Sleeves Please

I had the honor of creating a set of sleeves for her Majesty Ansteys to use as favors for her tournaments during her reign. She asked for simple outlines of heraldic roses, as these are both a symbol of the Ladies of the Rose and part of her personal heraldry; one to be a bit fancier that the other.  I absolutely enjoyed this project!

I started of using the Pensic Traceable Art project archive to find a decent heraldic rose (http://www.aeheralds.net/submissions/traceable_art/IndivPDFs/Rose_heraldic.pdf) and then traced it onto tissue paper for transferring onto the linen.

After pining the tissue paper to the fabric, I used a simple basting stich to trace the pattern onto the cloth with a contrasting color sewing thread. Since the fabric is dark green, I used white, other times I have used bright orange. On light fabrics I use dark blue or black as the stitched will be picked out after the embroidery is done

Next, I tore away the tissue, leaving a thread outline for me to follow with my embroidery stitches.

For this project, I used a simple chain stitch for the outlines, and French knots for the pips in the center of each rose. Outlands colors are green and gold, so I chose to use a gold thread for the large roses, with green leaves and black pips. Her Majesties personal heraldry has white Tudor roses, so for the “fancy” sleeve I added two smaller white roses above the large gold rose.

Once the embroidery was complete, I closed up the sleeves using French seams and hemmed the openings. HRM Ansteys was quite pleased with my work, and I am honored to have had the opportunity to do this project for her. 

Next up on my list, a hood for His Majesty, Leif III.