White 14th century XL hood for a friends Pelican elevation – embroidery .3 – how I created the embroidered knight belt patches .2

Yesterday I showed you my first work steps concerning the embroidered knight belt patches for the 14th century hood for my friends Pelican elevation at the Meridian Grand Tournament.

And today I was quite busy again and therefore already have the second posting ready for you, which is showing the next steps of the creation process for the embroidered knight belt patches.

And now let’s take a look at the next work steps or how I added a little bit more “3D effect” to the otherwise rather flat appliquéd knight belts – enjoy! 😀 [emember_protected not_for=3-4 do_not_show_restricted_msg=1]

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You might remember the picture above – it was already part of yesterdays posting.
The picture shows how I carefully added the very first stuffing in between the two layers of the appliqué work piece – the cotton fabric at the bottom and the wool fabric on top. The stuffing added a little bit more “body” to the belt end before I finished the line of surface couching embroidery above the belt end.

After properly finishing the ends of the threads of the line of surface couching embroidery at the backside, I used a long and fine pair of tweezers to stuff the “inside ring” of the belt appliqué with more stuffing material:

…and here a picture from a slightly different angle to give you a better impression of the actual stuffing:

Btw. the amount of stuffing looks actually like much more at this pictures than it will later on – this is based on the fact that I actually “fluffed up” the staffing by pulling it apart before I added it to the inside. This way I was able to loosen up the stiffer parts of the stuffing and to get rid of this small and stiff ball like parts inside it.

This process also gave me a more even filling and a better control of how much I added to the inside. The control of the amount of filling is quite easy during this step as you can already feel the differences by just sliding your finger with a little bit of pressure over the appliqué surface. Wherever your finger sinks in too much and you fill a kind of gap, you can add more stuffing until the whole filling appears even (or as even as possible) at all parts.

I wish I could give you the brand of this stuffing but as I just used some of the white stuffing material which I already had at home and don’t think that it is part of the original stuffing which was sold in the bag where I got it from, I am not able to answer this question.

However, I still have a short advice for you – something I did before I started using this stuffing. Whenever you get a new stuffing material with which you have never worked before, take a little bit of your (new) stuffing, make it wet and roll it for a short time in between your fingers. If it starts to get compact and/or even starts felting, you might consider to abstain from using it unless you are sure that you will never wash or expose this piece to water/rain/liquids!

Nothing has a greater ability to ruin a lovely embroidery like the effects of a bleeding fabric/thread or bulky and uneven stuffing! Though I sometimes take a chance with my fabrics and threads because I really want to use them – even after pre-washing the fabrics for several times with vinegar – a ruined and uneven stuffing can be easily avoided by just testing the stuffing material beforehand.

Btw. talking about bleeding fabric… The yellow silk of my husbands blue 12th century wedding tunic bled to the white tunic underneath – yes, that’s what you get when you allow your sweetheart to take his new tunic out to a rainy event. However, after several tries to get the yellow color out of the white linen, we decided to simply dye the whole under tunic yellow. I simply count it as “shit happens” and am thinking about making me a new underdress which I will dye yellow with his under tunic… Yeah, let’s just count this as “shit happens” and learn from it… But that’s a complete new project and adventure I haven’t started yet… 😉

And now let’s get back to the embroidered knight belt again:

In order to pin the inside of the appliqué patch to the cotton fabric, I had to flatten the stuffing again. Btw. the stuffing at the picture above actually resembles its final appearance. As you can also see on the picture above, I carefully applied some pressure to the top of the appliqué patch along its inside border and set a pin after another as close as possible to my thumb until I had the whole inside border pinned down:

As soon as I had everything pinned down, I could start with the appliqué border embellishment along the inner line of the knight belt:

For this next step I just took the silver thread and the purple wool thread and with a suitable needle I pulled the ends of both threads to the backside of the patch. Then I threaded a new purple sewing thread, attached it to the backside and properly sewed the ends of the silver and the wool thread to the backside for a proper backside as well as a well secured thread.

And then I started creating the two colored embellishment along the inner line of the knight belt:

I hope you also enjoyed the second posting about the process of how I created the embroidered knight belt patches. I still have some more pictures left which show how I made the embroidered belt buckle and I will try to post them as soon as possible. ?