The "Finished" band

Well as you can see i have finished the "band"

Now i just have to decide what i am going to do with it. It was only a tester to see how it would turn out, But it don't want to "waste" it by not using on something.

Any Suggestions???

renaissance dyeing

Thanks to Renaissance Dyeing for such quick delivery of my new threads. They are in France and i am in Australia and my thread arrived in 4 working days. (6 if you include the weekend).

Not only have they arrived quickly but they are beautifully soft and the colours look wonderful.


These are the colours i got, resting on my new navy blue 100% wool i got for $9 a meter at my local fabric store. I was doing a bank run at work, nearly got knocked over by a hoon on a bike turned around to abuse him and there in the distance i saw the words ...."Fabric...." being new to the area i ran there, regardless of the whole "should be at work thing" and found my wool.

Some more research on Bands

Well i kept playing with that embroidered band, and this is it with 1 movie's worth of work on it.

The following are some drawings from my sketch book showing some ideas for of the embroidery. These are most more "geometric" patterns. I have a whole other page of more "floral" patterns but i still need to scan them up. The top three are perhaps my favourites. Sorry i havn't had time to date them all with sources, but they are all pretty much copies from various books i have.

This one reminds me of the Bayeux tapestry, just a little....

New wool

Just ordered some new wool thread from Renaissance Dyeing http://www.renaissancedyeing.com/

Within two hours of me ordering online it was in a post van, so hopefully it will arrive soon so i can start playing with it. Angela, if you want me to send you some samples i can do that. It looks like it will be of a good quality and suitable for what we will need it for. Maybe if i send them you can take them to the next Condott training to show the others.

I have also thought about doing a embroidered band around our cloaks/cuffs/anything that stands still long enough. I was playing with a pattern tonight. If i like it i may use this one. I have seen variations of this on many braids. Variations normally include different "devices" in the middle, and maybe the red outlining being done in couching.

I tried a "new" stitch on the pink background it's the base stitch for the Bayeux couching, then the over stitching is just split-stitch. Not sure if i like it as much or if i like it for the band, but i am just playing!