Since I'm on a court where I'm not terribly useful, I was happy to have the chance to make some trim for Their Highnesses Eyvandir and Cyneswith. Yay - I'm helping!

The only hitch with the pattern was that when the seawolf was centered on the trim shape, the waves were far above center. So I adjusted things a little, and now the seawolf is swimming evenly through the waves and my AR nature is satisfied.

Transferring the pattern was a pain in the rear, involving drawing the pattern to fit onto the two different trim shapes, transfering those new layouts of the pattern onto two matching shapes of tracing paper each, pinning the tracing paper shapes to the fabric, stitching through the lines on the fabric, ripping off the paper (the fun part!), inking over the dots, tearing the thread out, and reinking until I had a nice, solid, deceptively simple pattern drawn onto the fabric. I could have pricked and pounced the pattern on, but I think that would have taken just about as much time as what I did. Anyway, it's done now, and the fun part can begin.

And it's really fun - and really fast! I'm stitching the pattern in three threads of Splendor silk, and will eventually use DMC silver metallic floss for parts of the seawolf. Sadly, I don't have a scroll frame wide enough to work efficiently on, so I've had to stitch, roll down the line, restretch the fabric, and stitch again. But it's at a point where each band ought to only take two or three days to complete, which is not bad at all.

I know the picture above isn't the best; flash doesn't seem to like my work. But the fabric is a dark emerald green, the bottoms of the waves are a grayish blue, and the tops of the waves are white. The seawolf will eventually be white with silver trimming which should look pretty neat. Per usual, I'll be back when I have progress to report.

Wow, has it really been almost a month later? Time, she flies.

Anyhoo - I am done with this project, am really pleased with that fact and have plenty to report. April 7 was a banner day for pictures, and below are pictures of the first finished piece of His Highness' trim. First is an overview, second is a closeup of the seawolf, and third is a closeup of the head. I really like the little bits of silver here and there that Kaaren and Cyneswith added; they're subtle, but add a nice touch of flash.

I thought it might be fun to show the procedure I use to transfer patterns. To the left are the first and second steps: pinning the tracing paper that has the pattern onto the fabric, and stitching through the paper to make tacking stitches along the pattern.

To the right are the third and fourth steps, inking the pattern onto the fabric and finally getting into the stitchy goodness.

It was about this time that I noticed something had gone horribly, horribly wrong: I had transferred the pattern so that the seawolves all faced one direction. I vaguely recalled Cyneswith asking for them to face each other across each set, so I confirmed it with her in a bit of a panic. But all was not lost; at that point I had finished one piece of each person's trim, had one still in the tacking stitches stage, and was just starting to embroider the fourth. I flipped the one with the tacking stitches over and drew the pattern on the opposite side, and only wound up having to completely cut out and redo one piece. Score!

And now I am done. Each piece went relatively quick, only taking about 4 days to do each one. My fingernail is feeling the pain of having to lift the needle and my fingertips resemble nothing more than pincushions, but I didn't bleed on them and I still had a good time (hmm, that kinda came out wrong . .).

Below are pictures of the finished goods, first of Eyvandir's finished piece, then a closeup of his seawolves, and finally an overview of all four pieces. And they now all face the direction they were intended to face.

And now, we wait, for I finished this project at least a week ahead of schedule. Now they are off to Her Highness for the next stage in their lives, being sewn onto the stepping down tunics. I am certain, however, that there will be many a photographer who will be at Investiture who will take many pictures of Their Highnesses, so I will make sure to get a couple pictures of the trim on the tunics up here when I find them.

It is really difficult to believe that it's been six months since Eyvindr and Cyneswith stepped up, but this last Saturday was Investiture, and now it's really over. Both were decked in the tunics with the trim on it, and they looked faboo! Although I am sure that others will produce much finer pictures than mine, I did manage to snag a few following final court to show what the trim looks like on the finished tunics.

Yay! So - that's it for now, but if Gelis, etc. post any pictures that are just too good to pass up, I will make sure to get their permission to post them here.