Toy horse

I made this horse puppet for my son because he loves a soft toys. He has his the most beloved rat from Ikea but unfortunatelly it's modern toy not suitable for our medieval reenactment activites.
The shape of horse body is based on clay horses found in a Carmelite friary in Esslingen, Germany and Toy horse from Nuernberg/Nuremburg. In my research I used fabulous web base made by Karen Larsdatter.
The horse is made from strong but light weight unblanched linen, stuffed by linen thread and embroidery decorated. To make a horse mane I used couched stitch-main thread is hemp and couching thread is linen.
Of course the horse is not finished jet, I must decided how to make a tail and other decorations.

2008.12.21
I made a tail-it's a simple tassel. My son loves this horse.

Progress on a cushion

I started with second color. So now my eagles are laying down on a green grass. I saw bright green cushions painted by medieval artist in a manuscript from BNF (it was "Biblie Historiale" from beginning of 15th century, sygnature Français 3) and I decided to use so vivid colour of thread.

More examples of the cushions from this book you can see on the web page http://mandragore.bnf.fr/html/accueil.html (choose "Recherche" from menu and type sygnature "Français 3" in Manuscrits "Cote" window).

I finished!

I bought a pair of brass buckles made by Nina so now my garters are finished!

Last two weekends I spent in Bern as a guest of Company of Saynte George. It was magical time with a new and old friends. We participated in a huge exposition about Charles the Bold organized by Historical Museum of Berne (see this web page).

Tubular tablet-woven braids

At last I try to make some tubular woven braids using technique described in "Textiles and clothing 1150-1450" on page 135. My braids was worked on 3 four-hole tablets, threaded all in a S-way and turned one turn forwards after each passage of the weft. The weft was passed always through the same side.
First time I used one colour threads ( red, madder dyed), second time I combined indigo blue and reseda yellow silk threads.

a pair of silk garters

The garters are 60 cm long and 1.6 cm wide. I made them using silk thread, madder dyeing. Weaving technique simulated striped damask.
They need just two nice buckles :)

tiny clothes

During a last two weeks I researched iconography looking for late medieval children clothes, especially linen tunics or shirts. I decided to reconstruct two types of them - simple, classic shape tunic and shirt with open front and short sleeves.

shopping...

A month ago I ordered natural dyed silk threads and they arrived last week. Colours are amazing-yellow, orange and green silk are unbelieveble bright!

medieval bread?

I bought this bread in Turkish shop. It's amazing, but the shape of this bread is still the same as in medieval times. This is white, wheat flour bread with yeast added (as a starter). I found very interesting recipe here: http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/recipes/MEbread.htm
After comparing (I'm not sure) I suppose that recipe is almost unchanged :)

Leather purse from Vienna

Unfortunately, the original I know only from black and white foto with not so detailed records.
Thanks to Isis and Machteld I knew how to fix small coin purse to body. I used chain seam described in theirs blog as a "lussenvlechten" or “embroidered braids”. All leather laces are still unfinished- I must buy swiss glass beads and sewn them in grape-like form at the end of each lace.

Classic linen pillow cover

It's not so bad-I finished linen pillow cover. It's laced only one side.
I weaved linen ribbon lace using tablet weaving technique, made holes using the awl ( I left them unfinished) and pull lace through textile.
This pillow is quite simply but finishing works took me a while. Now time is the precious thing for me. My little son is unbelievably absorbing person :)

Works still in progress...

First unfinished thing is embroidered cushion cover.
Second is reconstruction of small 15th century purse from Germany with silk decorating seam and strings finished with glass (?) beads.

First step (fly) of my eagle

Here is my own version of the printed eagle from a post below. The composition of whole patern is based on traditional Bizantine textiles with eagles, lions, gryphons and other mithological animals and creatures in circles.

New month-new idea

I saw this example of medieval printed textile and... I fell in love! I must try to adapt those stamped/printed eagles to embroidered ones. They have extremely modern form, just like trademarks today.
So it will be another cushion...

Looking for linen cloth...

I spent a lot of time looking for linen cloth with classic pattern known from late medieval german illustrations. I found one, produced here in Austria by company named Gollner. This is a traditional kitchen towel, 60x60 cm, big enough to made a pillow cover by sewing up two towels together.

Small experiment in kitchen-medieval tart

Pogoda za oknem nie moze sie zdecydowac-raz jesien, raz wiosna wiec siedze sobie w domku i studiuje ksiazki kucharskie. Tak sie sklada, ze mam od pewnego czasu "melodie" na tarty. Idac wiec za ciosem stwierdzilam, ze moznaby bylo poeksperymentowac z paroma orginalnymi przepisami na tarty.
Pierwszy raz zabralam sie za robienie "tarty z wieczkiem". Od strony technicznej wyglada to tak, ze zaczynamy od podpieczenia najpierw miseczki z ciasta tzw. "coffin" (urocze slowko) a pozniej wypelnienia jej nadzieniem, przykrycia wieczkiem z surowego ciasta i ponownego podpieczenia. Przy tej technice wypieku wazne jest odpowiednie nasaczenie nadzienia-w pierwszej tarcie bylo to jajko, w drugiej mieszanka wina i bulionu. Baza dla obu nadzien bylo mieso-gotowana szynka oraz gotowany kurczak i swinski tluszcz. Przyprawy to juz standartowo dla kuchni sredniowiecznej: kubeba, kwiat muszkatolowy (ang.: mace), imbir oraz gozdziki.

My experiment-first tart (pork, chicken and fruit tart) based on this recipe: http://www.godecookery.com/mtrans/mtrans39.htm
Second is inspired by:
http://www.godecookery.com/mtrans/mtrans24.htm

Late medieval cushion project-part 2

... and after a month I finished embroidery!
Now, I must find a fine red woolen cloth for back section of cushion, sew it up together with embroidered panel and finish stitches using tablet-weaving technique.