As I am the closest embroiderer to my fighter, Lord Baccus Kaloethes, he asked if I could embroider the trim for the garb for his upcoming time on Queen Aurora’s guard. Of course, I agreed. The outfits for the guard are based on a mosaic of a Varangian guardsman from the 11th century monastery Nea Moni on the island of Chios.

As a side note, more information about Nea Moni can be found here: http://www.chios.gr/archeological/nea_moni_en.htm

The guardsman has trim with a heart-shaped motif around the edge of his tunic, as well as on the tablions on his cloak. There are also some little bits of trim around his wrists that might match, but the nature of mosaic makes it impossible to tell if that’s what was intended. Although this is not required trim, I still might make it happen – if there’s time.

Baccus sent me pictures from a fellow guardsman, Daniel, whose mother-in-law (I believe) embroidered the trim for his garb. He also sent me the original pattern as envisioned by Her Majesty, which I resized in a Word document to get the correct sizings. The width for the sleeves, if I do them, will be 3”. The width for the tunic trim will be 5”, and 8 ½” for the cloak tablion. Baccus and I discussed including what looks like an additional thick band of red embroidery in the original mosaic, but since it does not go all the way around the trim, I think the use of red in those places is meant as a line of division. So I’m sticking with the original design.

The fabric is a dark mustard colored . . something, probably acetate, with a slight nap to it. The thread I am using is Silk and Ivory ½ silk ½ wool yarn color #14: Burgundy. It feels delightful and behaves very well, even kindly staying out of the way of my stitching when I leave a long tail on the back of the fabric. However, the fabric does not like to be worked on; it takes the needle badly, and has a stretch to it that prohibits proper stretching in my frame. I am, however, being very delicate with my stitches in hopes that I can get it to work. I am using chain stitch, a popular technique for the time and place.

BLEH! That’s what I have to say about this project. As I mentioned before, the fabric DOES NOT want to take the needle – I’ve blistered the side of my left pointer finger and use the scissors sock as a needle puller more often than not in the effort to make this project happen. This is not entirely no fault of my own, however, as I simply may have chosen a technique that was ill-suited for the fabric. But . . but . . it’s PERIOD . .

I just tonight finished one half of the tunic trim. It will have to be enough for Baccus to wear for Mists Investiture two Saturdays from now, as I really need to focus on finishing Oonagh’s pouch.

As a side note, I think I may have stumbled across a reason for why the heart shape was so popular in Byzantine decoration. I was playing the most recent Caesar IV PC game and noticed that one of the items available for trade is silphium. The cartooned picture of it did not give me a good idea of what it was so I Googled it. It turns out that silphium was a plant that only grew in Cyrene, a city on the coast of what’s now Libya. As a side-side note, the city’s port city was Apollonia. Woo hoo!

Silphium was very popular in Roman times as a seasoning, medicine, and even an abortifacient. It was so popular that it was farmed to extinction, and the only reason we know of it today is because of coins stamped with an image of the plant and sporadic mention of it in contemporary writings.

My point to this history lesson lies in the fact that the seeds for silphium were heart-shaped. It might be a stretch, but I think it’s possible that the Byzantines, who were so enamored by the Romans, adopted a symbol of an item that held great importance to them into their clothing. If you’d like to read more about silphium, here is the Wikipedia entry on it where I got all my information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium

Okay, so it's been a while! ::sigh::

I believe that due to a scheduling error with my other projects and the physical pain this project put me through, I put it off until it was past due, and then I gave it much less priority than other projects. I moved, it got boxed up, and thusly forgotten. I had made various promises throughout the year to finish it, but it was only when Baccus wore the tunic at an event that he had sewn the front half of the trim to that I realized how very sad the tunic looked with only the front half of the trim done. So I dug for it, dug in, and vowed to finish it.

I finished the second half of Baccus' tunic trim on Sunday night - yay! I went looking for the tablion patterns, and I can't find them . . which leads me to believe I never sized the patterns for them in the first place. Considering that all of the pertinent pieces are done, I am not that stressed. I will get to the tablions when I get to them, which I hope will happen before November 2008. One can hope!

Once more, an overview and closeup of the trim. This half went better that the other half, but I'm still glad it's done.

I will post some more pictures when he sews them onto his tunic. Can't wait to see it myself!