a quick favor

I've needed to design a more all purpose favor than the one I made for the Husbeast, which was effectively insanity on silk, for a while. Aside from showing support for your own particular fighter: there's a growing movement to have adults sponsor youth fighters in the youth tournaments. I think that's really wonderful, and I've meant to get involved a couple times, but not had time to design and make something. I've also thought a small favor worked in miniature as say, a bookmark, might make a very nice "your work is REALLY incredible" token for arts. But, again, I just haven't gotten to it. But I ended up standing in as consort for a friend at crown tournament, which typically involves the consort giving the fighter representing them a favor, and it seemed like a good opportunity to design something that could be made reasonably quickly in a number of mediums. That way when opportunity to use it came up, I could just transfer it to fabric and work it up however I wanted: embellished applique, bayuex stitch, or even just outlined in stem stitch if I was in a particular hurry. I also wanted something I could use any materials that I had lying around or struck my fancy on. A basic, all purpose design, that would remain clearly representative of me.

 I started with my arms, which are a mouse salient on a green field, and  added my household arms to it. It made a super cute design!











I used my heat transfer marker to transfer it to a piece of green silk (I've got a BUNCH of odd scraps of this delightful green that I dyed for something or other a thousand years ago lurking about. So it keeps popping up.) I put it over handkerchief linen to give it enough body to withstand the tension in the frame, and outlined everything in black DMC cotton with stem stitch. I filled the shield with red and more black (this is all DMC cotton, I'm trying to use up my stash) and worked the cross in herringbone. The herringbone worked really well, but I didn't quite get the hang of keeping the points even till I was on the top (which was the last one I did.) It's a little more wodgy than I'd generally like. I'm not sure if I'll do it again or not. I really like the look of it but not so much the unevenness.

Then onto the body in more split stitch with ecru. I marked the directions that I would follow with the stitching to give the body shape with a pen before I started.

Then just keep stitching! This is 4 strands of DMC floss, which working in this small of a design felt quite like cheating! I tend to fall into the trap of working everything at super tiny scale, even when a larger scale would serve my purposes just as well. With 4 strands this worked up relatively quickly, and the overall effect is very nice.

With the body filled, I mounted it onto some heavy black linen for the backing and belt loop. The silk is pretty flimsy, it seemed silly to use it for the back as well as the front. Lots of pinning and some hand stitching later....

One finished favor! 

I'm really pleased with it. I think it's cute, recognizable, and versatile.