Viking Samples

 

I've been doing quite a lot of research this year around Viking Embroidery. This is partly a result of the folding of the British Embroidery Study Group of the SA Embroiderers' Guild a couple of years ago. I promised the last couple of members of the British Group that the World Embroidery Study Group would incorporate British topics into our program.  My own particular interest, which goes back to my university undergraduate days, is with early English history, literature and language, so I have been scouting around Viking and Anglo-Saxon embroidery. I have a presentation on Viking Embroidery ready for the World Embroidery Study Group in October and have been asked to repeat it for a Certificate Course workshop in February 2022.  The latter means having a project for the group to work on.

Our knowledge of this era is largely built on the work of Margarethe Hald, textile historian and curator of the National Museum of Denmark whose definitive work was published by the Museum in 1980. Margarethe Hald died in 1982.

Subsequent books in the field acknowledge and draw on this work, which is, of course, out of print. When I looked, several months ago, there was only one copy on offer for sale in the world. There are four copies in Australian libraries, one here in South Australia at Flinders University. A Guild friend and alumna of Flinders, generously applied for an alumna borrowing card and borrowed the book for me. We are immensely privileged to have access to it.

Fortunately for us, there are numerous relevant excavated burial sites in Scandinavia and a couple in England, many containing textiles. In the acid soil of Scandinavian burial sites, animal fibre survives while plant fibre deteriorates faster, We know that Vikings were weavers and stitchers, who constructed clothes, mainly from wool but also skin and fur. The pieces were shaped and joined using running or back stitch, and the seams reinforced, either inside or outside the garment with a range of stitches. They also valued textiles and those wealthy enough imported silk, linens and embroidery from their trade routes to Baghdad, Constantinople and England.

For the workshop I procured just over a metre of dark brown woollen twill from the Historic Fabric Store in Sweden. The popularity of Viking re-enactments in many countries provides a supply of products attempting to replicate or imitate. It is not always easy to tell the difference. 

My plan is to provide students with a roughly A4 piece and the pattern, on printed solvi, for a reconstructed design from the Mammen Cloak, one of the few surviving  embroideries agreed to be Viking, along with some Appleton's wool in the colour range thought to have been used. It is believed the cloak was originally covered with embroidery, mostly in linen, which has not survived in the acid soil of the Swedish burial. The embroidered fragments that survived were all embroidered in wool. All are stem  stitch. 

I've worked my sample as a pouch. I used the Viking method of running stitch seams, reinforced on the outside by the stitch believed to have been used on the Mammen cloak.  

This is what it looks like inside - not very tidy, but it does hold the seam folds down, out of the way.

On the back of the pouch I decided to applique a sample of this design from a 10th century embroidery of spun silver on red silk in the Valsgarde burial. It isn't clear to me whether this part of the design was worked in couching or stem stitch. From illustrations it looks like stem. 

I located some red silk scraps in my stash. I chose one that was russet and stitched it on to some cotton fabric so it would fit in a 6" hoop. I then created a cardboard template of the design. I thought it might be easier to trace around a template than use other methods of transfer on the coloured silk.  It worked.

I've sourced some silver French gimp bullon perle wire that I thought might work for couching. It is not, however, even remotely close to spun silver in look or function - a much later thread design. In the end I settled for a silver metallic thread.

Initially I tried a softer, darker metallic, to outline the design in stem stitch. It was hard going and not the right colour or look. I  tried the silver metalic couched, then unpicked the dark outline.

The result isn't brilliant, but passable, I think, to give the idea of the original, which is thought to be the decoration on another cloak, probably imported to Scandinavia from Byzantium - either whole, or as pieces that were appliqued on locally.                

It seemed appropriate to appllique it to the back of the pouch. It's a bit wonky, but then, so was the original. I'm thinking that the woollen embroidery and the seam join will be the basis of the workshop. These are both directly attributable to Viking workmanship (or perhaps workwomanship). I will prepare some silk strips on calico backing that students can take home and work if they wish to try the example of silk work valued and imported by Vikings.

 I will eventually line the pouch and add a (very non-Viking) zip, but I will leave it unfinished for the workshop, so students can inspect the inside to see the seam neatening.

I have also purchased a set of Naalbinding needles and briefly tried them out, along with a lucet (which at the moment I have mislaid). Naalbinding, practiced by Vikings, predates both knitting and crochet and uses a needle to create fabric.  Certificate Group students may like to try these out and incorporate them in some way.  As I have indicated, my presentation to the World Embroidery Study Group does not include a project, but it will be useful to get their feedback on what I have planned.  There may be a later post around braiding, Naalbinding and weaving.

A friend from my university class in Early English Literature and Language commented that our studies were entirely based on the history of largely male activities - mainly fighting and writing - and that knowledge of textiles may go someway to redress the balance. We do know that there were Viking women warriors. There does seem to be agreement that the work of gathering, preparing, weaving and constructing garments, sails and furnishings from wool was executed by Viking women, perhaps not exclusively, but there's a way to go before we have a thorough knowledge of Viking women's lives. Someone, somewhere, I'm sure, is working on it.

In the meantime,  I can return to my knitting!

Dijanne Cevaal Figure 3: First Dragon

I have found the Dijanne Cevaal panels so addictive I moved straight on from the King to the dragon - and didn't pause to take photos until I was quite advanced. I began with those scales on the back of the neck - worked in some of the SA Embroiderers' Guild over-dyed stranded thread.

I was really excited by the red-gold thread from the Guild's last batch and bought rather a lot of it, using a red-dominant with an open chain stitch for the neck and a gold-dominant in Bokhara stitch for the wings.        
                                                         










The chest uses a lighter one in a combination of stem and buttonhole stitch.

Some of the Madiera sparkly synthetic from the King's beard came in handy for the horn, teeth and claws.

I separated the sections of the wings with a couched gold laying thread and used a black/gold Au Papillon metallic on the legs and feet.

The shape of the two plants cried out, I thought, for needle-lace. I haven't worked this in a metallic before but found it worked up really well in green Kreinik metallic with stems in a slightly heavier DMC Diamante.

In the  two earlier panels I worked I largely ignored the screen printed markings on the background. With this one, I decided to work the markings in a variety of blues to give an impression of sky. I used a variety of threads, solid and variegated, silk, cotton and metallic. The tail was worked in red - with solid outline and seed stitch fill.

I liked the effect of the seed stitch so much I decided to use it for the background in place of running stitch.

I am pleased with the effect. I used one or two strands of stranded cotton, then added in some more between these using a metallic - mostly Madiera No 40.

The result is very rich and dense. 

Now to turn this into another cushion!

Phoebe Anna Traquair Finish

I put the finishing touches on my Phoebe Anna piece, increasing the rows of couching on the large leaf to intensify the colours (other than the underlying brown)
and outlining the berries, branches and leaf.

I spent some time considering what to do with the piece before settling on a bag that I can use for projects. I had some dark denim that I thought would work well, so made that into a bag and inserted the embroidery before discovering that the dye in the denim transferred to my hands while stitching. I unpicked the embroidered insert, washed the denim and rinsed it thoroughly in vinegar to set the die.

 

Alas, the dye still leaked as I handled the denim, so I abandoned it and tried again with a piece of dark green drill. The colour is lighter in the photo than in reality.

The finished product, lined in pale blue chambray, is attractive and useful - both important to me. 

It will also be examined and appreciated by stitching friends as I use it for current projects - beginning, I hope, with the Rose and Thistle crewel work - the second project from the Scottish Highlands Tour that I now intend to move on to!

More Hexagon Centres

Here are a few more of the embroidered centres of my hexagons. The first two are couched daisies - picked up from a project in an embroidery magazine.








This is a spiral using reverse chain stitch - another idea from Mary Corbett. I'm not sure this is any faster than regular chain stitch, but it may be more even, and I enjoyed trying it out.








I also played around with strawberry leaves and a whipped stem stitch.








Niamh took me up on a suggestion she embroider her initial on one centre. This is the centre she chose and she managed a very creditable couched initial.




The one on the right was not embroidered by me. It is one of my late father's initialled hankies.






Since last posting I have added four rows to the quilt - two black and two coloured. I have eight more rows to go and it now looks like this:

Winter Birds Table Topper Start

After the Samurai, I wanted a project that had large components, a bit free-flowing and involved no counting,  preparation or construction. I settled on a kit for a table topper, bought, of course, on sale.

I bought this because it is so cheerful. I like the colours, and the style reminds me a bit of Hungarian embroidery, which I admire. I also like to have some projects on hand that require no finishing once I've finished stitching and I rather liked the edging on this one.










The thread is 5 Perle - solid and fast, and the instructions consist of a large diagram and a sheet of stitches. Basic.

I began on the red berries and really enjoyed the freedom after the cross-stitch effort of the last weeks.

I moved on to the pine needles, and decided to couch them rather than have long loose stitches as in the diagram. That seemed to work well.



I then decided to experiment a little on some of the larger leaves, trying some of the lattice techniques that Mary Corbet has been writing about in her blog.

I needed the filling fairly dense, so used two shades of green with the framework lines fairly close together. It was possible to get the lines intersecting so the colour is all light at the tip and all darker at the base and a mixture in between. It gives a textured effect that I quite like.






It doesn't look so good, however, with the gold veins in place.

Next I played around with the cream-coloured blobs that I take to be snow. Not having a lot of experience of snow, I don't know whether birds actually choose snow rather than exposed branches to sit on, and I would have expected the thread to be white, not cream - but I am out of my knowledge base and may be too literal.

Rather than large blobs of satin stitch, I tried layers of couched lattice - a layer on the straight and couched down overlayed by another set at a 45 degree angle. It would work well for a nest, but probably isn't the best effect for snow.

The photo also shows how the gold veins for the satin-stitched leaves sink into the work, while those on the latticed leaves stay on the surface. Looks like satin stitch wins for the leaves.  I want to try something else for the snow (assuming that's what it is!). It's good to be working on something I can easily play around with.