Between working on my Mother's elevation to the Order of the Pelican, summer events, "real life" and now my 'Seeeecret Project', I'm kind of kaput.
But the Secret Project is finished and I wanted to talk about it.
It's an aumônière.
And it's pretty and I wanted to talk about it.
The majority of my project came from having attended a lovely class at Pennsic War and then further, looking for way too long at THIS PAGE and looking around the internet to confirm that the page I read (which is so comprehensive) seemed legit. (It did. That page and it's sources are astonishing.)
Here we go for picture time!
But I chose to do him in this style, of an Owl, from THIS bestiary from the mid 1200s. Since the alms pouches are from the mid 1300s, I figured I could pull this guy's style out and onto my pouch. I got rid of the other birds to put the focus on Nikolai. I eventually changed the flora too, to better suit the flow of the piece. My goal, so far, with my medieval pieces, is to be tasteful. Not everything made in the medieval ages was tasteful, so I often tone things down or ramp them up a little to try and keep things sensible to modern tastes. There's no point in making someone something super authentic that took you loads and loads of time if they're not ever going to wear or use it because it's tacky as all hell. (If you're commissioned, of course it's up to the two of you. But so far, everything I've made have been surprise gifts.)
So as you see, I kept on trucking through...
And trucking through... trying to add texture to the feathers...
Gideon convinced me that my initial sketch wasn't right. Nikolai had to be smiling in the embroidery, because of how he is a very happy bird. So, despite even MORE anachronism, Nikolai is unnaturally smiling.
I ended up doing detached buttonhole for his breast feathers. They might not be quite appropriate for this time of piece, however, the texture looked right for the fluffy front feathers.
See? I like how his shoulder came out too.
Added the slight color that would peek out by his crest. I did a (pretty crappy job of) underside couching the gold thread behind him. But it came out alright in the end. So I say let bygones be bygones.
Then began the back panel, which was a bear.
I wanted to couch the entire back panel in black and then couch the banner over that. However, my deadline was looming (End of October) and I found myself about halfway through cursing myself for that. It wasn't working and it looked horrible. 
You learn as you go. Suddenly you learn a new technique or stitch or - WORSE, discover that you've been doing it sorta wrong the whole time. It may still look good, but you realize that one stitch may have been more appropriate than another and so forth.
And then there's the point where you just need to finish the damn bag.
Sewing the compass stars (part of my father's device) and then placing them around the scroll... not exactly perfect, but it's the back of the bag, you know? I know I found speech bubbles like this in some manuscripts and other embroidery pieces, but the source escapes me for right now. I'll add it later.
Then there was the actual creation and lining of the bag, in which I realized that my linen was a bit too heavy for this sort of thing, but, again, at this point in the project, I had maybe a week or two left before I would see my father and I really really wanted this to be done.
In comes the trim. Which I wove myself, some years earlier. My mother is primarily a tablet weaver and as such, I picked it up as a child. I never got proficient at using the cards, but I had made this trim for myself ages and ages ago. Then I realized that it was 1) very small 2) I had no idea at the time what to even do with trim, 3) It looks like a road. I had essentially woven myself a road. What??
So the trim was finished, placed in a bag and never used. And as I started to finish my pouch I lamented and said to myself, "Oh my Lord, what, will I have to weave myself a whole new border?" when I remembered that I had this stupid little piece in a bag. And I dug out old boxes and, actually, found it lickety split.
And so a lot of sewing began. And it came together. I learned so much my head spun. One or two things are glaringly obvious. One, being that I didn't have a chance to fingerloop braid the hanging rope. I have a good friend who teaches it to everyone around her but we weren't able to meet up before my deadline - wanting her to teach me, I decided to just braid myself a strand for the meantime. I still intend to learn from her and replace the strand once I have. Second, the tassels should have a special knot-topper-thing that I'm still learning about. Third, it should be bigger, probably.
While the pouch is definitely NOT perfect, it is finished. And in my book, that's totally a win. I learned buckets more than I thought I would (mainly things like if I'm going to put 150+ hours onto a project, maybe I ought to spring the money for silk, instead of DMC cotton. But whatever.)
I'll be shortening and adding proper links to sources for my actual Arts and Sciences display for our local event, 'A Market Day at Birka' this year.
