Gulf Wars Gift Basket Contribution (With Pictures)

This post was written in advance but now that everyone is headed back from Gulf Wars I expect it should be safe to post without revealing any surprises.

At the major SCA wars, it's tradition that the various royals exchange gift baskets. Often these baskets are made up of various items made by the populace of the giving kingdom. We know in advance which kingdom's royals will be receiving the basket, so we often keep that kingdom's heraldry and colours in mind when donating the items.

This year for Gulf Wars, the recipient of Our Majesties' gift basket is Trimaris. Over the past couple of months, Her Majesty had placed a call out to the populace to for items for this gift basket.

Avelyn had the idea of donating a starter set of silk banner supplies, so we pulled together a quick collection of various colours of silk dye, along with some gutta.

I wanted to do something a bit more personal, so my contribution was of course a leather item. After some discussion, I came up with the brilliant (note: some sarcasm implied) idea of doing one of my rapier sheaths for the gift basket. Now, this isn't itself such a bad idea. The problem was that it took me so long to decide what to contribute that I'd left myself very little time to make the sheath. I basically only had a couple of weeks between when I made the decision on the sheath and Practicum (which was the last event I would see Her Majesty before she left for Gulf Wars).

For those that haven't seen one of my rapier sheaths, they are fairly time and resource heavy to make. The core of the sheath is a plastic plumbing tube that will help protect the sword from bending in transport. I then cover it with leather, which is tooled and dyed as appropriate.

There are now only five of them in existence (I have my original prototype, I gave one to the Barony when I stepped down as rapier champion, Lady Thora received a special one as a going away present and there's one in Dragon Dormant with the winner of the Border Spat tourney I ran two years ago). In all, they take probably anywhere from 10-20 hours of labour to make (actual work time, not including drying time etc.), depending on the complexity of the leather tooling and whether I have to develop a carving pattern or its something I've made before. They also require a particularly long piece of leather since you need a single piece that covers the length of the sheath - in this case about 3 1/2 feet long).

I wanted to tailor the sheath for Trimaris, so I also developed a carving pattern for their populace badge (thankfully their badge is an easy design - Thank You! to whoever designed it) and custom mixed a blue dye that would be the appropriate colour for their heraldry.

All in all I think it turned out pretty well. I hope Their Majesties of Trimaris like it, and that it will work for whoever ends up with it. I attached a little card with my contact information so who knows, they may even be reading this post some day (if so, Hi!!! Hope you like it).

And now, to the pictures:

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.

The Ongoing Challenge of the Period Blue Leather Dye

The last piece of my Kingdom A&S puzzle is the blue dye. For those that have been following along, this has been a bit of an ongoing saga, with multiple attempts at various recipes.

This past week I made yet another attempt at getting the dye to work. I used the first recipe I tried from the Plictho, which is basically a mixture of indigo, water and gum arabic. Based on the input a received at QPT, I adjusted the recipe process by:

• Grinding the indigo finer using a mortar and pestle
• Using distilled water instead of just filtered tap water
• Soaking the leather in alum water for a full 2 minutes instead of just a quick dip
• Soaking the leather in the dye for 30 seconds rather than painting it on.

All of these changes got me absolutely no further than I was before, at least with the veg tan leather. It gives me a bit of a tint on the surface but it just rubs right off as soon as I touch it with a damp cloth.

Just for a test I did try the dye on a piece of the alum tawed leather that I ordered from the states. It seems to have worked much better, and doesn't really rub off at all. I suspect this is one of the dyes that was originally for tawed leather and that's why it isn't working on the veg tan.

As a last ditch effort, I took a piece of veg tan and let it soak in my dye jar for a full two hours, just to see if it made any difference. It didn't really do much, other than collect some of the sediment on the leather (which rubbed off pretty easily as well).

I think this recipe is a write-off at this point. I may try one more attempt at my second recipe, which uses strong vinegar, but I'm not particularly hopeful. If that doesn't work, I'll have to try some of the more challenging recipes that involve stronger chemicals like lye. But that probably won't happen for Kingdom A&S.

Still, I do have four colours working now (red, green, yellow and black), which isn't a bad project I think.

Practicum Wrap-up

Yesterday was Practicum in Caldrithig (Ottawa). This is a bit of a unique event up in or end of the Kingdom because its entirely focused on classes and learning (mostly related to A&S). Most of the day isn't even in garb, although a lot of people wear it anyway so they don't have to change before court.

Lots happened during the day.

First, I was able to present the item I had promised Her Majesty to be included in Their gift basket for Gulf Wars next month. She was coming up for Practicum so I wanted to get it done as it would probably be the last event I'll be at before They head down south. The recipient of our gift basket this year is Trimaris. I won't be posting any details or pictures until after the event as I don't want to ruin the surprise, but I hope they'll like it. Stay tuned in a few weeks as I took lots of pictures over the past couple of weeks as I worked on it.

I also officially came full circle at Practicum this year. It was about 5ish years ago at Practicum that I took my very first leatherworking class taught by Baron Tiberius. Yesterday, I taught my first A&S class at an event, which was of course an intro to leatherworking class. I had four people, and we spent about two hours going over leather basics and working on a leather pouch. Hopefully they enjoyed the class and with any luck I'll have gotten some of them interested in leatherworking at least as well as Tiberius did with me.

I was able to take a few classes about armouring and SCA fighting being taught by Mistress AElfwyn to help me get a bit more of a background in that area now that I'm starting to go to practices and such.

The other "big" news from Practicum is that I was chosen by Baronial Council as our new Baronial A&S Minister. I have some ideas for some things I'd like to do, so I'll probably do a bit of a post about my plans in the next few days. I'll give you a hint though and say that social media will be involved. :)

All in all a pretty full day.

Project planning - What's next

Mistress AElfwyn asked me this week what my next project was going to be. I've been working on the stick-purse for so long (and then adding in the leather dyes as a side project) I haven't really thought much about what I wanted to learn/do next.

She wasn't asking about my miscellaneous functional type projects that are always on the go (carving award badges, Avelyn's armour etc.), but rather those in depth kind of projects that present a real challenge.

I figure the leather dyes are going to be an ongoing area of work, between testing other recipes, improving my methods and figuring out how to finish the leather so the dye doesn't rub off. I'm also going to do some work developing my research into a class for next year's Practicum (and maybe at other events - we'll see).

The stick-purse will continue post A&S since it won't be ready by March. I'll probably enter it if there's a QPT in the fall this year and then enter it officially in Kingdom A&S next year (depending on where it is in the Kingdom).

I was thinking of taking another attempt at making shoes. I'm kind of tired of wearing my modern black shoes at events (at least when I'm not fencing), and I know if I can figure it out there would be a few people who would be happy to have some as well (cough cough Avelyn, Emelote cough cough).

There was also those funky leather framed late-period glasses that I found a picture of. Probably not a huge challenge but it fits into my bizarre project theme. Plus, it would be neat to have actual period glasses at events. :)

Of course, the other option would be to finally use the leather that Avelyn bought me as a wedding present to make my leather jerkin based on the Museum of London artifact we saw at the museum. This might even make a good White Wolf Fian project!

Or, as has happened before, I could just stumble on a picture of something strange, like say this, and decide I just have to make it.

The Latest Stick-Purse Fail

It's certainly not a fatal kind of fail but it is a setback.

For those that have been following the project, I did a mock-up using my garment weight, chrome tan pigskins as a way to test the pouch design and it seemed to work out just fine. Here's the pic from before, (although you can see the full post with pictures from various angles here).

Since all of the mock-ups worked out and my design was set, the past few weeks I've been slowly working on the actual stick-purse. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had a feeling the leather was going to be too heavy so I started out by just doing one of the pouches as a test. That way I wouldn't waste all of my nice veg tan goat by cutting it all until I know it works.

I cut out the main pouch body, the pouchlet and the pouch base from my veg tan (using slightly heavier leather for the base). I used my vinegar black dye to dye the pouchlet piece as I have a theory about the use of colours to distinguish what coins are in which pouch. I then started to sew the parts together using my newly acquired linen thread (I'm using 18/3 thread for the body and 30/3 thread for the attachment of the pouchlet).

Once I started to assemble, I ran into some issues.

• I didn't factor the thicker leather into my assembly and pattern, so the pouchlet piece doesn't quite reach all the way around the circle like it did on the mock-up. That's an easy enough fix, I either make the circle smaller or the pouchlet piece bigger. Or use different leather.

Which takes me to the other problem, which is:

• As I feared, the leather is just too thick and not flexible enough for the pouch design. Especially with the pouchlet, it won't pleat properly to bunch using a drawstring.

Here are pictures of where I got to this week.

So what's the plan you might ask? Well, fear not as I've already come up with something thanks to a chat I had with Master Dafydd while he was sitting his vigil for his Pelican (of course we talked about leatherworking, what else?) ;)

The original pouch at the Fries Museum is actually made from chamois leather, which is an oil an leather made from sheepskin. Most people would be familiar with this type of leather as it is also used to polish and dry your car. It's super soft and extremely absorbent. You can still find natural oil tanned chamois in various places, although I have no idea if its produced the same way as would have been done in period.

Anyway, in anticipation of my veg tan not working, I had thought to look for some natural chamois. You can get lots of synthetic stuff but the natural oil tan ones are  a bit harder to find. Of course, where would you go to buy stuff like this in Canada but Canadian Tire. :)

So I now have four pieces of chamois leather, about 5 square feet each. That should be enough for what I need. The one thing with this leather is I'm not sure how well it will take dye. I have no doubt it will absorb the liquid but whether it will stay in the chamois as it dries is another question. I did apply some vinegar black to a scrap and it didn't react at all, so there are no natural tannins present. I'll have to try pre-soaking it in gallnut (as per the actual period dye recipe) to see if it will work.

If it doesn't dye properly I'll have to modify my plan. I can skip dying the pouchlets (since the original artifact didn't have them dyed) and just stick with dying the handle leather. I plan to use the veg tan for the handle as the chamois wouldn't braid very well. Since the original artifact does have a dyed handle weave, it would actually be a closer replica of the period item.

I am starting to think that this may not be ready for A&S in March, so I may only have the leather dye project at A&S and then enter this at the next one (or maybe the QPT?).

Stick-Purse Update

I'm behind schedule on the stick-purse if I'm going to get it ready for Spring A&S. The dye project is in good shape but I haven't really done much lately on the stick-purse.

Last week I did put in an order for my linen thread (for those who wanted to piggy-back, I didn't have enough room on my credit card for anything more once we put together our own order - maybe next time). It should hopefully arrive sometime this week so I can get started on assembly.

This weekend I spent a bit of time down in the basement cutting out some of the pieces for the stick-purse though. I have to say, I'm concerned the leather isn't going to work. I bought the thinnest stuff I could find, 2 oz goat, but handling it as I was cutting it, I have a feeling it will still be too stiff for the pouch body and the pouchlet.

The original purse at the Fries Museum was actually made of chamois leather, which is an oil tanning method different from veg tan. Here's some information on the different tanning methods: http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/leather/pl.html

I think I'm going to put a hold on cutting all of the parts out and just cut out one piece of each pouch piece. Once the thread comes in, I'll assemble a single pouch to see how it looks. If it doesn't work I'll need to figure out an alternative.

So what are my alternatives:

1. According to the link above, buckskin and brain/deer tanned leather are also period and are essentially an oil tannage (similar to chamois), so that could be an alternative. I know Zeli's carries it, but whether it is true brain tanned leather or just chrome tanned made to look like it is another question.
2. I could use my chrome tan pig skin that I have been using for pouches. It's light and flexible and would work really well (its actually what I used for my mock-up). If I can demonstrate that the actual period materials are not reasonably available and I knowingly made the substitution for the closest modern equivalent I could find, it should be OK. 

The one concern I have is that I don't think my period dyes will work on either of these leathers. It certainly won't work on the chrome tan. In theory though, the leather on the handle would have needed to be a bit stiffer to weave it properly, so I could use my veg tan for that component and dye it as I originally planned.

More to come I'm sure in the next few weeks.