Details.....

 

And More Details....

Sometimes, Dear Readers, I am struck by what a Magnificent Structure this Castle is becoming! And in those infrequent moments, my resolve to just Keep on Keeping on is fortified and the missing inspiration is awakened anew! What has taken me so long...? This is the ever present nagging voice in my life... but I know these things take Time, and lots of it, for those pesky details to emerge from the confusing mists of "what if I tried this...?" and "maybe this would be best..." or "What was I thinking..." or "How could I have forgotten that..."?. Clarity is sometimes a rare treat. And thus I will tell you that the Grand Lower Windows of the Castle Great Hall have always been as clear as a bell in my mind! The story is that they were "added" to the original Ancient fortress along with the fireplaces sometime long after the original structure was built. They are large and have opening glass sections at the bottoms. But true to typical castle construction, they are "plainer" then the higher up windows. The arch at the top is just plain without the saw toothed decoration and the central pillar is plain with out the barley twist carving. The only extra decorative element is the capitals on those pillars. And of course, they ware not so easy to make!

 

But first, we have to build the arches. 

Again I am using that scrap of luan plywood. 

It has a smoother grain and denser filler than

 modern plywoods of similar thickness.

 Then they need the required painting...

 

Primer, the base coat of gray and the "stone" texturing.

 

 And here they are propped in position, awaiting the glue. 

But we are still missing one important detail!

 

Did you notice there is no "Capital" on that central pillar?

 

Like this! 

(The one on the left)

Can you see the difference it makes?

 

I neglected to take pictures of the making of the capital. 

By itself the stock wood was not thick enough at the base, 

so I needed to pad it to make it thicker. 

And it needed to taper in from top to bottom.

I know it is impossible to tell from this picture!

 

 Here you can see both with the capitals. 

It makes the windows grand, elegant, but not fussy. 

 

It always amazes me how much difference

 the glazed windows make in a building!

And eventually the entire facade will

 have the "rocks" painted too. 

 

 But that is not all I worked at this week, Dear Readers. 

The Medieval Lord Tapestry had it's share 

of pesky details to sort out as well!

I left you last week with the Horse just getting his legs....

 

I was trying to get the main outlines of 

the horse's body stitched, so I could be sure

 of his placement and angle of stance. 

This was so that I could design the saddle. 

My original sketch was inadequate in several ways.

 It omitted the stirrup, and didn't allow for the

 "roundness" of the horse's girth around the belly. 

There was really not quite enough space 

for everything to look right and be distinct 

when stitched at this thread count. 

 

And there was the question of what colors

 the saddle should be.... most leather saddles

 are brown of one shade or another. 

And while the tapestries proved that saddles 

also came in brilliant shades of red or reddish-brown, 

that was way too similar to the horse's color.

 

While pondering these issues I decided

 to get the horse as finished as possible, 

the better to judge colors and positions.

 

I had chosen a dark maroon red for the horse's reins... 

the ones that steer the horse, not the decorative

 flashy ones of the "caparison" ...

 they are the ones the Lord is holding.

 I decided to make the stirrup leathers the same color

 and stitched the metal stirrup and the leather first,

 since they will be "in front of" the rest of the saddle. 

Fitting the saddle girth behind them was really tricky.

 But this also needed to be done before

stitching the rest of the saddle. 

I made a start on the saddle, in back next to the horse's head,

 but the color was too similar to the rest of the brown horse. 

I ended up unstitching that bit and starting again 

with the grays I used for the hooves.

This shows the saddle "removed" (ie unstitched)....

 

 

And the re-drawn chart... 

also the "extra bit" of the horse's hind end

 that would not fit on the Tapestry...

 

 

Here the new saddle color is started... 

way up there at the horse's withers (beside his head)... 

but it was getting late and dark... 

I needed to be stitching in the daylight to judge the colors.

 

 

Here I have decided that I need the clarity 

of the Tapestry edges to work within 

so I ran a line of sewing thread around the stitching area.

 

 

I have begun the saddle stitching... 

I decided the gray colors worked well enough... 

but I am not happy with the shape of the saddle. 

 

 

 Having unstitched and re-stitched the saddle a couple of times... 

I realized I was not going to be able to make it look "right",

 but this was probably good enough.

 The saddle is not supposed to be the focal point at all.

 It needs to just be there in the background, 

recognizable as a saddle whether or not it is accurate in details!

 Once the background is finished, the Lord 

and the Horse himself should be the focus.

 

 So I concentrated on finishing the horse himself.... 

including the complicated decision of whether or not

 to include his left back hoof.... 

the one that sticks back into the tapestry fragment at the bottom right..

 I decided he would be happier with the hoof than without! 

It gives him balance.

 

Well, Dear Readers, I don't know about you, 

but for Me, all those little details

 make such a difference.

 Details matter a lot!

 

Chipping Away.....

 

Looking Good So Far.....

In the History of Castle design, Dear Readers, it is important to remember that these buildings were meant to be defensive structures. Comfort was not a part of the plan, but survival was the essence. In this light, decoration of any kind was superfluous. It was only later, as the world became more settled, that decorative elements were added and lifestyles became more comfortable. Windows initially had no glass and were very narrow openings so soldiers could defend them easier. It is only later that glass became available and larger windows let in light. Along with this development came an increasing use of carved stone decoration on windows, doors and fireplaces (themselves a late invention!). For my Castle Dollhouse, I have compromised accurate historical rendering in favor of anachronistic decoration in many parts, chiefly, the painted ceilings and the windows. But still, I am trying to preserve an "Early Medieval sensibility" to the project as a whole, especially the exterior facade. This is not meant to be a nineteenth century Romantic Gothic castle, but a good old Norman Keep! And one of the earliest window decoration treatments used was a "saw-toothed" arch over the window. It is the signature motif (if there is one!) for this Castle. I have used it over the Great Hall Doors, The Main Entrance, and the Great Hall windows (facing the back wall). So it was always clear to me that the clerestory windows on the front of the Great Hall had to have the saw-toothed design. Of course, it is not easy to make! You can see in the above picture, the basic arch shape I cut from the 7/32nd inch thick scrap of luan plywood I have saved for years.

 

Here you can see I have begun cutting the sawtooth design. 

It is tricky because it is not cut all the way

 through to the back of the arch, 

but "straddles" the front curve of the arch.. 

It is tricky to hold, impossible to measure

 and I simply have to "wing it" 

with my razor saw and exacto blade. 

 

Because you are cutting across the grain of this plywood,

 it is very easy to cause a "chip" of the saw-tooth" point to chip off,

 necessitating an elaborate reconstruction...

 which you can sort of see under way in the above picture. 

The clothespin is holding the tiny scrap in place while the glue dries.

 

Here you ca see the glued on fragment 

before I carefully trimmed it to shape... 

which I forgot to take a picture of.

 

Here you can see the notches completed on the first window!

 

And window by window I got the notches cut. 

I had to take breaks to rest my hand... 

the angle of holding the piece was hard to maintain.

 

Here you can see the four arches have been notched

 and just have to be painted...

 

Which required primer....

 

 

Then the first coat of gray paint... 

the light is giving you a real look at the saw-tooth effect!

And then the darker gray stone shading effects....

 

And... Ta da.....!! 

in position on the windows!

They have not yet been glued in place,

but, Wow, what a difference they make! 

 

And as for the Tapestry, Dear Readers, 

I have chipped away a bit at the design!

 

I wanted to see how the shading of the three

 brown threads would work on the horse's legs... 

so I worked on them next.

 So far, I think they are looking good.

 But I really needed to work out the rest of the 

chart for the Horse's position and saddle. 

Remember, I am using every square inch

 of the cloth that I can, but I have to leave 

about 1/4 inch on either side for hemming the tapestry.

 

 

So I spent a few hours refining the position 

and researching the actual structure 

of saddles in the fourteenth century! 

My go-to source is a hard-cover copy of

 "Medieval Life and Leisure in the 

Devonshire Hunting Tapestries" by Linda Wooley.

It is an incredibly sumptuous book! 

 

 

Mostly the "Lords" are in the saddle making it hard to see...

 but there are a couple of places where you can see the saddle... 

from the back on the horse way to the left at the edge of the tapestry... 

and you can get glimpses of the pommel 

with the two Lords on the horses at the front...

 and their girths and stirrups...

 

 

And you can see some of the saddle

 under the small guy at the right...

 probably a groom holding the extra horse.

 

And a look at another empty saddle on the horse at the left.... 

showing a very uncomfortable looking wooden structure!

 But perhaps this one was intended 

to carry home the quarry.

 (This is the Bear and Boar Tapestry).

 

At any rate, I have begun to stitch the

 rear end and rear legs of the Horse.

 All of him will not fit within the cloth...

 but this is why I claim these pieces I have stitched

 are only fragments of a larger Tapestry.

Who knows, I might just have to keep designing

 this "Mystery" missing Tapestry!

 

I still have a long way to go, Dear Readers, 

but I have been chipping away at these projects

 and so Far, I think they are Looking Pretty Good!
 

 

Precious Little....

 

Progress....

It Is That time of year, Dear Readers, in this part of the World, Garden season has begun! As a result, I have spent most of my energy outside this week, tidying up after our arduous Winter season. It is so wonderful to be able to spend time outside again.... all the new growth bursting from the ground and transforming the world minute by minute. My forsythia are in full bloom... the crocus have called it quits and the daffodils are beginning to shine. Everywhere green is emerging from the dead brown earth. We have spent this week with a "heat wave" with temperatures in the 80's every day which is not at all usual for this time of year. I am hoping it will cool down to normal... which would be the 50's instead. Meanwhile, the Ambitious project called "The Castle" has seen a very small amount of work accomplished on those Glorious Great Hall Windows. Above you can see the morning sun pointing my attention to my current task.... get those window frames completed! I spent hours on one afternoon carefully cutting eight little pieces of wood for the "capitals" at the top of each of the window frame pieces for the upper windows. The pieces needed to be as identical in size as I could manage with my hand saws, and they needed to just cover the top of the side frame bar and extend just far enough into the  window area to create the correct starting point for the window arch pieces which will top each window. Believe me, this was actually quite complicated! And then I needed to trim the thickness of each piece because my 1/4 inch stock is too thick by about 1/32 of an inch! (This matters!) But I did it! Another hour spent carefully shaving a layer off the back side of each "capital". Then painting the edges and gluing in place.

 

Here you can sort of see (in the too dark picture) 

the capitals on the two windows at the left have been added, 

and the two on the right have not.

 

Here all eight of the carefully fitted capitals are in place! 

So much work for such a small piece of the trim! 

But it really matters to get it right!

 

Here I am testing the "pattern" for the window top arch pieces. 

Now that the capitals are in place I can figure out

 exactly how the arch will fit and see if

 one pattern can work for all the windows. 

Ideally the answer is yes... 

and so far it looks like it might work!

 

And as for the other project I worked on this week, Dear Readers,

  the Tapestry stitching got a little attention too! 

I left you with my beginnings of the horse's harness... 

but on further examination of my design 

I noted some flaws in my chart pattern. 

The shoulder harness piece 

(I don't know what it was called in Medieval times) 

should not look the same on both sides 

because the horse is slightly turned to the side.

I had charted a straight slant to the piece, 

while it needed to curve gradually... 

 

Here you can see the original colored design

 on the right has been erased...

 I have penciled in the outline for the new pattern,

 but not yet colored the new design.

 

Here the new design has been colored. 

This graph paper has ten squares to the inch 

so the design is fairly picky to color correctly, 

but the chart is nearly twice as large as the actual stitching....

 

Here you can see what I mean.... 

the stitching ends up much smaller than the chart.... 

but in order to make the chart and read the chart, 

it needs to be at least this large.

 

Here you can see I have stitched more of the harness

 and started the outline of the legs.

 

Here I have made a little progress on the legs... 

outlining with some of the color variance.

The lifted foreleg will be the lighter shade of brown

 to highlight it and "bring it forward" visually... 

when I get it stitched!

 

 I also decided I needed to get the hooves in play

in order to be sure my proportions were looking right when stitched.

 

Here you can see a little more done on the hooves

 and the darker shades on the lower leg. 

And that is all I got done this week. 

 

So you can see, Dear Readers, 

precious little got done in my big projects. 

But it's all Little, and it's all Precious, 

and it's all good Progress! 

Progress...

 

New And Old...

As I Mentioned in the past few posts, Dear Readers, I felt a strong urge to move to the larger long-term projects in my Mini Worlds, but not before creating a "solid" roof for The Wonderhouse Kit. You can see in the above picture, the framework of this kit's ceiling. There is no covering supplied with the kit, it is all open to the air and (in my opinion) at serious risk for disaster in the form of dust and cat hair if nothing else! (My cat's name is even "Dusty" because he likes to spend time in those hidden corners that collect so much dust....) I was determined to finish covering this roof before I moved on to the Larger projects. The first step was the need to build a framework to cross the open space at the front of the shop part of the kit. (The "Studio" section has that nice solid framework as part of the kit.) The dimensions were easily matched with my stock wood pieces. The smaller inner framing was trickier to make. I "raided" the wood from the kit "boards" cutting a narrow piece of the leftover board to make the square inner window frame. It needed to be patched together from several pieces, but did not need to be too structurally durable.

 

 Here you can see the Studio end already has the

 framework in place as part of the kit... 

all I did was add a carefully cut piece of the

 plastic I used for all the windows.

 (There will be a top piece of framing to seal the joint.)

 

Here you can see the framing pieces 

I used from the kit "boards" cut to size.

 

And getting the required several coats of paint!

 

Here the new framework is mostly all glued in place, 

only lacking the inner wooden framework 

along the right end by the wall rack.

 

For the outer framework I decided to simply

 cut cardboard and paint it the dark brown. 

This was the method I used on the other windows

 that needed additional framework...

 in particular the opening ones on 

the front by the studio area. 

The plastic "window" has also been cut

 to fit for the area over the Shop.

 

Here you can see both the cardboard frames are cut to fit. 

Then they needed to be painted brown.... several layers! 

And then all the "windows" needed to be

 glued securely to the roof openings.

 

Here you can see the Kit from the top

 with the new enclosing roof to keep

 everything inside free of dust! 

(While I dash off to tend to other projects!)

 

And just to  prove I am not avoiding 

the Castle Great Hall Window framing.... 

I have made some small progress

 on the Major Lower Windows.

 

The frames for the "Grand Windows" in the lower portion

 of The Great Hall, are in fact,the Signature piece 

of decoration for the front facade of The Castle! 

Castles tended to not have many windows. 

Only the sheltered side of the castle had large-ish windows

 and these are probably a bit anachronistic

 in their grand structure. 

But perhaps the Lords of the Castle did some renovations

 and added these Great Elegant windows with the opening panes!

 At any rate, the structure, by tradition is less ornate on the lower levels. 

So the central column between the panes is only a simple rounded column. 

Nevertheless, I needed to carefully "clean up"

 the construction irregularities of these windows 

by aligning all the frame pieces as identically as possible. 

This took several days of measuring, cutting, fitting,

 testing the window opening function, trimming, painting

 and sometimes starting all over... for every piece! 

It doesn't look like much and still has a ways to go... but it is Progress!

 

This is a (much too dark) in progress picture 

of the elaborate "gluing clamps" needed to attach the side framing. 

None of my real clamps could reach far enough. 

(There is a bag of wood spools weighting those prop sticks!)

 

But the Real progress, Dear Readers has been in my stitching projects!

 

Do you even remember the Medieval Lord Tapestry

 I had started to stitch back in ....2024? 

I had reached a certain point in the altered design 

I had laid out for myself before the Tiny Medieval Tapestry Cushions

 took over my stitching time and attention.

 Since they have been completed (for now) 

I find myself wanting to complete this other piece

 of Medieval Tapestry that I consider a "fragment" 

of the tapestry that I have already stitched two other pieces of. 

The original kit was designed by Janet Granger, 

but I felt it was too "Tudor" in its costume design 

and I wanted fourteenth century not fifteenth century style. 

 

 Here is a reminder of the original chart design.

 So I had redesigned the costume and also decided

 to use more of the mesh and end up with a larger tapestry section. 

But it also needed to have the design made by me. 

That means charting the pattern... and that requires a lot of focus!

 In the previous stitching picture you can see

 the "Lord" is only partly done. Believe it or not, 

I stitched the legs just the other day but forgot to take a "before" picture. 

I tried to find one in my collection.... but didn't find a satisfactory one. 

The next stitching I did was the elaborate sleeve... 

all of this needed to be adjusted as I went, 

because the colored pencils I use for my chart

 are not easy to tell apart....

 

But I think it is looking okay.... 

at least the way I hoped it would. 

 

And once I had the main part of the Lord's clothes completed.... 

including the small boots to which I decided to add

 a pair of silver spurs (using silver metallic threads!) 

it became necessary to work out the details of the rest of the design. 

I had planned to add a horse for the Lord, 

or at least part of a horse to stand behind him... 

the horse was already roughly sketched

 into the chart I had made in 2024. 

But it needed to be actually charted so 

I could begin to stitch with confidence in my plan.

 

I spent hours refining the design and attempting

  to get the "colors" worked into the chart. 

A Dear Reader had suggested a long time ago

 that the horse could be white...

 but I was not leaning in that direction. 

You must remember the background color for 

these tapestries is a very dark navy blue. 

Any very dark brown would disappear 

into the background. 

But I did not want the horse to entirely "steal the show" 

from the Lord in his golden raiment! 

The color would need to stand out from the dark blue, 

but "recede" from the foreground. In short, it needed to be brown. 

But not the same browns already in use for the Tapestry. 

So I dug out my threads to see what I had

 in "coordinating shades"... because you need

 at least three shades of a color to imply three dimensions.... 

the base color, the shadowed tone, and the high-lit tone. 

My colored pencils were going to be useless

 for charting the brown shades. 

But at least I could get the Horse on the cloth

 by starting with stitching the harness... 

at a certain point you just have to start somewhere!

 

I began with the harness... the elaborate bridle and reins..... 

then the eyes... the point at which the picture comes alive! 

And I just am stitching the brown shades by

 feel and instinct..... there are four shades of brown in play.

 

Here the horse is showing all four browns in action.... 

can you tell them apart...??

 

And because I needed to see if the silver threads 

would work on the harness too... 

I went ahead and stitched them as well...

 

Of course, now I can't wait to get to the background stitching too.... 

to see how that will play with the colors....

 but that will take some time! 

Gosh, it feels great to be back in the "Middle Ages" again!

 

So you can see, Dear Readers,

 I am making Progress! 

Even though it is mostly on 

Very Old Projects!