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!

Goldwork Progress

Life intervened and I did not make the event this weekend, but I did get some stitching done in the little breaks. I have finished the stitching on one of the scissor cases and prepared the design work for the other one. It occurs to me that I didn't mount the little squares for the little scissor fobs when I dressed the frame. I shall have to do those seperately. For now I will revel in the progress so far - shiny!

The Nuns at Wienhausen

This website is on women's monastic communities and it has some great embroidery from the Convent at Wienhausen (some in color!). There is information for embroidery pieces and a bibliography. If you're hunting down info on a piece, this may be a good start. The convent embroidered pieces in the brick stitch that I have been focusing on and the Klosterstitch works that Racaire has been working on.

Pretty pictures

Thanks to my sister for sending me links to some more pictures on the web :)

Two Flickr pools of interest:
* detail pictures from the Cloisters piece at the NY Met: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosettastones/3406589474/in/set-72157616161436505/
* some scans from the Kroos book, along with some pretty stitching: http://www.flickr.com/photos/medievalartcraft/