SINISTER STITCHES
CURRENT PROJECTS - ETERNAL
COPTIC RONDELS

As my persona in the SCA is early period Byzantine (CE 500’s), I have obtained a decent number of colorful Byzantine tunics to wear to events.  However, they are somewhat lacking in decoration; only two stripes, or clavii, adorn each tunic.  I have long wished to embroider something to appliqué to the tunics, but am faced with a dearth of extant period pieces.  There are contemporary descriptions of the richly bejeweled and embroidered tunics that were worn by Byzantine courtiers, but none exist to examine and reproduce.  The closest I have been able to get are so-called Coptic embroideries.  The Copts were Egyptian Christians who excelled in weaving and embroidering, whose designs are easily recognized for their colorful, cartoony people, beasts and foliage.  The Copts also shipped out their goods all over the Mediterranean.  Although I do not have any solid evidence for this, it is highly likely that a Byzantine courtier in the early 500’s would have owned a piece or two of Coptic embroidery.

In the early days of my SCA experience, I acquired a book by Deborah Thompson called Coptic Textiles in The Brooklyn Museum.  This gem from 1971 has mostly woven pieces, but has two pages of images of embroidery in color.  One is a larger piece from the 5th century, a square bust of an angel with flowers, fruit, and other decorative elements.  The other is a collection of three rondels from the 5th to 6th centuries, each no more than 2 inches in diameter.  Two depict colorful birds, while the third shows a bowl of fruit.  All are done in colored wool threads in chain stitch on linen ground.

I chose the leftmost bird and the bowl of fruit to recreate as they have the clearest visible patterns.  I decided to triple the size because I wanted to put them over the ends of the clavii trim on one of my tunics, and they thus need to be large enough to be visible.  My first attempt was a bit of a bust, but over which I learned a lot about how to make this project turn out right.  I chose Paternyan wools in colors that I matched to the pictures in the book.  Sadly, I made a very poor fabric choice; I had a quantity of tan knitted wool on hand that I used, and figured that it wouldn’t matter as the entire field would be covered with the stitching.  I strung up the wool on a frame for stitching, and once I finished the embroidery and took it out, it immediately puckered like a Frisbee.  The picture below was taken by Mistress Catherine Lorraine of Stonegate Manor.

My next attempt will be on linen, like it should have been in the first place, and I will need to rethink the scrolly vines along the outside of the bird.  My original thought was that the leaves used in the original looked too much like laurel leaves, which would be bad for me to incorporate into my garb at this point in time.  So I used three Lazy Daisy stitches, which I have yet to see used in period.  Despite my two planning flaws, I am very pleased with the way the embroidery turned out.  The colors are lovely and show up well against the dark teal of the intended tunic, and match the gold of the existing clavii trim.  And I have enjoyed dubbing this bird the North African Jelly Bean Amoeba Quail; it is very cute and fits that title.  As for the bowl of fruit, I will save it for another tunic.  My current plan is to complete four of these patches in 2007 and attach them to my tunic.

I've agreed to teach a Coptic Embroidery class at this year's Darkwood Arts and Sciences Tournament. I am a little nervous because I still have yet to pull together all my research, but I'll get it done. I am planning to give the students enough linen (yes, linen, and not stretch wool) and wool thread to make the North African Jelly Bean Amoeba Quail patch on their own. I will provide more updates and pictures when I get them.

UPDATE: Looks like I meant Kingdom A&S, but that fell through due to a miscommunication about class scheduling. Looks like I get more time to work on it!

I received permission to reproduce the scan of the Thompson book from The Brooklyn Museum in an e-mail sent on 7/13/2006.

The picture of the patch was taken by Catherine Lorraine, who gave me permission to reuse the picture in an e-mail sent on 7/10/2006.