So one of the things with this SCA stuff is that making things is much less of a hassle than trying to find exactly what you want, and infinitely less expensive. So, I’ve been sewing a lot more. Excellent.
One of the things we needed was some form of heraldry. A couple of tournaments have required it recently, and the Crown Tournament (aka, the tournament to choose the next king & queen) this weekend has asked for it as well. Last time, we borrowed from a friend… and while it looked lovely, it’s not really OUR heraldry.
So Nick & I spent three evenings working on our new banner. He designed, I added input, we both cut, pieced things together, and I sewed. And sewed. And made my poor sewing machine cry a little. And sewed more. In the middle of it, I also made a new jorvik hood, which I realized later that I made differently from my last one… oh well. It’ll do, I mostly just wear it if it rains anyway.
Anyway, so banners are a little odd for our personas, which is 9th-10th century norse/viking… since banners weren’t in popular use until 12th century or so. But, they are pretty, and a little heraldry never hurt anyone, and there is at least ONE known Viking banner, the Raven Banner. It has an odd shape, triangular (or a long, thin half circle) with little streamer things coming off the side. Okay then.
So here’s our version:
Eventually, we’ll have the “flagpole” be a spear, so it looks prettier than a plain dowel (and will have a nice sharp point so we can stick it in the ground.)
Anyway, the construction: It’s doublesided, and the symbol painted on the front will eventually be on the back as well, we just ran out of time and that sort of detailed painting on fabric is bloody annoying. The streamers are all little folded over sleeves, then sewn into the seam of the triangle. Each of the banner loops are also sewn into the seam, and you can see why my sewing machine was shrieking in pain by the time we were done — this is all medium-weight canvas, although thankfully not treated canvas. At a few points, I was sewing through 8-10 layers of canvas… very, very slowly. Ugh.
The design is a triskele, traced onto the fabric with carbon paper, then painted with fabric paint. I’m pretty happy with the result. We have a banner!
And so, tonight we’re off to Crown. What do you think, shall I be Queen?
If you can find butcher paper (aka freezer paper in the states) it can be used as a poor man’s silk screen for the fabric painting. If you’re interested I can find the how-to video on craftster.
We thought about making a stencil, but because of lots of “disconnected” pieces, it would have just been a bunch of gaps… :D So, tracing the design was required.