"Mille Fleures"....

 

 

 

Medieval Tapestry Petit-point Update....

I Promised to show you the design for the Tapestry as the kit instructions intend, Dear Readers, and then forgot to take a picture of the packaging showing the two Ladies in the flowery meadow. This is a wonderful kit by Janet Granger, a UK needle artist and miniaturist and I love her kits! That doesn't mean I manage to finish a kit without making a few changes to the design. I hope you will spot the changes I made in the hairstyles for the Ladies, in particular the Lady on the left.

It is difficult to see the new head-dress against the white cloth...

But here the gray threads do stand out well enough to see the shape.

There were a couple of other little changes I wanted to make,

 in particular the left hand Lady's right hand

 disappears into her skirt too much for my liking.

This was easily remedied by adding a couple of stitches in the brown thread....

 creating a slight shadow between the hand and the skirt.

Also a couple of "shadow" stitches in the drape of her skirt

 where it forms the "pocket"... 

she is Not collecting blossoms in her skirt!

And then because I had introduced an extra color into the design pallette 

(the light gray for the head coif)

I decided I should balance it by also adding

 some additional "white" to the background.

If you look carefully you will spot a couple of "test" blossoms in white

 along the Right hand side of the background.

And then I thought if I am adding the white to the background,

 I had better add the blue as well... for balance you understand!

It is really difficult to "test" these ideas while stitching....

They become impossible to "undo" later.

But I liked the effect right away,

 so it was really just about figuring out where

 there was space for all these additional blossoms...!

Which meant completing the background flowers

 that were specified in the chart....

All of these were just the two pink colors

 and only two green colors for the leaves.

Here the skirt on the right is finished

 and I am adding the leaves to the blossoms...

 Here I have added all the greenery that was specified with the design...

I know it looks crowded... 

but there is a lot of extra space... 

and this style of background is known as

 "Mille Fleures" or a Thousand Flowers.....

Surely there is a need for more blossoms in other colors!

And it only took me a short while to decide that

 the greenery for the new blossoms

 needed to be in different colors as well....

If you look closely in the above picture you will see

 a "spring" green for the leaves on those white "daisies" 

I have sprinkled into the design.

And before I went too far with the "daisies"....

 I needed to add the "bluebells" as well...

And they needed their own green as well...

Because they needed to stand apart from the other greenery

 where they stood next to each other

 (no social distancing in this meadow!)

Yes, I was getting carried away by details!

And all this while I am desperately hoping, Dear Readers, 

that I have chosen good colors and not messed up the entire project!

These are the threads for the kit... 

along with the "extras" I have tucked into the selection.

On the very left are the mint green and the white...

The second green, a very "emerald" hue is beside the dark olive green

 and way on the right is the pale gray for the head-dresses.

But it will be impossible to tell the results 

until I get the background stitching underway.

But first I needed to get all the blossoms added... 

and all the greenery too...

(I did a lot of stitching on my vacation week!)

And Finally it was time to start the background... 

that beautiful midnight blue....

So dark it is almost black... but not!

And at last we can get a sense of the changes I have made...

More flowers in the meadow....

More Medieval look to the headdresses...

I still have a long way to go, 

but I am liking the "Mille Fleures"!

I did a few other things during my vacation week, Dear Readers,

 but I will have to show them on another post.

For now, I have been carried away  

by the Medieval Petit-point Tapestry!

Fall Is In The Air.....

 

 

 A Taste of Halloween....

Not Very long ago, Dear Readers, I bought a bunch of little kits from Robin Betterley Miniatures. Specifically, a whole bunch of her Teeny Weeny Secret Books. They are hollow "books" which pull out and have tiny scenes inside them. Many of them are based on a Holiday Theme, and as we are approaching the Halloween Season, indeed we could even be already In the Halloween Season, I decided to put together one of these tiny projects. You can see above the beginnings of construction. In theory it is very simple and straight forward to make. A box like a drawer slides into a "case" which has the book cover information applied. I only made a half dozen mistakes in the initial assembly. Clearly I wasn't paying attention to which side of what went with what side of whatever! Eventually, after some serious un-gluing and doing over, I got it right!

I painted it a burnt sienna color

 and then applied the decorative printed papers.

First the cover art.

 

 And then the interior art.

This angle shows the left hand side...

And then the right hand side.

Please ignore the lumber "scrap yard" in the back-ground!

The kit comes with all the little "twiddley bits" to make the interior scene...

 including a cutout of a Witch's silhouette.

But I thought it needed something more....

So I added an old Crone....

And gave her glitter eyes...

Which do shine in the right light!

I might have gotten a bit carried away... 

I wanted the cauldron to sit on glowing coals....

(More glitter in red and copper.... but so hard to photograph!)

And a crooked stick for stirring the Brew....

And smoke rising from the pot.... 

(My own additions.... not included in the kit.)

Can you see it in this picture?

Or here...?

The brew is green and overflowing 

and has copper glitter mixed in too...

Here I am gluing the Crone in place.

The space is really very small... 

so I had to carve off part of the Kit Witch...

I had to glue her to the back side...

(I am not sure she wants any part of this toxic brew!)

So I still had room for the pumpkins.....

I don't know why...

 but I wanted one of them to still be on the vine...

I had to keep checking to see that it would fit inside the cover....

And see if we can see the glitter...

And with the pumpkins inside too....

It is full to the brim!

I have nothing more to add, Dear Readers,

Except to say that this is a Little Taste of Autumn....

And to wonder what you've got "cooking"?

Stitching....

 

 

And More Stitching....

About the only thing I accomplished this week, Dear Readers, was more stitching on the Medieval Ladies Tapestry. You saw last week that I had changed the headdress of the Lady on the left to look more Medieval. The Middle Ages are considered to be the years between 500 AD and 1500 AD, so there were more than a few centuries of Fashion to consider. But Tapestries as we know them - large woven "pictures" for hanging on the walls - were only begun around 1400AD. That reduces the clothing options quite a bit, but it includes years of very "outlandish" headgear for both men and women. For most of this century women covered their hair unless they were bathing, or unless they were young maidens. As with all things, generalizations are dangerous, but more often than not the women portrayed in Medieval art wore "headdresses" often covered with a "coif" or veil of linen. 

Here is an example of a Medieval illumination 

depicting feasting nobles, dated around 1470.

You can see the variety and elaborate nature of the head coverings.

 

 

All of this is by way of saying I was still not satisfied

 with the "hairstyle" of the Lady on the right, in my Medieval Tapestry.

I was hoping I could "unstitch" some of her hair

 and maybe convert it to a "turban" style.

I spent quite a while trying to undo the hair

 and gave up before I had ruined everything.

I decided instead to just add the "veil" 

and a narrow band around her crown.

Of course, it is nearly impossible to see the pale gray

 of the "veil" against the white unstitched cloth.

It will really only show when I stitch the background.

And then because I was getting carried away 

with inventing details, Dear Readers,

 I wanted to add something to the draped skirt she is holding.

Why would she be holding it thus?

Perhaps she is gathering blossoms?

Of course she is gathering blossoms!

Her Mother (in a more old fashioned headdress)

 is handing her some flowers...

She, young Lady of Modern persuasion and barely covered hair...

 is saying she has enough already...

Her skirt is full!

And to make these dots look like blossoms, 

I had to add the green of the leaves...

First the darker green and then the pale green.

I know, you can barely tell!

But I did want to see how the colors would all look together.

And here I am moving on with the stitching

 the pale highlights on the skirts...

I think it is looking more like I wanted it to.

And that's all I did, Dear Readers....

Stitching and More Stitching!

 

Filling The Gaps.....

 

 Details..... Details.....

I did a lot of Repairing things last weekend, Dear Readers, fixing gaps in the Castle stonework and adding missing stitches to the Medieval Ladies Tapestry. It was one of those satisfying stretches of actually making things come out right after all! Imagine That! I have a tendency when stitching the Petit-point to want to get all of one color in place before adding another one.... this only works on small designs, I am discovering. The trick I am learning is that you can leave one color thread "dangling".... just unthread the needle and let it drape to the side while you "work" for a while with another color. This is much more like painting and easier to fix the missing stitches before you have gone too far. I am learning! As I was fixing the missing brown stitch in the Lady's cuff, I found a missing pink stitch, and one that was supposed to be pink but I had stitched brown.... I know you don't need to hear all of this... but I had to unstitch quite a bit and re-do it. 

Fortunately, I had not gone too far and was able to get the stitches right.

 

And over in the Castle Stables, 

you recall I only had one more "Arch support" to complete... 

but it turned out to have an even wider gap than the back wall!

I don't know how I didn't notice it for all those years!

It needed filling the same way as the previous one...

A long strip of "ceiling" glued in the gap 

and then covered (mostly!) with the "stone" pieces.

You can see the rough edges where the strip didn't glue exactly right.

But this is the "camera's" view... 

I can't get my head this close to actually see it.

 And I also added the missing "stones" 

to the Stable Door surround...

They had to be fitted one at a time.

It is so hard to see back there

and I couldn't measure the gap 

and hold a stone in place at the same time.

And you might have thought, Dear Readers, 

that the Guard Room was already completed...

But once I had "strengthened" the corner post in the Stables....

The corner of the Guard Room looked weak.

So I started to "strengthen" it too...

Here you can see the stronger corner.... 

just needing the grout lines painted.

I thought it looked Great....

Except that the "capital" now was out of balance.... 

and I had never been satisfied with it in the first place.

Here you can see the close-up "before" shot....

(What a mess of miss-matched pieces!)

Here it is "after" the capital has been remedied.

This was a really complicated piece to shape!

I am really pleased with how it turned out!

And on the other wall..... Over the Door to the Great Hall...

There was an arch that hadn't been added yet...

(I didn't get a good "before" picture)

Here the stones are added, 

waiting for the grout lines to be painted.

And the final "stones" over the stable doors....

And even the small side door was finished....

And then I had to paint all the Grout lines....

The Guard Room ceiling arch....

The "strengthened" Corner Post....

(So Satisfying to see...!)

The Dungeons ceiling arch.....

 

Stables left hand side.....

 

Right hand side....

(I even added the door handles!)

 

The back wall.....

I can't tell you how satisfying it is to have this done! 

And as for the Ladies Tapestry, Dear Readers,

I am making changes to the original design.

I wanted the Ladies to look more Medieval....

I know it is hard to see.... but I am adding a 

"coif" to the headdress on the left.

This requires adding a new pale gray thread color,

 because the off white flesh tone needed to stand out against it.

It won't be until I am doing the background color

 that we will be able to tell how it really will look.

But I think it will work!

She already looks much more Medieval to me!

I know I have not shown you the kit design picture....

I'll do that next week....

For now, Dear Readers, 

I am Happy with all these little details.... 

Filling all those Gaps!