Unveiling the Feast of the Hare Projects (with pictures)

Heading into Feast of the Hare, Avelyn and I may have set a personal record for the number of projects we had on the go for any one event. To the point where Avelyn was having to turn stuff down because we just didn't have time to do it all.

Now that everything has been presented, I can unveil the stuff I worked on.

Our Baronial Signet Mistress Alais contacted me to see if I would be willing to do a scroll for her. Given my total lack of any artistic ability, we laughed about that for a while, and then asked her what she had in mind.

Turns out Their Excellencies had a plan to award a matched set of five Hare Valiant awards to the five currently active Knights who call the Barony home. They would have matching wording, but Alais wanted each to receive some sort of customized scroll or token. I offered to take on the project for Sir AElfwyn and Avelyn offered to take on (or coordinate) the project for Sir Menken.

For AElfwyn:

I wanted to go outside the box. Everyone would expect me to make something out of leather, since that's what I'm know for and AElfwyn is my Laurel. But since when do I go the easy route? Plus, AElfwyn doesn't need me to make her leather items. So, I went the silk banner route. I went through a few different designs, but I eventually landed on something I felt I could produce (because my first few ideas were a little overly ambitious given the timeframe we had and my total lack of artistic ability).

Here's a picture of the banner in progress. The badge of the order is on the bottom half (on the right), while the top image is actually me taking a bit of creative license with period illuminations. I found period examples of a dog riding a boar, and another of a hare riding a dog. So in Photoshop I moved the hare over so it was riding the boar (AElfwyn's heraldic charge).

Around the edge of the banner in silver metalic gutta on black background are the mandatory elements of the scroll to make it official: Barony of Skraeling Althing - Order of the Hare Valiant to AElfwyn et Langenwuda by Their Excellencies Shahid and Catherine at Feast of the Hare November 5 AS 51. This was my first time doing text on a banner. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, although I don't think I'd want to go any smaller than the font size I used. I basically printed the text using calligraphy font on the computer (after checking with Alais to find one that was close as possible to an actual period calligraphy style of course) and then traced it onto the banner.

Here it is with the red coloured in (the shield on the original hare was green in the illumination, but I'm sure I'll be forgiven for going Skraeling/Ealdormere red). What you can't really see in the picture is that I also used silver and gold gutta to mark some metalic highlights in the swords to make them pop a bit.

After it was dry and fixed, Avelyn sewed on some bias tape on the top edge and made some loops so AElfwyn can hang it somewhere.

For Menken:

We knew we wanted to do something different for Menken, not the same type of banner that I did for AElfwyn. Each person needed to get something unique.

Avelyn engaged Lord James (Menken's Squire) to help with it. He worked with a fellow fighter (Paddy) to make an actual spear, which is very cool. I think Avelyn was just thinking an armoured combat spear but this is even better.

So, we had to figure a way to turn that into an official scroll-like item. At that point Avelyn got pulled into the chaos of organizing Rick Mercer's visit to the event, so I took over the work.

We decided to make a leather sheath for the spear, and then to do a small silk pennant to attach to it. Since we didn't want it to be too similar to the banner I did for AElfwyn, I tooled the mandatory wording around the edge of the sheath (rather than putting it on the pennant) along with the main charge from his heraldry (a fleur-de-lys and three billets fesswise) on one side. I then stained the leather using an antique finish and painted a bit of gold outline to mark where the blade actually sits in the sheath. I then stitched the two pieces together using some brown linen thread.

Here it is. Hardest part was definitely tooling the lettering.

For the pennant, Mel told me she wanted the chequey to feature prominently in the pennant, and we wanted to include the badge for the award since it wasn't on the leather sheath. This is the design I came up with based on what she told me she wanted.

and here it is after Avelyn did the bias tape and ties for the pennant, attached to the final spear.

I think if I had it to do over again I might make the badge a bit bigger, and would increase the area of the chequey, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with it. The badge was probably the most difficult part, those hares are pretty intricate for such a small size (up close, or backlit, there's a difference in tone between the black gutta and the black dye, so you can actually see much more detail).

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 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.

Proof that I do stuff unrelated to leatherwork (with picture)

Lately most of my A&S work has been related to leatherworking, but every once and a while I do actually do some stuff in a completely unrelated area.

Something we've been meaning to do for a while now is work on our own banners for events. Most of the rest of the members of Talfryn have their own banners at events, particularly when we camp at Trillium War or Pennsic. They're lovely heraldic silk banners and they look really awesome.

Last year at Practicum, Avelyn and I took a silk painting class and over the last year we've been accumulating stuff to do it. I had ordered a starter kit from one of my suppliers for my leather dye pigments, but we've also discovered that our local art supply stores carry the stuff as well.

So, this weekend while Avelyn and Emelote were working on other A&S projects, I decided to do a sample sheet of the various colours so we could figure out which ones we want to use for our banners (there are 3-4 different shades for most of the colours and we didn't want to buy a huge supply of them until we knew which one was the right shade).

The image below is the colour chart before I fixed the dye and washed out the gutta. I used the black gutta so the lines separating the colours would stay in place. I've applied the colours in order of their numbering by Pebeo (the brand we can get locally), with the blank spots for colours we don't currently have in our collection, mostly because we wouldn't really use them (like salmon pink). We may want to get some of the browns though and test those, since we may need them for some pieces.