Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Malocchio's MoD Glove

This is the second set of MoD gloves that I'll have made. I was very proud of the first set, but this pair was going to be very different for three reasons:
 - Malocchio wanted gloves he could fight in, when the time was right. Goldwork and silk shading doesn't lend itself to that.
 - Malocchio's girlfriend Jen was helping me with this set. We live a couple hours apart and she isn't exactly full of free time.
 - I also didn't have the months of time to devote to the gloves before the elevation. Luckily reasons 1 and 2 align well with this problem!

Jen did the design work on the gloves. We went back and forth with several options before settling on this design, with the MoD symbol on the top of the cuff and the sleepy lion on the bottom:
Then, of course, this languished for a few weeks. As the days ticked by I slowly removed aspects of the design from my mental equation - goodbye, sun. Goodbye lion. Goodbye to the neat designs around the medallion.
Luckily, I had planned for this. Each major aspect was to be embroidered on gold linen and then appliqued onto the glove. Which meant that we could even add the lion and other decoration later if we wanted to.
Turns out I sure didn't take progress pictures of this one.
Anyway, Jen and I met over the Christmas break to exchange supplies and have a tracing party. That border is pretty great and also a pain to get onto fabric in any way.

She took the two borders away to embroider them. I took away the two medallions. What we didn't think of was that I would really need to applique the border on before doing the medallion part, so we didn't get to work in parallel quite as much as planned. Liadan made the cord used around the outside of the appliques. It is reminiscent of the cords the Handsome Boys use to denote their Handsome Boy status, and also does a fine job of covering up any sins in my applique.

Despite the assorted delays in the process I was only sewing for maybe an hour on the day of the elevation, so that's much improved from previous projects. The other glove has a long was to go, but we'll get there.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Malocchio's Order of Defense Elevation

At the East Kingdom A&S and Bardic Champions event an elevation that was near and dear to my heart occurred.
Lottieri Malocchio is my for-reals brother, and also was my cadet brother. And I was extremely excited for his elevation to the Order of Defense.

I had a lot of awesome people help me out on the planning and execution of the vigil and regalia.
The outfit, the cloak, the collar, the vigil book. So many banners. It was amazing.


Closeup of black and goldworked cuffs












Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture of his actual vigil room, festooned with banners.
                                Closeup of the collar





I made the glove, and so you'll have to wait for another post on that particular piece of regalia.

Thank you to everyone who helped by making things or running errands or bringing food. Thanks especially to Remy Delemontagne de Gascogne, Llewellyn Walsh, Catalina de Valencia, Liadan ingen Chineada, Sorcha Dhocair, Isabel del Okes, Katerina Folconer de Lanark, and Cecily O'Donell for their skills, time, and effort making the whole day come together.

Photo by Akamatsu Katsumoto