The Darkwood Tapestry Panel is a large project designed to commemorate the Barony of Darkwood’s 20 th anniversary. It is being done in the style of the Bayeux tapestry, with 20+ vignettes depicting various scenes throughout the barony’s life. The project began formation in early 2004, with the kits being distributed to embroiderers in mid 2005. The heads of the project are Eric Bjornsson, Isela di Bari, and Catherine Lorraine of Stonegate Manor. The artist for all scenes was Raymond von dem Loewengrabbe, and the Latin translator was Adriana Tacita.

Although I am not a member of Darkwood I do play with them on occasion and am friends with many members. My own Laurel, Mistress Isela di Bari, is a Darkwoodian herself. So when I caught wind of this project, I immediately volunteered. Not everyone involved the in project are Darkwoodians – I know several other people who live in the south bay who are participating. However, we all share a love for Darkwood and are glad for a chance to create beautiful art in service to the barony. The panel I chose to do depicts the current baron and baroness Erich and Liesl, whom I like and respect a great deal.

Raymond spent much time coming up with designs that were similar to the style of the original tapestry. Catherine and Isela limited the colors used to the most popular six colors used in the original. The fabric is a lovely linen twill that takes the needle beautifully, and the floss is Appleton crewel wool. Catherine and Isela transferred the patterns to the fabric, taped the edges, and stapled them to the stretcher bars. It is not taut – it is rather loose, but that allows for swift surface working that I couldn’t do on a taut ground.

The stitches are two strands in outline and stem for the outlines, and one strand in laid and couched work for the fills. I worked doggedly for a couple weeks after I received the kit, then put it aside to focus on the kingdom kneeling pillow label project. I picked it back up a little over a month ago, again working on it to the detriment of everything else, and am nearly complete with it. All that remains is a little bit of Liesl and most of Erich, as I would like to tweak Erich’s outfit and decide on colors.

This has been a really fun project, being the physically largest that I’ve ever worked on up to now, and went remarkably quickly once I got the stitch down. It is my first project using laid and couched work. There was a time where I forgot to use two strands for the outline and used one instead, but I switched as soon as I remembered. However, I intentionally did the hands, faces, and words in one strand, as in my view two strands made everything look like a bulbous mush. I like the way the project looks so far, although I have to remember not to hold it up to the light and look for gaps in the stitching (which I know there are a bunch of, but apparently only I can see them). I’ve experienced a couple occasions when I was too sick of the project to work on it, but I eventually got over it. What project does that not happen on?

My main problem with this project is its lack of portability. The frame is quite large – 20” wide by 22” long – which precludes working on it when sitting closely amongst others, like choir or court. So I’ve had to spend many an hour at home chugging away at it, usually to the tunes of Owain Phyfe. Another big problem for me is that the wool threads thin out after repeated use and shred. The wool is also making my skin dry out, particularly the tip of my left pointer finger, which is continually dry and insensitive. It’s not my first occupational injury from embroidering (that honor goes to the bruised tailbone I got in high school from sitting in a curled position for too long), but it’s still a battle scar to be proud of.

This project is due on July 1 of this year. Once all panels are complete, Catherine and Isela will take the panels off the stretcher bars, size them equally, and sew them all together into one giant ribbon like the original. I will most likely help them make the embroidered borders that will cover the seaming of all the panels.

This first picture is after a week’s worth of work on August 5, 2005. At this point, I still only had my cruddy camera phone to document my work with. I started with the dragon because I think he’s cute, and I wanted to work on something that could assuage my sadness over not getting blue dogs (a favorite element of mine in the beginning of the original, which I asked to be added to my panel but didn’t get – oh, well).

This next picture is after I picked it up again in December and did some more work on it. December 6, 2005. I’m still working on the dragon, as well as getting tired of trying to fit a straight stitch technique into curvy shapes and deciding to work on the only straight shapes on my panel. Note the advent of the digital camera!

This next picture was taken today, after seeing about a solid month’s worth of work. As you can see, I’m down to a little bit of the right-hand tree, some of Liesl, and most of Erich left to do. A couple things to note which can’t be seen in this picture: I noticed that I could spell my name in amongst the lettering I got, so I put those letters in a medium green as opposed to the black of the rest of the letters. Even in real life it can’t really be seen unless you’re looking for it, but I am okay with such stealthy stitching. Also, when I was doing modern embroidery before I joined the SCA, I always gave my embroidered girls hazel eyes if I could, sort of as my maker’s mark. Because I liked my dragon so much, I gave him a hazel eye. My dragon’s cute, and he’s the same deep teal as Liesl’s dress and Erich’s cloak. Why is my dragon a he? I have no idea.

And yes, I have ripped out Erich’s shield. I didn’t like the way it had turned out, so off it came. I’ve actually had to take out a few spots, some because I didn’t like the way they looked, others because they were straight up mistakes on my part. Luckily, there haven’t been enough of those to make me go any more insane over this project than I already have. And those lines on the sides of Erich aren’t speed lines to make him Super Erich – they’re strands of blue thread I needed to put aside until I could fix his skirt. I want his skirt to be longer, but I need to do some more pictoral research before I can come to a final decision on this.

I’m not sure why it took me so long to finish this report . . the panel has been finished and photographed since the end of May. Perhaps it was because I was so happy to be done with my two main projects, which I finished within days of each other. Below are images of the finished panel in all its glory. There is the complete piece, a closeup of Erich and Liesl, and a closeup of my dragon, all finished and happy. If you look close enough in the closeup of Erich and Liesl, you can see the different color I used for the letters of my name. Other people liked that idea so much that they tried to do that in their panels, as well. Once my panel was done, I passed it along to Catherine Lorraine. My panel was the third one to be completed.

This final picture is what my cat, Sheba, thinks of the thing that kept me from paying attention to her for so long. She didn’t actually do anything destructive to the panel; she just likes to get her rear, face, or other furry parts into the shot when I’m trying to take pictures.

All pictures on this page were taken by myself between 8/5/05 and 5/26/06.