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.

King's & Queen's A&S Champs Report

The beginning of my A&S token collection

This past weekend I participated in my first SCA Arts & Sciences competition. And because ...reasons....it just so happened to be King's and Queen's Champs.

I have heard horror stories of A&S competition since I first got into the SCA. It didn't necessarily scare me away from A&S - I just took my time finding something I actually wanted to research - but it did make me extremely wary when I entered into the scene. I'm lucky in that the Eastern embroidery community is generally very supportive of new people, and even when providing criticism they have so far been quite kind to me. But I knew they weren't the only ones I would be interacting with if I started competing.

The competition changes slightly from year to year, but this year is took place in two rounds. The first round was completely closed - the judges went around to the ~30 displays without anyone else present, and you were not able to speak about your pieces. They had to stand on their own. This was very difficult for some people, who had stranger displays or whose writing was not as good. This was nice for my first competition, because I had nothing to be nervous about. There was nothing I could do once my things were set up. (Of course, it means when I'm in a more common competition and have to do a lot of talking it will be like the first time all over again.)
From that round they selected the top scores to move onto the next. They selected seven people. Each of them were given five minutes to talk to judges about their projects and convince the judges that they would be a good champion. I was not one of those people (nor did I expect to be) but several good friends were, and I am very proud of them!

My display was very simple. My gloves were stuffed so they would stand up, and my book was flat on the table. I brought the designs I had sketched and the test pieces I made before each piece, but they weren't labeled or anything. My documentation (gloves and book) was set in front. After seeing other people's displays I have some ideas for how to make things more engaging and visually interesting.

I went to sit with my display as soon as they let me, although I didn't get a lot of questions. I did get a lot of compliments, particularly on the gloves. And since the gloves now look very flawed to me, that was probably a good reminder. One of the judges came by to give me some pointers, which I really appreciated. Although he was trying to translate Embroiderer Speak, so hopefully I'll get to sit down with the judge that was actually in my area soon.

Between my observations and the feedback, next time I should:

• Have summary docs displayed.
• Show more process - example threads, glossary. 
• Describe the test pieces better, point out which stitches and threads are which, encourage handling of them.
• Bring a  separate table cover to really mark off my space rather than using the expanse of white.
• Make a display board for the back - maybe the back corner, so that I can still sit behind it. Put a lot of the above bullet points on it, and pretty pictures.

My score ended up being significantly better than I expected, though! 19/25. I was banking on getting a solid C grade and managed significantly better than that.
We were scored on 5 things, each out of 5.

• Materials - 4 - Entry uses primarily period materials. Substitutions are reasonably explained, appropriate, and justifiable. Information is provided about period materials. Materials are appropriate to period.
• Methods - 3 - Entry uses or emulates a combination of period and modern techniques. Techniques are justified and explained well in the documentation.
• Execution and Artistry - 3 - Entry demonstrates a good degree of skill, workmanship, or artistic ability. The item functions as intended and is generally appropriate within its intended time and culture.
• Depth or Scope - 4 - Piece demonstrates an advanced degree of execution, research, time, or commitment to produce.
• Documentation - 5 - Excellent documentation. Primary and secondary sources are appropriate. Thought process and decisions are very well explained, document is easy to follow.

And for full posterity, the comments: "Good progression from the first to the second project. Process notes are excellent. Would like to see more fill in the patterns so they look busier."

The Documentation and Depth scores were particularly surprising. I figured my documentation was going to be barely acceptable. Turns out that the SCA does not hold us to the standards of advanced college courses, for which I will be forever thankful.

So I have two directions that I want to take my goldwork from here. On the technique side I want to try some padding. On the research side, I seem to have started a collection of Elizabethan accessories, and I feel like I should just keep adding to that. Combining this would be great, but I suppose I could do multiple things.
I've already started researching sweet bags, but I am open to other accessory ideas!

And in addition to all the A&S that day, there were also awards that went out to several good friends and fellow Handsome Boys. My cadet received a much deserved Queen's Order of Courtesy, and three friends got Maunches. I got to read them all (two were verse, and I think I did ok!). And I managed to keep Liadan from figuring out she was getting a QoC, due in part to her own obliviousness.

It was a good day.

MoD Gloves - Finished Product

After a many month saga - starting to plan the things in March of 2015, and then embroidering like mad until Donovan was given his peerage on May 2. Including doing nothing on the day of except sit in front of his vigil tent attaching the cuff to the glove.

Note it was singular. As the day drew close I started concentrating on only one glove, since only one was needed.

When that glove went out and was thrown down (onto a pillow, thanks your majesty) it still wasn't done. But it was done enough. But definitely not enough spangles.

And then I took a break. I was maybe, just maybe, a little tired of looking at these.

But little by little over the intervening months I have finished up the second glove's embroidery, attached it to its cuff, and then filled out the spangles on both of them.

The last spangle was sewn on on 1/16/16 on the way to 12th Night! I entered them into the populace A&S competition, and got a fair number of votes (although nowhere near the people who tied for first - and they totally deserved it!)

Of course, as I was sewing on that last spangle I noticed that I had completely missed outlining one of the small leaves. It was suggested that I come up with a Deep Reason for it.

I definitely need to stop looking at these. All I see is faults!

Mod Gloves - The Embroidering

This is part 2 of the glove extravaganza. Part 1 can be found here.

The is the exciting part! To me, anyway.

The inspiration gloves were white leather, with red silk and gold thread. It looks like there could maybe be some silver in there too, but it's hard to tell whether that just because it's old or not.

I knew that Donovan wanted black gloves, preferred silver to gold, and that his outfit would be green. So I adjusted the colors to reflect that.

I started with a nice thick piece of black linen, big enough to work on both cuffs at once. I knew that if I did them one at a time then he would only ever get one glove. The large scroll frame I have was just big enough to work.

Transferring the pattern to the fabric was a project in itself. I didn't feel comfortable freehanding the pattern, and thick black fabric and light boxes don't really get along. And besides all of that, any normal pen wasn't going to show up anyway. I ended up using a combination of chalk and carbon transfer sheets to get the pattern on there, and then stitched around eeeeverything with running stitch, because the chalk was never going to stay long enough.

Then began the silk embroidery. This, at least, was nothing particularly new. I chose green instead of red to go with his outfit, and because he's a fan of the color. I also decided to have the larger motifs needle painted...mostly because I really like how needle painting looks.

I used Eterna flat silk, which is a pain to work with but so very shiny. I outlines each flower-thing with split stitch with the darker green, and the filled it in with long and short stitches. For the needle painted ones, I did last row or two in a light green, still with long and short stitch.

For the OGR and OSR symbols I decided to applique felt for the blue areas instead of trying to fill it in with stitches. This was mostly because filling in the entire circle for the OSR seemed like a bad idea, and I wanted to make sure they matched. So I cut out circles and tiger heads, two of each, and appliqued them down with tiny stitches.

Now for some goldwork.
Due to the time contraints I had, and the fact that I felt like I could have ruined this at any time, I did not splurge on new materials for the goldwork. I had some jap gold (and jap silver) in a somewhat thick size (check for the size?), and did all of the goldwork using those threads. These threads were perfectly fine for the lines - maybe a little bit too bold, and difficult for turning corners, but perfectly serviceable. Where the threads fell down was on all of the filled areas. I'm pretty sure that the original gloves used chips of check purl to do the filling, but the Japanese thread of course needed to be plunged..and plunging centimeter long bits of metallic thread is not a thing I suggest to anyone. Especially a wrapped thread that will start to fall apart.

I realized quickly that due to time and the previously mentioned corner turning problems, that doing all the little leaves the design wasn't going to work. So most of those got dropped early on.

One problem that I didn't foresee was that the thick thread absolutely could not be plunged through the dense felt I used for the badges.This was mostly a problem on the Silver Rapier badge, and resulted in a lot of creative bending and end covering. I think it worked out ok, but I will never make that particular mistake again.

I am very happy with some of the couching work I did and very unhappy with other parts. Things that looked ok on the frame got wobbly once the tension was off. A lot of the problems came from rushing - I didn't put my stitches close enough together, I didn't always secure the stitches as tightly at the ends as I should have.

MoD Gloves - The Planning.

Before the Masters of Defense were even a done deal, I knew that when Donovan got one I wanted to be able to make something for him. Of course the problem there is that I don't really sew - I embroider. And regalia kind of requires a combination of the two activities most of the time. And I knew the likely candidates for sewing for him were far away, so that would be difficult.

Once the new Peerage was definitely going to happen there was so much discussion about what sorts of traditions and regalia and such we would be using in the East. So. Much. It's like people really cared or something. One thing that got brought up by several different people and then stuck was the idea of "throwing the gauntlet". The Queen would literally toss a gauntlet, and retrieving it would be the symbolic acceptance of their new duties.

I thought it was a very cool and unique thing for the new Order to do without stepping on anyone's toes, and allowed for the Queen to be directly involved. It also meant that the regalia would have to include gloves. Embroidered gloves. My task was born!

I have never done a lot of historic research in my embroidery - I've done what strikes my fancy at the time, or projects given to me by other people. But I knew that the person (Alesone/Alysten over at Alysten's Blog) making his garb for ceremony was going full on fancy late period English, so I wanted to add to the outfit. Little did I know that most of the extant examples of late period English gloves are UTTERLY RIDICULOUS. But also, so cool.

I ended up with a Pinterest board of late 16th/early 17th century gloves, but I took particular inspiration from these.

Image from metmuseum.org

I liked them, and they weren't quiiite as complex as some of the others.
So there was much sketching. Here are some designs from before I settled on those gloves, in more "typical Elizabethan embroidery" style.

Unfortunate shadows are unfortunate!

Once I had the pattern I wanted, I enlarged it to full size for tracing purposes.
I went with the basic motifs in the inspiration gloves - the border and the flower-type things - but changed some of the flowers to be circles instead, to be filled with the three fencing award badges in the East. In this picture you can see rough sketches of the Golden Rapier, MoD, and Silver Rapier symbols.

Once I had a design I approached the problem of materials.
I knew that I wanted the base gloves to be the calfskin ones available from Darkwood Armory - they are soft and nice and I could figure out his size from his fencing gloves. And there was no way that I was going to add "glove making" to this project.
Unfortunately, the gloves that I've seen come in two types - embroidery directly on the leather, or embroidery on piece of stiffened fabric that is then attached as the cuff to the leather hand part of the glove. Neither of these were going to be feasible for this project. Embroidering directly on that leather was asking for tiny holes everywhere from mistakes, not to mention that most ideas I had needed properly stretched material to work on. Removing the perfectly nice leather cuff to attach a fully fabric one was taking a step closer to glove making than I was interested in going for this project.
The happy medium I decided on was embroidering on linen, and then attaching it (and a layer of stabilizer) to the leather cuff, making it look like it was a fully fabric cuff. This had its own difficulties, but I still think it was the right plan.

Stayed tunes for actual embroider pictures to come.