embroidered award

In January 2008 I embroidered an award for my friend, Arnleif the Red. The white is an old linen shirt that I reused, rather handily. It was soo soft to embroider on!
The yellow and maroon (a Valkyrie on a horse) are done with stem stitched Paternaya wool thread.
The blue and green runes and lines for the King and Queen's signatures are done with silk thread.
There are also amber colored glass beads used for the rays emanating from the center circle.
The accents are fresh water pearls for eyes and at the base of all of the rays.
Also, matte red size 8 glass and silver metal beads were used for the accents at the outer portion of the rays.
The black background is blanket weight worsted wool.
The white linen was sewn onto the wool background with more silk thread. The open circle on the bottom is for her to put her registered arms when she decides what that will be.
The tabs for hanging are tablet weaving that I had finished awhile back, but never put to use. I bought a wooden long sword and burned "Lady Arnleif the Red" into the handle for display. It fits neatly in the tabs and on her wall.

I had a TON of fun doing this project, from the research to the actual making. The research took nearly four weeks lone. I completed the stitching in a month. Sounds like a long time? Not so much in regards to embroidery. The longest part was the stem red and yellow Valkyrie and horse center circle that took about two weeks alone. The words were done by my friend Dresden. I used her imagry, translated it directly into runes and then stitched, stitched, stitched! I would look forward to doing something like this again, certainly!

Here is Asgar's blue fight tunic. The fabric is twilled linen, washed three times in hot hot water, and my fingers *still* became blue when hemming the neck and sleeves. The dog represents Asgar and the rabbit represents me.


A close up of the dog. The hind leg was not completed when the photo was taken, but has since been finished. The animals are cut from white wool, thicker than most wool I see, perhaps even blanket weight (I do not even pretend to know how to determine weights of wool).
I used a single strand of black paternaya wool thread to stitch the animal on. Both stem stitch and back stitch were used for the outline within (ie the eye, mouth, etc).

My son thinks the bunny kind of looks anime (Japanese cartoon). This was a farily quick project, with each part quite different than the next. Very low on the boredom factor! :)