Branston’s favourite show is on his own special telly.

Branny would also like to remind the birthday bat that he is going to be four years old next month, and that he has been a (relatively) god boy all year. He says all he wants for his birthday is a mobile phone (so he can text his monkey when she’s out at work, even though he can’t see why she has to abandon him for hours on end) and an Ipad (he want’s to play angry birds) and an economy sized box of hamsters

Ok, so not my most sucessful effort, it’s a bit wonky, but I wondered what would happen if I tried to translate a german brick stitch pattern into smocking.

It may be wonky, but I’ll wear it anyway, and I really like the white thread against the unbleached linen – even if the wonkiness probably wouldn’t be quite so conspicous if it was natural on natural.

You have to try these things, as my mother always says

I did this piece of tablet weave maybe ten years ago. It’s just over two inches wide and about four foot long, and is silk brocaded onto silk with a linen weft – the linen was deliberately used quite thick to give a somewhat corded appearance to the background. If memory serves me right(and I wouldn’t count on that becuase my memory is a most insolent servant) it’s based on a design from ecclesiatical pomp and aristocratic circumstance.

It was intended as a c15th gown belt, which is why I dug it out and remembered that it’s rather pretty, as I’m currently thinking about what to make to go with my velvet gown (alas this will not suit, but it will go nicely with something else). I really need to get round to putting a buckle and strap end on this and using it, even if only to see how this form of surface brocading stands up to being worn – I do rather fear that the buckle will pull the couched threads.

My other c15th gown belt, which is 3 inches wide and made from gold brocaded tablet weave (sometimes you do these things just to prove that you can – I never want to do one of these again!) won’t suit either, as it’s also too red to go with the velvet. I think I need something black and classy. The gold one isn’t doing to badly considering how much it’s been worn – it was bound to get a few creases.

and its mine, all mine!

I got a whopping gas bill rebate and it seemed rude not to spend it on something completely frivolous and unnecessary. this is going to be an alternative underkirtle for my velvet dress, and a pair of sleeves for my other kirtle

There is some debate over whether the dresses of the late c15th had a waist seam or not, and I’ve done versions both with and without in the past. This time I’ve decided to go with the waist seam because a) I’ve found it more economical in it’s use of fabric whilst obtaining maximum skirt swishiness (technical term) and b) I find it gives a more elegant fall to the skirt whilst simultaneously allowing a better fit to the bodice.

Also, I’m a right lazy cow, and this method give you a good level hem every time without any effort, and the lining never gives any bother either.

Normally I would start with two long pieces of fabric sewn up the side to make  a square, then cut that into a circle (the offcuts make the sleeves and body with nowt left but the tailor of Gloucester’s “tippets for mice”) but due to the nap of the velvet I made my square from four pieces this time, so the nap will always fall vaguely down

I basted the lining to the outer fabric along the centre seam to stop it shifting. This is invisible from the front and will not be removed.

The whole thing is flat-felled using unbleached linen thread – you can’t see it on the velvet and I’m not really bothered about it being visible on the black linen lining. I then basted around the entire hem to hold it until I finish it, but I used red linen for that.

I love the way the light bounces off this. I haven’t used velvet for over twenty years because I wasn’t able to get anything of a quality I was content with – I would rather use something else and make a different costume than compromise. The more I look at this the more I think that anyone using cotton velvet and insisting you can’t tell the difference must be either blind or deluded.

I still haven’t decided what to do with the hem though, so It’s probably just as well that I need to set it aside for a week or so. The painting has just the tiniest wee hint of a fur lining poking out, so tiny as to be barely discernable – we aren’t talking about the wide contrasting bands often seen at the hems of frocks like this. I’ve got fur for the collar and cuffs, and I do have some more I could use around the bottom, but I don’t think I have enough to line it and I’m not sure I want to since I’ll mostly be wearing it in summer. This leaves me with three options-1) finish the hem by simply folding the velvet and lining together, 2) do  very very thin band of fur around the bottom to approximate the painting (which could look a bit wierd when the dress is lifted), or 3) do a brown silk velvet facing.

I’ll probably go with option 2 in the end, but I need to mull it over for a bit – mostly cos fur is a pain to work with and I always put it off til the last minute like maths homework

Actually, not like maths homework, I don’t think I ever did any maths homework when I was at school.

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THis one is my third ever piece of smocking. I’m not sure my white apron is terribly robust, being worked with silk, so I decided to make an all linen one, and went with unbleached for a change. I like the idea that an all linen apron can be thrown into the washing machine after a muddy weekend, and hopefully it will become paler over time. This has been through the washing machine since I finished it, and a good pounding seems to have done it good.

I didn’t use smocking dots on this one, as the fabric has a twill, so I just did the pleats along the twill, then just did the smocking freehand, which is why it’s a little wonky.

I only wanted enough cloth for one apron, but Anwar gave me a roll-end, so I have enough for two more aprons – I quite fancy trying one with white linen thread for contrast.

Also, I am harbouring an urge to make a proper smockish smock of the kind worn by English farm labourers. I considered making one as a Christmas present for my Stepdad, Peter, so that he could wear it when he helps my mum out with her traditional costume stuff. Then I thought that wasn’t really fair on Peter, since when he helps my mum with her traditional costume stuff he’s really just acting as her Ken doll, so Maybe I should make it as a christmas present for my mum, who could then dress Peter up in it like a big Ken doll. Then it all got very confusing, so now I’m thinking that maybe they’re going to get a smock as a joint present next christmas – after I’ve studied the book on traditional smocks a bit better.

I think there’s something almost masochistic about goldwork embroidery. I mean, I enjoy it whilst I’m in the middle of it, but it’s always a relief once it’s over.(and it makes my fingers sore)

I do have some reservations – I realised when I was almost finished that I’d taken one repeat from the original and used it over and over, ignoring certain subtle variations. I think now that maybe I should have used a slightly lighter weight gold twist. And my freehand work isn’t all that regular – but then at the same time it’s almost too neat because it’s a lot neater than the original

Anyway, it’s done, and next week I will find some good strong cardboard and send it off to Kent, Not to be seen again until November Torm. By which time I will most likely have forgotten what it looked like in the first place.

This is probably a good thing, since I think I may possibly be at the whingy, nitpicky stage of the project.

There are definite pros and cons to working on the velvet. Pro – you can hide a lot of stitches in the pile. Con – certain threads bring a lot of said pile fluffing out all over the place.

Gold thread on silk velvet. Vaguely book sized (can’t be arsed to go measure it now, it’s downstairs and the computer is on the second floor, ok?) Based on a c16th one from europaische stickeriein, which I’ve probably spelled wrong.

This time I was looking at his portrait of a young girl, and started thinking about the necklace. So I went to see my mum and scrounged some stuff.

You see, first I should confess that I never really think of beaded jewelery as “proper” jewelery – not becuase I do silversmithing, but because when I was about ten, my mum gave up her job to become a textile artist (I really should dig out some of her old stuff and post piccies, it was rather good) unfortunately, in the 1980s it was kind of a hard sell – now, with the net, it would be easy enough to find the market for it, but back then you really needed to be in London, and we weren’t.

So mum started supplementing her income with beaded jewelery (this was before the current situation where every badly organised craft fair is made up of a minimum 50% jewelery, most of it bought in). A lot of the stuff she sold was made by me as a way  earning my pocket money, or rather making up the huge deficit of my numerous pocket money advances.

Hence, becuase my earliest earnings came from making beaded jewelery, I kind of struggle to be impressed by it, or see it as an actual skill, cos, well, actually a ten year old could do that, and did.

This thing started to change my mind a bit, mainly cos it was a complete and utter pain in the backside, and took me a whole day to make. I’m posting two pictures of it because I genuinely can’t decide whether it looks better on the yellow or red background.

actually, the yellow one might be a bit out of focus, sorry.

It’s made from little black seed beads (the kind you don’t thread but just fish for) gold 5mm bugle beads, and 8mm freshwater pearls(I always have pearls in stock), with a quickly made catch of silver wire (I don’t like fiddly modern catches, they’re hard to do up and they tangle in my hair, and it’s easy enough to make a soldered silver one). I don’t know when I’ll actaully get to wear it, maybe Tatton Park? but I think I like it better than the painted version.

What I like best if the way the pearls work against the black, even though it’s a little bit Goth. I must confess to being a bit of a pearl nazi with medieval stuff. Plastic pearls are horrid, they always look plastic and there just isn’t an excuse for something so nasty. I think the excuse that you couldn’t afford real ones doesn’t hold much water – if you can’t afford real pearls(which aren’t actually that expensive), do something that doesn’t involve pearls, its not like there isn’t enough choice. Glass ones are excuseable as long as they’re decent quality (theres plenty of evidence for fake pearls in the medieval period, both glass and concocted from various pastes of nacre, just not plastic) but decent glass pearls are almost the same price as real ones, so you might as well have the real thing.

Tell you what though – I’m not about to start making them to sell.

Three teeny weeny tablet woven book markers, which will hopefully be mounted into the book covered by the goldworked velvet I’m currently plugging away at.

Gareth went a bit David Bailey on me trying to take this pic – he got his tripod out and everything. First we tried it on the worktop – too dark, then we tried it on the three kilo bag of dessicated coconut – too shiny, and eventually we settled on the page of a recipe book for scale.

It’s not particularly impressive tablet weave, but it is tiny. It’s done with 60/2 nm silk, which for those of you who don’t speak weaver, is kind of like sewing cotton in thickness. Normally I use a linen warp with silk, because it grips better and gives a neater edge, but in this case I used silk.

All three were done from the same warp, which I spaced with a piece of card so tat the end of each one could have a little tassel. The patterns are created by turning each band slightly differently. Top is all in the same direction, middle is a variation on the classic rams horn pattern which involves turning the cards in two directions at once, and the oxo one at the bottom is four rotations forward then four back.

I was going to do the third band with a different variation on rams horn, but since each band is about a quarter of an inch wide the subtlety of rams horn is a little lost to the naked eye (you can see it better here because it’s enlarged) so I decided it wasn’t really worth the extra effort. Besides which, the book cover is c16th, and by then they were using the easier patterns anyway – one of the oddities of historical tablet weave is that it actually gets more complex the further back in time you go, like some sort of bizarre reverse evolution.

Now all I have to do is finish the embroidery and  I can send the thing off to be mounted

First filler pattern for the labours. I’ve kept the palette very simple and just used the same orange and blue as I used for the borders of the main panels, plus white and dark brown, as I don’t want the fillers to compete with the main event. Looks very seventies, somehow, I’m sure my mum had a flowery cushion cover in that colourway when I was a kid.

The pattern is based on a c13th floor tile from an English abbey (I forget which one but if anyone’s desperate I’ll look it up), but it’s quite similar to the filler in the life of St Martin antependium held by the Cluny museum in Paris, which is a sister piece to the Reykjahlid antependium – filler patterns do tend to be much of a muchness.

I’ve been working this freehand – starting with the flower and working out, using the length of my left hand index finger to judge the length of each fleur – but I measured it before I began and this should be a nice fit. As I was measuring out filler 2 this morning I pondered upon whether much of the wonkiness in medieval embroidery is down to needlewomen working freehand, specially since many of them were probably just as shortsighted as me (because this project is done at work much of it has been done sans specs), because it’s only human to go a bit skewiff now and then, but when the pattern is simple and repeated it makes no sense to spend hours marking it out