Mi Contra Fa

No more 'Sideline Research'

When I started this blog in 2008, it was far and away focused on music and poetry.  What work I did on other arts (e.g., for KASF 2009) I posted to my LiveJournal.

I eventually decided that was a silly and artifical split.  This blog is 99% for me - it's not like I have an actual large audience, waiting for irregular posts on amateur early music interpretation.  Nobody was there to complain if I started including other projects, so I did, under the new organizational category "Sideline Research."

That's worked well, but doesn't work well any longer.  I feel that I'm doing enough, on a variety of projects, to start breaking them down. I've added Accessories, Calligraphy and Illumination, Clothing, Embroidery, Gear (camping gear, feast gear, etc.), Tablet-Weaving and Weaving.  That covers most of what I've been up to; I should think about some "other" category.  I've also added "Loot," as a place to blog about things I've bought or otherwise acquired, rather than made.

I'm slowly working my way backwards through the old Sideline Research posts and re-categorizing them.  When I've completed it, I'll remove the Sideline Research category.

Laid and Couched Flag

Per the Chalice feedback, I've tried a little pennant in linen and wool yarn. 

• Roughly the same size as the first pennant
• Using two layers of linen for additional stiffness
• Red circles (roundels?) surrounded by yellow in a red frame - composition very similar to the first pennant

I used "laid and couched" technique, same as the Bayeux tapestry is done in.  Stem stitch to outline, then long mucking stitches across each figure, then medium stitches across those, and then small stitches across those.  Lessons learned:

• Stem stitch does not have to be teeny tiny and in fact, longer stitches covered the fill/border area better.
• Lay the first L&C stitches all the way across the figure.
• Lay a lot of them.  No, more.  Okay, a few more.  Good.
• This might be cheating, but when I came up for the medium couching stitches, I found that I could reduce gaps if I came up through one of the long laid stitches.  Lady Sabina suggested that using more fill, or finer yarn, might make this unnecessary.
• And ditto for the final tacking-down stitches.  Coming up through a yarn ensures color on either side of the new stitch, whereas coming up between stitches can push both aside, showing the "roots" of the new stitch. 
• Two layers of linen is really too much.  My fingers got to hurting after a bit.
• Gripping the needle between thumb and side-of-finger helped with that (instead of pinching it to pull it through).

The embroidery is done now; it's a real solid brick of wool, let me tell you.  I'm stitching on a backing, and I fingerloop whipcorded some ties.

While working on this, Meisterin Johanna taught me some neat things about stitching.  Namely, a stitch should be a thing that starts and ends on the right side of the fabric.  My usual "stab through, pull, stab back through" is not efficient, and means I don't see tangles that happen on the reverse of the fabric.  Doing it that way also makes a bunch of stitches (like chain stitch) easier and more sensible.

Not sure what to do with this once it's done, although I am considering making it the first/only item in an Etsy shop.