This pouch was done as part of the Needleworkers Guild’s Pennsic pouch project. Pennsic ’05 was the 6th time where the guild rallied enough volunteers to make a rose pouch for our Western queen to give to the queen of every other kingdom at Pennsic War. Our pouches are the centerpieces of Western largesse and have always been a big hit with the other queens. For 2005, I was the guild minister in charge of presenting the pouches to the populace as well as to Queen Gierdis. I managed to attend June Crown and run the court presentation of the pouches despite being very sick with the flu. I got several members to carry the pouches into court, many of whom were the pouches’ creators. It was very well received among the populace and all royals, eliciting many heartfelt “oohs” and “aahs.” After Pennsic, Countess Gierdis, who was the queen who gave out the pouches, responded to a query from me saying that although other kingdoms gave more voluminous gifts, none gave so exquisite a gift as did the West thanks to the guild’s pouches. She also added that the guild is without peer in the known world. To a young guild minister, this brought great pride to me, and I made certain to share her sentiments with the rest of the guild.

The pouch I made was for the queen of Lochoc and I started it in 2004. I was given the directive of a white rose on a quarterly red and blue background, and was told to choose my techniques. A brainstorming session with Mistress Aldith Angharad St. George brought about the idea of making the background into a harlequin pattern using the same color thread and stitch but changing the direction of the stitches from diamond to diamond. Since I used Splendor silk, the finished product resulted in the harlequin pattern coming out in the right light, but otherwise looked like a large flat blue and red checked background. I was very pleased with how that aspect turned out.

I used some white evenweave art linen from my stash, so it was probably Wichelt’s 28 or 32 count linen. Since counted work is my favorite in the whole wide world, all of the fills excepting the seeded center were executed in brick stitch. I did two over-4 stitches for the background, one over-2 stitch for the petals, and horizontal lines of over-2 stitches for the leaves. Aldith had also suggested using a white rose of York pattern, which I managed to find a nice picture of somewhere online (the source has since been lost). Additionally, I used some of the gilt pearl purl wire I had received from serving on Duchess Eliana’s first court. I cut the wire up into little bead-like bits that I sewed into the center of the rose at odd angles; the end result of this technique was also pleased me very much.

The biggest problem with this project was getting the diamonds to line up, which in the end they didn’t. If you looked at the original (which you can’t unless you have access to Duchess Mistress Morwynna Branwynt in Lochoc), you would notice that the diamonds on one joining of the red and blue are slightly off. I suppose I could have done better had I run thread through the holes down the lines of the diamonds, thus knowing precisely where to go. But I didn’t think of that beforehand, so I ended up with a slightly off pattern. Grrrr . . ah, well – in the end, I loved it all the more for its flaw, and was sad to see it go.

Mistress Catherine finished the construction of the pouch in her signature “frame” style, and also added some bells from her stash to the bottom of the pouch. She took all the pictures that I have of the pouch, as I was still lacking in digital camera-ness at the time. The first two pictures are during its embroidery process. You can see how the lines I thought were correct for the diamonds were in fact not. The last two are of the pouch once it was completed, including a detail of the stitches. By the way, I realized far too late that I had gotten a bad dye job on one card of the blue, which is why in the second picture the blue looks spottily faded. Ah, well – everything can’t be perfect!

The pictures on this page were taken by Catherine Lorraine (Conny FitzSimmons), who gave me permission to reuse them on my website on 7/10/06.