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).