "do the other leg".  Since I had done all the plate positioning directly on the first leg I didn't really have a pattern to work with.  What to do?  The answer was prick and pounce - armor style!



I borrowed my son's sidewalk chalk and used it to make maximum mess on the splint plates.  The plates with the texture side up did a much better job of being chalky, but the smooth plates did adequate.  When all the splints were thoroughly dusted, I carefully lined up the two pieces, flipped them over, pressed down carefully (no shifting!), and then removed the chalked piece.

The result was a magnificent success!  I was hoping for it to work well enough for a fiddly approximation, but the copy was perfect!  After the surprisingly effective pattern transfer gluing the second leg was a breeze.  

Acts of random dye-ness

 I was making myself a nice cabbage dish the other day and couldn't bring myself to throw out the pot of bright purple water.  So, instead I added some thread.   Perfectly logical.  Anyway, here's the results of the test run.  Above is are the three samples {wool, nice spun silk, cheap silk} dyed with purple cabbage using a cream of tartar mordant and a bit of vinegar on the rinse.  I like that all three of the pinks come from the same batch.  The cheap silk made the brightest pink.  Also, since purple cabbage makes a nice litmus test (literally) you can see the clothespins with their nice basic wood (pink) and apparently something acidic going on with the metal (green).  You can use your excess cabbage to make litmus strips and test all the things for fun!  Science! Yay!

I liked the result and then got to thinging "Now what am I going to do with this?"  Obviously I needed another color, so I found another skein of the cheap silk and let it stew in the left-over coffee from yesterday.  After drying I got a really nice yellow out of it.  So there you have it - random project complete.  I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with it yet.  The colors on these threads will be more delicate, so I won't make anything that must be washed frequently or with gusto.

Leg armor progress

I've resumed work on upgrading my armor, starting with the legs that I was working on. The pieces had been previously cut and dyed, and then laid on a shelf where they weren't doing much of anything. So, this weekend I decided to make some progress. I punched rivet holes and gave them a nice coat of neatsfoot oil. The oil darkened the green dye a bit, but greatly improved the handling and feel of the leather. In the picture above you can see the legs partially assembled with the knee cops.

I borrowed some beverly shears from a friend of mine and got to work cutting out plates for splinting the thighs. I've mounted the shears using some C-clamps onto a wooden spool that I picked up for $5 from the electric company. The spool is heavy enough to be sturdy, small enough to fit in the back of my micro van, and the round shape makes it relatively easy to move around. This setup worked really well and I got all the plates for the thighs cut out.

And here is what two sets of thigh splints look like after they are pattern drafted, cut, and laid out. I still need to grind the edges, since they are a bit rough in places.

What armor kit would be complete with out some fashionable bling? Ok, it's 14th century fashion, but still - fashionable. I pulled out some thinner black leather and cut dagging strips for my knee cops. The black helped contrast against the green, making it appear less dark. I decided that the contrast needed a bit more zing, so I painted a white border around the edges of the dagging. It looks even nicer than I imagined! As an added benefit the paint sealed the leather on the edges and made the dagging cuts look more tidy.