Ruminations on a Tableau

As I was planing some beautiful cherry (thank you, Bjorn) this weekend for a table and benches, my father said something to me that made me go "Oh, duh."

You see, there's this beautiful trestle table from the 14th century that is still in existence. A friend of mine planned and recreated a few of them, then very generously provided me with his plans (thank you, Harvey!) In taking these plans to my father, the engineer (yes, that's where I get it from), he said, "Do you know why the table still exists? because nobody wanted to use the damn thing! It was pretty but it kept falling over!"

While I don't entirely agree that nobody wanted to use it, there is a good deal to be said for the instability of a table that's 24" wide, but has a 15" wide base. Certainly as a merchant's wife, Olivia would not have had an unusable table, or one so prone to falling over that it needed to be kept in a corner or against a wall somewhere. 

So, now to go back and find some designs from late-ish period tables that meet the needs of an active house without a disposable income. Perhaps a perusal of paintings would promote planning progress. I have some thoughts, but will need to ruminate a bit more.

Embroidery for Master Joel Messerer

Master Joel Messerer was elevated to the Order of the Pelican this weekend at The Sign of the Dancing Fox. As part of his elevation, I was asked to create an embroidered medallion for his cloak. The medallion art was taken from a scroll created for Master Joel's Pine (the Barony of Concordia's service award).

I was provided a photo of the art to be embroidered, a 6" square of cream wool, a 6" square of cream linen, red silk, and black silk. Due to a miscommunication, some of the other medallions were done on the linen side, while others were done on the wool side. To help with visual balance between the fabrics, I was asked to create my medallion with the linen square facing up. 

The first task was to transfer the design to the fabric. As the design was a different size than the requested circle, there were a few different options for this:

• Resize the image and utilize a light box to trace the image.
• Freehand the image on the fabric.
• Grid the fabric and the design, and scale based on the grid lines.

As I am a mathematically-inclined individual, I chose the grid option. Below are the step-by-step instructions for the grid transfer. 

1. Draw a vertical and a horizontal line through the center of the image. 
2. Draw a vertical line halfway between the center line and the edge of the pattern. 
3. Repeat this on the other side of the center line
4. Draw a horizontal line halfway between the center line and the edge of the pattern.
5. Repeat this on the other side of the center line.
6. If you need more grid lines, continue drawing lines between the existing lines until you have the desired size grid squares. 
7. Repeat steps 1-6 on the fabric. 
8. Using the grid boxes as guides, draw the image on the fabric lightly, with pencil or fabric pen, making adjustments as necessary, to get the desired look. Remember the grids are not perfect, so you may need to make some minor adjustments to get the image to look right. 
9. When you are satisfied with the image, go over it again with slightly darker lines. 
10. Now you're ready to sew!

Personally, I find the grid method to be the easiest, as it breaks the image up into manageable chunks. Scaling with a light box can also be fairly simple if you are decent with scaling. Additionally, I chose to do this portion of the art as an approximation, as they would not have calculated perfection of reproductions in period. 

As the other embroideries were done entirely in split stitch, I used this stitch for conformity. Were I given an option, I would have likely chosen chain stitch for the circles, and split stitch for the design, as I prefer the look of chain stitch on circles. Below are the final front and back photos of the medallion.