Racaire’s wedding cloak project – two embroidered patches from the SCA Shire of Phoenix Glade in Meridies :D

Life tried its best to keep me very busy recently but it’s definitely time again to present another awesome patch for my wedding cloak project to you. But wait… it’s not only one patch – I got two beautiful patches from ‘Inan… 😉

During the last year I received many lovely embroidered patches for my 12th century wedding cloak project by mail and in person. Though our 12th century wedding was delayed by at least one year due to the major heart attack of my husband, I haven’t given up on my 12th century wedding clothing project yet – I just took a short break to deal with the whole situation.

And this short break gave me all the energy I needed to address my embroidery projects and especially my 12th century wedding clothing project again. From my recent postings about the new progress for my 12th century wedding dress you can already tell that I am getting back on top of the situation and also back to crafting. And not only that, it seems like I finally get accustomed to posting in English – well, yes, it just took some years and a lot of practice… 😉

And in order to celebrate my new found energy, I’d love to share the following two great patches with you:

Today I proudly present to you two beautiful hand embroidered patches for my 12th century wedding cloak project by courtesy of ‘Inan, my awesome and very talented mother-in-law.

About the artisan:

• Name: Umm al-Mundhir ‘Inan bint Sufian
• From: Shire of Phoenix Glade / Kingdom of Meridies

And now some details about the artisan and her lovely work:

“My full SCA name is Umm al-Mundhir ‘Inan bint Sufian but I’m known as ‘Inan.

I’m a member of the Shire of Phoenix Glade and a member of the House of Rolling Thunder. I’ve been in the SCA since June 1997 and my main interests are Middle Eastern dance and costuming.

I love to sew and during the past couple of years I’ve begun to increase my embroidery skills and I’m learning to weave.

The patch I chose to do for your wedding cloak patch is a dragon based on one of my tattoos which is a zoomorphic dragon from a piece of Scandinavian pottery.”

Thank you very much ‘Inan! 
…and hearty greetings to the sunny and hot Florida! 

And now we will take a closer look at ‘Inan’s lovely patches – let’s start with the second patch she embroidered for me:

This patch is again a great example of how some simple embroidery techniques and the good combination of colors can make a great embroidery. I really love the blue glass bead contrast for the eye!

…and now let’s get to the first embroidered patch she made and the story behind it:

Though ‘Inan was with good cause very proud of the second patch she embroidered, she wasn’t happy at all about her very first embroidered patch. The dislike even went so far that she thought about destroying it.

But you know me, I don’t give up on embroidery that easily and therefore asked her to give me both patches. After I got the patches, I thought some days about the problem, added some stitches with “gold” thread to the embroidery of the very first patch and voilà:

I think this is a very cute and lovely dragon, isn’t it! And I am very grateful that I found a way to “safe” the embroidery so that ‘Inan can be proud of her work and I can use it for my 12th century wedding cloak. 😀

Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of her embroidery before I made the outlines with the “gold” thread. But I think you can rather easy imagine how the dragon looks without the golden outlines.

When I saw her embroidered patch in real for the very first time, I immediately knew what the problem was – though her execution was lovely and her stitches looked very beautiful, there was not enough contrast for the eye to separate sections and to see a pattern. Without further outlines the body just looked like a mess of black and red stitches.

Well, I encountered this problem before – actually while I was painting my very first tin miniatures about 15 years ago. Regardless how many awesome shades of blue I applied to my dragon – if the difference between the sections is too little to really stand out, the whole dragon just looks boring. Yes, this was a hard lesson but I learned it.

After analyzing the problem I decided to add some outlines in order to restructure the embroidery to make it more pleasing for the eye. Now I just needed to find the right color for the outlines. Working with such dark colors you really need something that stands out – the “je-ne-sais-quoi” as some tend to call it. And nothing is better than gold thread to add that certain something and some extra sparkle… 😉

Well, I wish all solutions in life would be that easy. 😀

I hope you like the new addition to my wedding cloak project – I definitely love it! 😀

PS: You can find more about this wedding cloak project and all the beautiful embroidered patches I got till now here:

• Project category: Patches for my 12th century wedding dress project
• Project details: Racaire’s 12th century wedding dress project
• Patch #1 & #2 from Ireland by Hilkka Susinen
• Patch #3 from Denmark by Else Marie Pederson
• Patch #4 from Canada by Sorcha de Lenche
• Patch #5 from Sweden by Grima in Rauda
• Patch #6 from USA/Florida by Siobhan Love