Monday, December 18, 2017

Husbeasts favor, an experiment in hair work.

"Many an ensign of red, blue, and white, many a veil
and many a sleeve 
were bestowed as tokens of love"
- Romances of Chretin de Troys,
Erec et Enid


The SCA has the delightful habit of adopting some of the more grand romantic gestures from times past into the society and making them part of our own particular culture. To my mind, one of the best of these is fighters carrying favors onto the field, typically these favors will have been made for them by their romantic partner, although not always (one of my friends has carried a favor made by a child of marker on napkin onto the lists with great pride). This practice is rooted in the tournament tradition where a lady would give her "favor" to knight on the field, and as a visible sign of her  support, she would give him an object to carry onto the field, one of her detachable sleeves, a scarf, a ribbon, could be tied around their arm, a handkerchief or similar small object could be tucked into the armor over the heart as a more private token.
A knight receives a token from a lady
Manesse Codex
The earliest mention of this seems to have been sometime in the 12th century, although the practice became more popular later, it still wasn't by any means as universal as the idea of it became when it captured the imagination of the victorians.  In fact, it's reasonably difficult to separate the fact from the fiction in this instance. Very likely it was done in real life as well as period fiction, but exactly how, and what (aside from detachable sleeves) was given is somewhat unclear.

 For SCA purposes usually a belt favor or a scarf is given as a token to the fighter you support, whether just for that day, or in a long term relationship. Belt favors can also be used to show household and other allegiances. My children, for instance, each wear a belt favor with household arms, and their animal badge on them as ID tags: so if they get lost they can be returned to sender.

For my husband's favor, I wanted to make him something really special as a token of my affection. A way of taking my love with him into the lists, even though I frequently can't be there when he fights to cheer him on. I decided on a scarf, since he doesn't always wear a belt, and I made a design with my personal heraldry: a mouse, and my favorite flower: a rose. Many of the favors I've seen are linen, but I wanted to make this super fancy, but still sturdy, so I chose a tightly woven, plain weave shot silk in blue/green. My own arms that are on their way to being registered are green, and his are blue, so that seemed appropriate (not to mention my enduring love of iridescent silks. They were much loved in his persona's period too).

With the design down, I had to decide on materials. I had read an interesting throwaway reference in my wonderful book "Elizabethan Stitches" referencing Elizabethan's couching down all sorts of things to prettify embroidery design, human hair, feathers, anything pretty, and had been super excited. I've had a great interest in fiber arts using human hair for a long time, I enjoy the symbolism of it, and I think that as a love token it's particularly meaningful. I was super excited to find that it was a period thing, not just something thought up by the victorians, and decided to do the mouse, my personal symbol (based off a nickname the husbeast gave me long ago and far away) in my own hair. Since that is a couched technique,  Idecided to make this piece a couching sampler. I had seen stems in another piece, part of a glove, worked in gilded leather couched with gold, so I decided to do that for the woody rose stems. Likewise I had seen floral elements on extent gloves filled with sort of squiggled couched threads, I chose to do that in silk for the floral elements of the design.

I used my fancy new white permanent transfer paper on this project and it worked GREAT. I really suggest it for working on dark materials.  it doesn't smudge, and it's easy to work with. I bought it for the gloves of doom, and was trialing it here.

First I cut the stem portion from the gilded leather, and couched it down, then I couched a thread along each side of it to outline it. The extant piece I had seen was likely worked over in ladder stitch, which I did not do here, because  I didn't think I could control the curve of the leather as well. I will try that another time. I tried outlining the leaves with couching, since my original intent was to use nothing but couching on the whole piece, but it was so clunky, I tore it out and went to stem stitched outlines for the leaves, which were much more pleasing. I continued to stem stitch the outlines for the rest of the piece.

 With the outlines set,  I began to fill, using three strands of floss stitched down with a single strand of the same floss. Because the area was small, and because I wanted it to be snag proof, I worked the fill on a very small scale, very tightly stitched, and very small turns in the thread. Techniques like this would have been popular in period (and indeed are still popular with me!) because they would have used the expensive silk to the best advantage: hardly any of it is wasted on the back of the work.
 with the leaves filled I went onto the flower, outlined in stem stitch, and decided on some shading to highlight the petals. I drew on the shaded areas with white colored pencil, and filled them in with couching in pink silk, being careful to leave edges that I could fill in against easily with the darker color.
Then onto the dark fill, still working in the same manner. I started and finished the couched threads by pulling them through the work to the backside with a large needle and then running them through some of the stitch loops on the back, avoiding any large knots I might have to try and stitch through/around. I started and finished the couching threads with small sewing knots. The scale of the work is still very small. The silk fill was a little faster to work than opus anglicanum/split stitch, and MUCH more thread saving. I worked the dark fill of each rose petal in an evening's worth of embroidering.
 With the rose finished, I outlined the mouse in silk that matched the variegation of color in my hair. I have a bunch of cut hair from me chopping it all off after various pregnancies (when it would start falling out), which ranges from the almost brown of my roots, to sun and bleach lightened ends. I wanted to use that variegation in color to highlight the shapes with subtle shading, and so outlined the various portions of the mouse with different shades of brown, to accentuate that eventual shading.

 As soon as I started working with the hair, it was clear that it was going to be tricky, time consuming, and require lots of patience and concentration. First, it was hard to start the hair. I used the technique used with gold passing thread (shown in "elizabethan stitches), and stitched a tail down with small whip stitches to the reverse, knowing that the stitches would be covered by the fill. Even so, a gentle tug would pop the tail right out of the stitches.

Then it became instantly obvious that I wasn't going to be able to turn the hair at the ends of the rows like I could other threads (much less use it for the free form fill I had been doing!), it was simply too springy, and the loops wouldn't properly close. So I started working in linear couching, keeping the hair threaded onto a large needle, and would pop each row through the fabric at the end, then come back up for the next row, rather like working the thread saving variant of satin stitch. I was able to come up and down under the stem stitch outlines, so you can't see the starts and finishes, it just looks like the hair disappears under the outlines.

 Here's the reverse of the work showing the long tails I left starting and finishing on the ears. Since I only wanted the dark root portion of the hair, I couldn't use the whole strand. I left the tails, then stitched them down and trimmed them short once I had a few.
 in progress on the inside of one of the ears.
I ended up taking a hint from Opus Anglicanum with the mouse, and using the direction of the lines of couching to help show the shape of the creature as much as the changes in color. 












The mouse was the last of the embroidery,  all that remained was to take it off the frame, fold it in half, sew it into a tube, and turn it out as a scarf. I finished JUST in time for Husbeast to take it to Kings and Queens rapier championships with him. When he gets home I will properly top stitch all the edges to keep it flat, and finish the (currently unfinished selvedge) ends. 


I asked the husbeast to take a picture of himself wearing the favor at tournament so I could post it, and he sent me this: such a comedian.

Evidently it was sliding down his arm, so he tied it on his belt instead. I don't know if he couldn't get it tied tightly enough over the elbow by himself, or if it's just slippery. The solution will be either a small fabric loop attached to the sleeve, or a safety pin. I'm leaning towards the fabric loop on the sleeve because it will be easier for him to do that himself. 


Here's a good article about love tokens in history and the SCA
http://www.florilegium.org/?http%3A//www.florilegium.org/files/ACCESS/p-favors-art.html