SINISTER STITCHES |
KARA'S CUFFS
Updates:
| When Uther won for Kara at June Crown, I offered her my assistance to make something - anything - for her reign. Kara is one of the sweetest people I have had the privelege to know in the SCA and I really wanted to help her look spectacular. After some long deliberation, she decided on a pair of cuffs done with the Jane Seymour pattern in black silk on white linen. Awesome! | |
| Although she wanted them for October Crown, I didn't get everything assembled in time. Although the embroidery is going quickly, it is not quick enough, and I won't finish the cuffs until some time in October. Poo! :( | |
| But it has been a fun project thus far. I lashed the linen pieces into a scroll frame and sewed a pair of knitting needles into the hems so I could have a smooth field to work on. I decided to use Needlepoint Inc. silks since I've read they're colorfast and had a great time using them on Sabrina's mantle patch. I am having some difficulty with using one thread, as it tends to fray something fierce. Yuck! | |
| So - some history. This cuff pattern was drawn from Hans Holbein the Younger's (ah, my favorite!) portrait of Jane Seymour, painted in 1536. Per his usual awesomeness, Holbein painted Jane's cuffs painstakingly enough that a clear pattern can be seen. Lorraine Behrens took the time to zoom in, chart away, and present us with this lovely rendition of the pattern. Yay Lorraine! You rock. | |
| And you know, the more I work with this pattern, the more I'm convinced that it's German. It is so very much like the other Holbein patterns that I've worked with (from his Anna Meyer portrait) that it can't be a coincidence. The two lines of mirrored patterns, the prevelance of crosses, the ric-rac lines - everything point to this being German. | |
| So there are a few possibilities. One is that Holbein painted a pattern he remembered from his homeland. Another is that he used a pattern from any old pattern book available in London at the time, which were conglomerates of styles and crossed borders freely. Another comes from my fighter Baccus, who suggests that it could have been a political move. As Henry was out of favor with the Pope at the time, he was trying to curry favor with the increasingly powerful Martin Luther, who was, in fact, German. This is possible; we know Tudor embroidery could be political, as the Moorish Spanish blackwork patterns exploded in popularity once Henry married Catherine of Aragon. Could this be another instance of politics meeting art? We may never know. | |
| Back to the project. As you may or may not be able to see in this picture, I'm most of the way done with one cuff. It does go quickly, particularly when doing the return runs. Oh yeah, I'm making this reversible. Not my favorite style - it's very easy to mess up a whole line this way - but it does look cool once done. I'm not the best at it, and my backs look a little messy, but I'm doing my best and I hope Kara is eventually pleased with my work. I just hope I can get it to her before her reign ends! |  |
| And, we're back. Yikes - so, that didn't go as planned. I certainly didn't finish in time for October Crown, but at least I finished them before Kara's reign ended. Score! |
| I've had a bit of Life lately with both work and school, but things have been settling down and I've found time to finish these bad boys. And I did, about 10 minutes ago. I'm very happy that they're done; my new plan is to present them to the world at the artisan's display at this coming 12th Night, then hand them over to Kara for completion on a chemise. I'll make sure to get a picture of the real thing once she's done. |
Some final thoughts on this project; doing reversible on diagonal lines sucks. It's hard enough trying to tie off my ends under straight lines - it's even worse trying to do that on diagonal ones. It's also really hard to tie off under ric-rac lines, so I aimed to start and stop on the long stretches. Second, I think I messed up the pattern a bit on the second to outermost line, the one that doubles back and forth. I followed Lorraine's pattern for one side then assumed it would mirror itself on the other. When I finally looked back at the pattern and realized that they were exactly the same on both sides, it was waaaay too late. And lastly, since this is the first time I've done reverisble blackwork, I have no clue how sturdy my tie-off's are. I did my best with that running the thread under the top half of the linen threads thing, but I don't know how it's going to hold up under real wear and the wash. |
| Anyway. On with the pictures: |
| Here is an overview of the final cuffs. The top one is a bit folded because it lived in the embroidery bag while I finished up its sister. | This is a closeup of the front. There are some spots where the thread doesn't lie quite right due to my reaching a little too far forward while tying off the threads. | And this is a closeup of the back. Reversible blackwork might not be my favorite technique, but I don't think I do that bad of a job for it. |
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