Aethelflaed’s Border Progresses

The border for the Medieval Movers And Shakers takes quite a lot of doing. The first layer is the broad “colouring in” – surface satin stitch, using the three colours of silk straight from the reels. I don’t enjoy this very much, because every time I sit down to it, I have to get re-attuned to balancing threads at either end, and it’s just difficult.

I do, however, like the effect.

It’s not stable enough to be left like that, though, and it’s not stable enough to be stitched over, as it stands. This is why the next stage is to do trellis couching over the top. If you look at the rightmost image in the gallery below, you will see the bit that remains unstitched of the diagonal stitches, and how much the couching settles everything down by comparison.

The diagonals are not as regular as I might have liked, but I’ve discovered that I can ease everything slightly one way or another with the couching, so the finished Trellis Couching looks more regular than just the diagonals. And of course, this is an intermediate stage, because I have yet to finish planning the roses, the beer barrels, and the bee skeps. And with William Marshall, I had an easy choice, framing the border with his heraldic colours.

All my questions to medievalists I’ve met concerning heraldry or symbology in Mercia and Wessex have met with apologetic looks. There probably was some, but they didn’t record it for us. So I will probably go for garnet and gold, because I would like to continue the structure I used for William Marshall, and have a suitable cross at the cardinal points. The borders framing the border can echo the crosses, and that will tied everything together.