In April 2019 I had the pleasure of leading the Shire of Roxbury Mill team at Revenge of the Stitch, a 24-hour sewing competition. After consulting with our model, Ava Deinhardt, we settled on a 12th-century bliaut. I was particularly interested in bliauts, as they’ve been finicky to pin down, and I happen to know Dr. Monica L. Wright, an expert on bliauts, and I wanted to apply her research.
This was the result.
After several requests for our team’s documentation, I am posting it here. You can also download a PDF copy.
In 2019, I had the honor to write the scroll text for my friend Ishmael Reed in a fantastic collaboration with Lady Adelaide Half Pint (illumination) and Lady Kaaren Valravn (calligraphy). Of course, I had to write a Shakespearean sonnet for Lord Ishmael:
From Ragnarr King and gracious Queen Lynette:
Hail and heed our words, Atlantia fair!
For poetry written and many a doublet
A Coral Branch for Ishmael Reed declare.
He toils with sharp and pointy things each night:
A quill, a pen, a needle, sometimes wit.
His laborious toil makes Atlantian arts shine bright
and keeps the lantern of arts well-tended and lit.
He calls forth words from both the brave and afraid
By easing others’ fears of meter and rhyme.
And oh! diverse doublets he helped be made,
Manifold shirefolk dressing now sublime.
Thus have we with royal power decreed:
Present this Coral Branch to Ishmael Reed.”
In 2019, I decided to make Ottoman Turkish garb for a Near-East-themed Twelfth Night — and won for Best Themed Garb in the Garb Runway Competition! I unfortunately got almost no pictures from the event, but below the cut I have my full documentation, progress photos, and pictures of the finished garb.
I made this bag for Lochmere Midwinters in January 2019 as part of their Pilgrim Bag competition. The picture shows the fabric a much darker blue than it is in real life.
Materials & Techniques
Outside Bag Body
Material: Wool, handwoven on a rigid heddle loom, fulled, and hand-dyed in indigo
Techniques: Handsewn with commercially-dyed wool
Bag Lining
Materials: Linen (commercially woven)
Techniques: Handsewn and felled with cotton thread
Strap
Materials: Commercially-dyed wool in Atlantian colors
Techniques: Inkle-woven and handsewn onto the bag’s back
Tassels
Fluffy fluffy goodness made of wool
Badge
Don’t worry! The badge hasn’t gone missing: this is the bag’s first “pilgrimage,” so it does not have a badge yet! After this event, I will sew a badge (perhaps a Spike?) to the front flap.
Pattern & Construction
Thanks to Mistress Karen Larsdatter’s links pages, I first found the pattern by Sabine Scholl, the pattern by Myriam Gateault, and the translation of Scholl’s pattern by Lord Coblaith Muimnech (Ansteorra). In several manuscript images on these pattern pages, there were blue bags with white tassels and details (Atlantian colors!). I then remembered the wool cloth that I had handwoven, fulled, and dyed in indigo—it would be perfect for this bag! Addendum 2019: I used a small rigid-heddle loom to weave the cloth out of a rough commercial wool; I then fulled wool by putting it in my home’s washer/dryer and forgetting about it!
While I prefer the look of the trapezoidal bag in these patterns and illuminations, I wanted to use every inch of my handwoven/hand-dyed fabric, so I settled on a rectangular bag (but still with tassels, because who doesn’t love tassels?). Because the final construction was simple folding and bag-lining (pun definitely intended), I did not use a pattern; I relied on the dyed fabric’s width and cut the lining to match.
Finally, while straps in illuminations are usually a single color, I wanted to reinforce the Atlantian colors of the bag body, so I patterned the inkle-woven strap with white and multi-toned, asymmetrical blue stripes. I wove a long enough piece to serve as a strap, then sewed it to the back of the bag to create the same visual, from the front, that I saw in the exemplars. Addendum 2019: I used a modern inkle loom to weave the strap. The asymmetrical blue stripes were a necessity, as I had a limited amount of match yarn remnants!
Period Exemplars
Detail from a mural at the Villeneuve church, France (1300-1400), of a pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela. This mural also inspired the colors on my bag, as well as its future badge.
Detail from a mural at the Villeneuve church, France (1300-1400), of a pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela. This mural also inspired the colors on my bag, as well as its future badge.
Detail from Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Français 2810, f. 142v (1400-1420), of pilgrims traveling. The bags worn by these pilgrims inspired the shape of my bag (and its tassels!).
These three exemplars gave me confidence that a blue-and-white square bag with tassels could be possible across multiple centuries.
In April 2018, I had the great honor to be part of the Shire of Roxbury Mill’s Revenge of the Stitch team for the first time. Our chosen garb was middle-class Tudor garb.
I had one responsibility: knit a Tudor flat cap and full it in the 24-hour time period. Folks were (understandably) a little concerned about the amount of time it would take me to knit, so I knit a test hat first.
It took 8.25 hours. Flat cap was a go!
Final cap drying! Photo courtesy of Mistress Molly.Ysabeau and I fulling during the wee hours of the morning after the cap was finished. Picture courtesy of Mistress Molly.
On the day of, though?
It took 6.5 hours, from cast-on to bind-off.
Fulling, of course, took a little longer.
Our model Joe in the final outfit. Photo courtesy of Lord Nicolo Santorio.
In 2018 my friend Ishmael Reed became Poeta Atliantiae, and somehow managed to convince me to start writing poetry again. The Fire of the Hunt was the result. I entered it into my first-ever bardic and poetry competitions at Trial By Fire 2018, and somehow managed to win both.
I picked up scribal in the fall of 2017, and although I was unable to attend the following Twelfth Night, I desperately wanted to enter the New Scribe Contest. Based on Her Majesty’s whims (Viking persona and a love of horses and the color red), I decided to do an Urnes-Style Horse and Grasping Beast Scroll. I was honored that my scroll was selected as the winner!
Because I wanted a challenging design (and I could not find any digitized exemplars of period illuminations that fit my concept, as Nordic manuscripts are rare before 1100), I decided to base my design on Urnes-style knotwork (c. 1050-1132). I used three artifacts as inspiration:
I decided to adapt one of the Urnes-style grasping beasts into a horse, based on Her Majesty’s whims.The color choices were also influenced by an Urnes-style scroll found online dated 2007; I could not find the name of the original artist. I used gouache and pencil on pergamenata.
As mythird scroll ever, this scroll had many firsts for me:
first entirely original composition for a scroll,
first completed illustrationof knotwork of any kind
I painted my first scroll blank in 2017, the same year I joined the SCA. The elements were an amalgamation of elements from early 15th century manuscripts (I believe I pulled from BNF MSs. Français 117-120, which was made between 1400 and 1425, with some modifications to the illuminations in the 1460s). I then entered this scroll into the Twelfth Night scroll blank competition in 2019.
Photograph is courtesy of Tannis Baldwin, as I am awful at remembering to photograph my own items!
In 2019, I decided to make Ottoman Turkish garb for a Near-East-themed Twelfth Night — and won for Best Themed Garb in the Garb Runway Competition! I unfortunately got almost no pictures from the event, but below the cut I have my full documentation, progress photos, and pictures of the finished garb.
I made this bag for Lochmere Midwinters in January 2019 as part of their Pilgrim Bag competition. The picture shows the fabric a much darker blue than it is in real life.
