Trillium War notes

*****Oops, wrote this last week but forgot to post it. Bad blogger. :) *****

It's been a busy week so I'm a bit behind in my updates. Trillies was pretty busy but here are some thoughts.

Thursday:

Didn't really get all that much done on Thursday since that's the day we arrived. We setup our presence with Fettered Fleur, who let us crash our day-visit setup with them, and got our banners all setup. There was a bit of a scramble because I left our portable hole in the garage at home when I was packing the car. Fortunately there were some available at a couple of blacksmith merchants on site so we now have several. After that and a quick dinner snack, I was off to the rapier list for inspection and the torch tourney.

Friday:

Friday morning was the start of my main class I was signed up for, Mistress Lucrece's leather bottle-making class. We spent most of the morning learning about the historical context of the bottles, design types and then trying our hand at making our own. I got to do my first wet forming of leather, and picked up a few neat tricks to improve my overall leatherworking techniques. It was an ambitious schedule, so I wasn't able to get done my bottle during the class, but I have everything I need to finish it up at home when I have time.

Right afterwards, I taught my first of two classes at Trillies. We had a full class of six people (Yay). We scheduled my Intro to Leatherwork class on Friday so that people would have some time to finish their pouches in camp if they didn't finish during the class, but I think almost everyone got pretty much done during the two hours, which is really great.

I like the format of this class because its kind of free-form. Over the course of the two hours I do a bit of an intro and then everyone spends about an hour and a half sewing their leather while I basically do a show and tell about leather tools and leather. Because I pre-cut and pre-punch the holes, we can chat and discuss all kinds of things while they work, so they end up hopefully picking up a lot more basics than they would otherwise.

I got some great comments during the class, and I'm told some of the students were really excited about it when they got back to their camps, which is cool to hear.

Saturday:

I had a couple of classes I was going to take on Saturday morning but I ended up not going for a couple of reasons. Aethelbert was doing a neat class on how he makes shoes, covering last making, stitching with boar bristles etc. It would have been neat but it was first thing in the morning and being off site, we just couldn't make it.

I was also originally signed up for a knife sheath class that Henry was teaching right afterwards, but I released my spot because there were a lot of newer people on the waiting list, and I figured they would get more out of it than I would. I was able to pop in and see his home-made bone leather stamps in action though, which was cool.

Right afterwards I taught my second class of the event, my discussion about period leather dyes. Its a bit more of a specialized class, so we only ended up with two people. Otherwise I think it went fairly well. I haven't taught it lately so I felt a bit disorganized in my thoughts, but I got all of the information out. The main goal is really to give people the basic tools to be able to select leather colours that look right, even if they don't want to experiment with making their own dyes. We also talked a fair bit about how the leather dyes compare to period fabric dyes, since at least one of the ladies had some experience with natural fabric dyes.

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon at Mistress Lucrece's camp, where she was showing us how she finishes the bottles to make them water-tight using pitch and bees wax. This was her first time trying this on a camp stove setup, so there was some experimenting involved. There was much less swearing and crying than was advertised since it actually worked pretty well.


Other general stuff:

Since I was essentially in the A&S tents for most of the event, I didn't do any thrown weapons or rapier (other than the torch tourney on Thursday). I also didn't even break my camera out until court on Saturday.

During court, we got to hear the scroll text Avelyn and I wrote for Mistress Kersteken get read out when she was presented with her Hare Valiant, seemed to go over well.

I was kindly requested by Her Excellency Catherine to stick around to take pictures of the Skrael fighters at the Rose Tourney, which followed after court. I'm pretty sure this was a RUSE though (sneaky Baroness is sneaky), because the plotting had begun to make sure certain people were there to witness my Laurel, Mistress AElfwyn, being put on vigil for the Order of the Chivalry. Woot Woot!!!!!! There was a lot of cheering. :)

So I got lots of great pictures of this fine event and some pictures of the subsequent fighting before we had to go pack up our presence (we wanted ot get it packed before dark). We hung around the rest of the night visiting, going to the awesome bardic circle and otherwise doing the SCA camping thing, and then went back to our hotel for a good night sleep before driving home on Sunday.

The classes have really become a much bigger part of Trillies in recent years, which is great to see but also puts a lot more time demands on me since I spread myself pretty thin across different SCA activities. But we are an educational organization after all, so lets edumacate people when we can. ;)

Banner making for Trillium War (with pictures)

Yes, I know this is a leatherworking blog and silk banners have nothing to do with leather. But I'm still posting it here because we've been wanting to make some silk banners for a while now, and we finally got around to doing it heading into Trillium War this past weekend.

But don't worry, I have a Trillies update coming too and that'll be largely about leatherwork, and I have a huge slate of projects on the go so there will be a number of project updates coming over the next two months.

So, to the banners.

Avelyn and I had previously purchased all of the supplies to make silk banners, but we didn't have the frames. We'd bought some copper pipes to make the frames but didn't necessarily have pieces short enough for small banners, so the week before Trillies we went out and bought a some more pieces. So we're now fully stocked (we also ordered some more brushes and such that we picked up at Trillies from HE Percival, so we're now setup to be Talfryn's eastern banner making hub). :)

So the first attempt at a banner was one we did jointly, with both of our main heraldic charges (I'm the kraken, she's the comet). We did the banner quartered and then did a purple and white border around the edges. I used a pre-hemmed silk scarf from our supplies, which made it a bit easier to work with.

You'll notice in the pictures below its a bit faded, that's because of a flaw in the instructions we got with our dye supplies. They were great up until the end, where it said to fix the dye and gutta using an iron, and then wash it out. What it didn't say is to wait 3-4 days before you wash it, to let the dye set. We only found that out when we went to the manufacturer's web site and read their instructions afterwards. 

As a result, the colours are faded and the black gutta didn't leave black lines like we expected. Lesson learned - in consultation with others it seems like they don't even bother washing it afterwards so we know better now.

You'll also see the lovely banner stand topper that we got. It was an awesome birthday gift from Their Excellencies Eleanor and Menken. I'm super please, it works like a charm and the artwork is fabulous!!! 

After the first quasi success (I admit there was a lot of swearing after the black lines washed out, and many emails and Facebook messages to try to figure out what happened), I decided I wanted to do another one. I thought it would be nice to have a small kraken sign to put up outside my classrooms at Trillies since I'd be teaching two classes (more to come in my next post on that). So I used a narrow pre-hemmed scarf to make a small personal banner that could hang from some of the modern garden stands that we have. This one I think turned out really well! Need to improve my painting technique a bit to avoid the overlap areas on the big stretches (I'm told its because the dye was drying faster than I was painting)..

But of course it wouldn't be fair to just do one for myself, so after I got mine done, I started on one for Avelyn. Thankfully I booked the week off to prep for Trillies so I could do it during the day, given the time it took to do the gutta lines. Hers is rather complicated. Here's the picture of the black lines without dye.

And here it is with the dye. I think it looks super sexy, the purple and white lozengy really pops. I might go with a different colour border next time, not sure about the yellow and black, but we didn't want purple because we thought it would be too busy given the complexity of the lozengy. We also made the bars in the border longer than in mine by about double so it would be less busy.

And here they are side by side on our modern stand (its actually a target shooting stand, but it collapses and is just the right size for these. We put little wooden dowels in the bottom to help wight it down a bit in the breeze, not sure that was super successful, they kept falling out. May need to rethink that.

Next up, I'm hoping to do a full 5-6 ft long standard for each of us. Hopefully in time for Summer Siege if I can get the rest of my projects going. My gutta line drawing could still improve, fewer blotches and blobs would be nice, but overall I think I'm getting the knack for these things.

Planning for Trillium War

We're less than a month from Trillium War and things are starting to firm up. Looks like this year at war I'm going to be spending most of my time on A&S activities, rather than rapier or thrown weapons. I'll still be doing some rapier marshaling, and I'll make sure I throw in some of the tournaments since I'm the Baronial champion, but I can see me spending most of my time at the A&S tents.

I've confirmed I'll be teaching two classes this year, both of which I've taught a few times before. On Friday I'll be teaching my Intro to Leatherworking, which is basically making a small basic belt pouch as a way to learn some basics of leatherwork. I go over types of leather, stitches etc, and then we spend some time assembling a pouch.

The second class is my leather dye class, which I taught at Practicum, and at Trillies last year as well. It was specifically requested that I teach it again this year as some people missed it previously. It's more of a roundtable where we discuss what colours were achievable in period, the period leather dye sources, my experiments to get the recipes to work, and people can see the finished projects and test swatches of dyes. Aside from learning the dye process, the real goal is to show people what colours are appropriate in leather items so they can choose their leathers and modern dyes accordingly.

I'm mostly prepped for both classes, so that's good. I had some kits left over from last time I taught the intro to leatherwork class, and went to pick up some more leather at Zeli's on the weekend so I can make a few more. All the leather got cut out and pre-punched last night so all that's left is printing out the hand outs and throwing  them in the bags. There's nothing really extra needed for the leather dye class other than making sure I have copies of the hand outs.

There are also a handful of classes I'm going to want to take as well, so lots to do and see this year.

We also have some things we would like to do before Trillies. For one, we'd like to finally get some banners done up (either silk or some painted ones, just to have something to jazz up our site). We're staying in a hotel, so we won't have a full camp, but some heraldry to mark us out would be nice. Fortunately we have all the supplies for doing both silk and fabric banners in the basement, so last night we spent a bit of time plotting out what we want to do. I'm hopeful to have at least a small banner or standard done up by the end of the month.

Kingdom Award Badges - Round 2 (With Pictures)

This weekend I kept chugging along with my work on developing cutwork patterns for our Kingdom award badges. I'm now moving on to a few of the slightly more complicated badges which require a bit of a different technique.

First up, the Thorbjorn's Hammer badge.

The pattern for this badge is actually fairly simple, but it has a couple of aspects that add an element of complication to the mix. Both are elements I'll need to master as there's lots of evidence these techniques were used for the cutwork book covers, so I may as well get working at it.

So the main difference between this and the previous two badges is that the main charge on the badge, the hammer itself, is actually a floating element. So, unlike the other badges where it was just a matter of cutting out a pattern, for this one I actually had to cut out the hammer as a stand alone element and then paste it separately.

The other slightly different element is that the hammer needs a bit of tooling on it so that the handle has the right 3-D feel to it. So I had to do small tooling on a cut-out pattern before it got stuck to the badge.

Here's a picture of the pieces cut out:

And then of course after they are painted (with fabric underneath to get the right contrast):

Next up is the Orion badge. It has similar elements, with the ring on the outside and a floating main charge in the middle. The main issue with this one is the harp because I have to cut out the harp strings, which will give me a bit of practice on really small cutwork shapes.

Here are the pieces cut out and painted.

I have two different purple fabric colours so I tested it with both. I ended up going with the darker colour on the left because it's more herladic, although I think I need to find some different fabric that's something in between the two for future badges.

Aaaaaaand, here are the two finished badges trimmed and mounted on a belt loop.

I actually think the Hammer badge is my favourite so far. Really happy with how it turned out. I think folks will really like wearing something like this (particularly if I can shrink it down so its a bit less cumbersome).

I think the Orion still needs some work. I'd like to get the strings straighter, and next time I think I'll use purple to do the outer ring instead of black, it makes the overall badge too dark right now. Plus, I think I'd try to find some lighter fabric for the purple.

Kingdom Award Badges - New and Improved with Cutwork/Filigree (with pictures)

As you'll have seen from my most recent post, I'm starting the process of working on developing some new leatherwork skills with the end goal of recreating 15th century (ish) Islamic filigree book covers. There's lots to do, but I thought I'd get started by working on my cutwork/filigree skills.

When I'm working on this kind of skill development, I prefer to do it by doing something useful, rather than just wasting leather doing samples. So I thought about my project from several years ago, where I developed tooling patterns for the various award badges. So I'm upgrading my award badges to version 2.0 - now with cutwork.

Much like with the tooling versions, I started out with the easiest one first - the Maiden's Heart. It's a fairly straightforward pattern with large areas of colour. I then moved on to the Order of the Wain, again because it has a fairly straightforward colour pattern that lends itself well to cutwork.

I started out by marking the line pattern onto a wet round of leather, the same as I would for tooling. However, instead of using the swivle knife next, I actually cut out pieces of leather to create blank areas in the pattern. In the case of the Maiden's Heart, I cut out anywhere that should be blue on the pattern, while in the case of the Order of the Wain badge, I cut out the white areas.

Here's an example, using the Maiden's Heart:

The original book covers have a layer of paper or silk under the cutwork leather to have the colour that shows through. I didn't want to use paper since these could get wet, and I didn't have the right colour of silk so I went with cotton for the purposes of the badge.

Here it is over the blue cotton fabric (although looks a bit closer to purple in the light of my work desk in the basement):

Then of course I have to paint the alternating colour on the leather. That's also a period practice, lots of examples of painted leather on tooled artefacts. Many of the books have either dyed leather or colour accents applied to the surface of the leather (often goldwork). 

Here's the Wain badge at the painted stage:

I cut the fabric in a round to match the shape of the leather and paste it down onto a round blank piece of leather the same shape and size as the top. I then paste the cutwork piece on top so that the fabric is sandwiched between. I also cut out a strip of leather about an inch wide and the length of the circle to form the belt loop at the back. I then punch the holes around the edge of the circle and sew it all together using some light leather as trim (since otherwise the edges of the circle would be pretty messy.

Here's a picture of the two completed badges (with a ruler as per Her Excellency Lucia's request to see the scale of the item).

So a pretty good start. They are much quicker to make this way than with the leather tooling so that's a big advantage. They do use a bit more leather though, so there's a bit of a cost trade-off for time.

I plan to experiment some more with the other badges since they'll require a bit more thought about how to do the patterns with the cutwork. I'm also thinking of scaling down the pattern so I can do the badges smaller. That wasn't feasible using the tooling techniques because my skills just weren't there (at least with the more complicated badges), but at least for these two I could probably drop the size by half and still be doable using the cutwork. It might make the badges more wearable for people, as right now they are a bit big (for my preference at least).

Planning the next project - Islamic filigree book covers

For those who've been following the saga of the stick purse/leather dyes over the years, you'll know I tend to pick major projects that will take me several years to complete. That's largely because they usually require me to learn new skills along the way. Since the stick-purse is nominally done (I say nominally since I plan to keep fiddling with the dyes as a background activity), I need a long-term new project.

I'm now officially at the starting line to start what I am dubbing "The crazy, what the heck are you thinking, Islamic filigree book cover project" (Trademark pending). I'll call it the CFP for short (Crazy Filigree Project).

I've contacted the Curator for the Islamic collection at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, where I first saw these crazy books. She's shared with me a paper she wrote on how they were done, along with some really close up pictures of some examples. While the pictures are super helpful, they've also showed me that this project is even tougher than I thought. Not only did they do cut-work/filigree patterns in the leather that are typically ornate for the illumination of that period, but there's leather tooling on the leather, in spaces that are only a few millimeters wide. I have no idea how they managed it, but its scary fine detail.

Here's an example from another source. This is a book from the 15th century. The area that's blue has actually been cut out of the leather and is showing the silk or paper that was placed underneath. The red lines that swirl through the blue is the leather lacework pattern that's left behind from the cutwork.

http://islamic-arts.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/dpc2125-176.jpg

So, lots to do:

• Research more on period Islamic/Persian book styles
• Acquire both bookbinding equipment/supplies and knowledge
• Work on my filigree and bookbinding skills
• Develop filigree pattern for the cover(s)
• Fail several times, probably by cutting the filigree wrong, or slipping with the knife and cutting off chunks of filigree
• Swear a lot
• Figure out if I want to add to the complexity by using my period dyes (I'd put money on yes cause I'm that kind of crazy)

I'l probably need to work on this in stages, like I did for the stick-purse and dyes, so several rounds of entries at QPT before the final thing is entered at Kingdom A&S.

I think for this year my goal will be to do the background research, and to work on my bookbinding skills. So for this fall's QPT, I'll try to make my first complete leatherbound book, which I can enter and get advice.

If I'm really productive I might be able to do some sample filigree work on a flat piece of leather, maybe as a scroll blank or something. I'm not going to try to get to that small a scale for my first attempts, but it's a cool enough technique that I bet some people would love it, especially Middle Eastern personas.

The other thing I could do is develop another round of badge patterns but using cutwork instead of standard leather tooling. I bet those would look sharp.

Thoughts about Future Kingdom A&S Entries (Part 2)

Here's part two of my post about Kingdom A&S. This one's just about what I've learned about why I enter Kingdom A&S and what I'm looking for in the process. I'm posting it because I figure I can't be the only one with these feelings and so hopefully it will help other people work their way through it. Happy to discuss here or on Facebook or even in person.

If you read part one of this post, you might ask if it was such a good day, the caliber of entries was high and my project went over well, why wasn't I jazzed following the event. That's an excellent questions.

Here's what I've figured out, and where I'm going from here.

As an A&S Minister I was super excited to see people geeking out about their work and being able to show people what they can do. And I can safely say that my feeling off had nothing to do with any expectations personally about prizes or awards because the feeling started pretty much as soon as I was done my judging. Hopefully it didn't overflow into the discussions I was having with other people, I tried really hard to be encouraging and to provide good comments.

I don't enter these things to win prizes (good thing too since I'm just not at that level compared to some of the really awesome artisans in the Kingdom. In the past, I've entered experimental projects like the leather dyes and the stick-purse, which have generated really good discussions and those have been the ones that I've been really excited about.

So after thinking about it for a while, here's what I came up with: I need to be more selective about what I enter into QPT and Kingdom A&S type events.

1) This year I felt like I SHOULD enter since the event was in our barony and I'm the Baronial A&S Minister, so I put together a project because of that, rather than because I was super excited by the research. I thought I came up with an interesting concept by recreating my original project from five years ago, but it still wasn't the same caliber as my previous two projects from a research perspective. The bottom line is it felt more like I was just showing what I had already learned, rather than actually learning anything new.

2) I think the other thing I've noticed is that people at A&S tend to gravitate towards stuff they know. I do it too. I may look at the fibre arts or illumination projects and say "oooo, that's impressive", but I'm unlikely to stop and have an in-depth discussion with the artisan because it's not something I know. I know enough to tell between an advanced effort and a beginner effort, but that's about it. Same thing goes for leather projects. There just aren't as many people interested in leatherwork in Ealdormere as most other arts, and so I don't find many people stop by to chat (unless its something so obviously awesome like Lucrece's book that everyone wants to see it). They see shoes or a purse and can appreciate the aesthetic from the perspective that we all need accessories to go with our garb, but the geeking out doesn't seem to happen as much and I think that's where I get my fun out of the event.

Solution

Given the above, here's what I think I've decided:

1) At least for A&S (QPT may be different), I think I'm going to try to avoid both entering and judging at the same event. I think judging entries on the day tied up so much time I wasn't able to be around to chat about my project with people, and since that's where I seem to get my energy from I think that its important to dedicate some time to that on the day. Given the following points that probably means I'll be entering fewer projects and judging more often at this point. I think that's OK.

2) When I'm deciding to enter a project, it needs to be something I'm going to learn something new out of. So that means either I start entering beginner projects in other areas, or enter different kinds of leather projects. That also means I need to work in advance much more than I did this year, since its going to involve more hard core research and skills development.

3) If I'm entering leather items, they need to be projects that add to the collective knowledge base like the stick-purse and the dyes, rather than just showing off what I can do. I also think these types of projects cross the boundaries better so more people will find them interesting, rather than just people who do leatherworking.

4) Tied to point #2, I need to take advantage of QPT like I did with the stick-purse and leather dyes. Use the full A&S cycle by entering mock-ups at QPT and final projects at A&S, incorporating the input I received.

So, thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Do you have a different perspective? Readers here have been seeing my various projects for years. You see what I get super excited about. Does this sound right, or am I thinking about it wrong?