Starting to plan Aethelflaed’s Border

As I get nearer to stitching the border for the Aethelflaed Embroidery, it is starting to become imperative that I make some plans for it.

This is why I started to work on painting, originally – not to become a painter, but simply to make design mistakes more quickly and easily than in stitches!

As I began thinking about it, and since I am conceiving of four panels which will between them cover four now lesser-known characters in politics and religion during the medieval period, I came to the conclusion that I should keep some themes across the four.

I’m keeping the background of trellis couched laid silk, for a start, and it will be the same blue, although I may make a change to the order of dark and light in the trellis couching itself.

The dog roses I used for William Marshall will appear in Aethelflaed’s border as well. My researches haven’t turned up any specific flora associated with Aethelflaed, but there’s a tale that the Viking attack on Chester was routed with boiling beer and angry bees, so I’m experimenting with beer barrels and bee skeps.

And there will be a different cross at the cardinal points of the embroidery. These first efforts are patterned after sketches I’ve made at some of the exhibitions I’ve visited, showing elements of the Staffordshire Hoard and other items. Garnet and gold is a combination very strongly associated with the Anglo Saxons, and I’m having a lot of fun playing with details.

Some of the ideas are not really working, others I think definitely are.

I’m certainly not yet ready to assemble a finished design. But at least there may be some signs of something to work with, and after all, I’ve still got a few weeks of thinking time while I do the laid and trellis couched border!