Bayeux Tapestry Onward into Battle ! Avec Le Point de Bayeux

 Hello everyone ! Goodness me , what a worrying world it is out there at the moment !
  Let us take up our needle and threads and stitch ourselves calm .

So here I am  stitching away on this little piece of the Bayeux Tapestry , I think maybe a wall hanging for my eight year old grandson .

I  found the chain-mail a bit challenging and was glad to have finished that .

I filled in the golden cross on King Harold's shield with more Point de Bayeux .

     Then I put in the little stars , bezants or simply studs in red and blue .

I sorted out some slightly off-white wool for the background of the shield , tricky because I wanted it to be a slightly darker cream than the cotton fabric that I,m stitching on .

 I settled on these colours and I think they look quite close to the colours in the Bayeux Tapestry too .

                                                Point de lancé

I,m still getting the tingles doing this ! Making my hands do what those 11th century hands did so long ago .
   What where they thinking while they stitched , so close then to the terrible event ,so fresh in their minds  .
 What an incredible work of art and important document of a terrible time and turning point in the history of England .
   And so ......
 Onward into battle with a much larger area than I,ve ever stitched before in Le Point de Bayeux or Bayeux Tapestry stitch .
First lay down the Point de lancé , taking the crewel wool from top to the bottom of the shield , but not across the back.

I slipped my needle through the little stars on the front of the cotton fabric .

                                                   Barrettes
 Next I stitch the Barrettes , which pass over the top of the Point de lancé, about 5mm apart and once again , not across the back .

                                                      Picots
 Then I stitched the tiny Picot stitches , which are the tiny , slightly slanting stitches , which hold down the Barrettes about 5mm apart and alternating .
 You can zoom in a little by clicking on my pictures .

 You see , it is in three steps and actually very easy . So don't be afraid to have a go at Le Point de Bayeux .
  I don't think I have ever seen this way of embroidering and filling large areas of a design  used on any other extant textiles of this period , 11th-12th century  .

I have been experimenting , with other little things from the Bayeux Tapestry , on some cheap cotton fabric . Just making simple sketches, by eye , with a pencil .

About children having fun with embroidery .
 It doesn't look too bad on my slightly heavier weight cotton or calico and would be cheaper than linen and good for older children to have a go on too .
      Use a pencil  , draw anything you like , then stitch over it . Easy ! Just have fun !
  I have taught little ones four and five years old , to do easy running stitch with a big fat needle over simple shapes , cat , dog , house , tree , smiling sun , drawn in pencil on felt . They choose their own colours of felt and embroidery threads and they loved doing this , of course they will need one to one supervision .
  This was how I learnt to love embroidery from my mother, grandmother , lovely nuns in my convent school and dear old Mrs Baker my needlework teacher , even though the sewing machines were a bit ,well , lets just say vintage !

   I have acquired a lovely bundle of antique linen , perfect for doing something  special .

                              It is so old and gorgeous . I am so happy !

Bayeux Tapestry fun - part one - practice piece

My young grandson Harry and I had been talking about the Bayeux Tapestry  , he is eight years old and very interested .
  I thought it would be fun to stitch a couple of small scenes from it  and let him have a go too .

So into my time machine we climb .  Back through time we fly to the year 1066 !
 The Bayeux Tapestry is NOT a tapestry !
 Back in earlier times , any needlework wall hanging would have been known as a tapestry, even though strictly speaking, a tapestry is fabric picture woven on an upright loom with a picture of the design behind it .
 I once had a go at weaving around a book to make a simple bag . I might do this with the children on another occasion to show the difference between a tapestry and an embroidery .
 The Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery . Embroidered with crewel wool on a tabby weave linen .
 The word crewel comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word cliow or kleow, meaning a loosely twisted woollen yarn thread . The word changed over the years to become crewel .
  So crewel embroidery is surface embroidery using wool . Today it can be bought in several thicknesses or weights .
Tapestry wool is slightly thicker usually for Needlepoint and thinner Crewel wool is for embroidery.
  There are several good makes now that I can recommend Appletons, Renaissance dyeing wool , Gumnuts and Heathways . These are all lovely !
     I,m using Appletons in this project .  Appletons definitely seem to have more colours to choose from ....423 to be precise !
 For those who knit or who do textile art work and for those who like to break the rules and mix it all up , then there are even more specialist wools ,yarns, cotton and silk threads out there .
 We are so lucky to have so much choice in these modern times and lovely craft shops from which to buy our needlework supplies .
    How we take it all for granted these days !
 Back in medieval times the fleece would have been hand spun and then dyed  , with natural dyes made from gathered wild plants such as Indigo , Madder , bark , herbs and berries etc before being wound into skeins . This would be another wonderful thing to have a go at , maybe in the summer .
   The Linen Flax was grown and harvested, retted and scutched . Spun and woven into linen on a loom .  It was expensive then and expensive still now !

 We began looking at pictures of the Bayeux Tapestry , both on-line and in books from the library .
 We thought about choosing a nice bit of it to do .... except that , there aren't any "nice" bits  in it !
  This is the true story of a terrible and bloody battle ! The Duke of Normandy William and King Harold defending and fighting for the Crown of England .
It is an incredible embroidered documentation of what happened leading up to the battle .
 It is thought that Bishop Odo ordered the tapestry to be made not long after the event . That nuns in Canterbury embroidered it . It is thought that it was designed and drawn by someone who may have been there and witnessed the battle or things that were happening around the event .
 There is so much to see and learn of early medieval life in the tapestry . The clothes that they wore , the tools that they used in ship building and cooking , their beliefs in God and signs in the stars , Halley's comet .
 The Bayeux Tapestry will be coming over to England in 2022 it has been announced . It could be the British Museum or the V&A , they haven't decided this yet .

 All fired up and excited , I grabbed a couple of pieces of old cotton sheet  and began doodling some of the pictures from my books . I think I,m doing them quite a bit bigger than on the actual Bayeux Tapestry .
  I,m drawing them freehand with a pencil , so they might not be all that accurate , although I,m doing as best as I can !
 I thought it would be better to practice on cheap cotton or calico rather than ruin expensive linen .

 I matched up the colours as best as I could . There are a lot more subtle shades within  the tapestry . The closer I look  the more I see . There are more recent repair jobs that have been done on it here and there , not always too well done , in my opinion . I,ll show you why later on .

It will be easier to stitch on linen . My needle does not go through this tightly woven cotton very easily . Need to change my needle but too excited to stop right now .

                                         The "nice" bit we chose .
     So I have begun , at almost the end of the story actually .
" Hic Harold Rex interfectus est " which means  Here Harold King killed is .. or as we would say  " Here King Harold is killed "

               I feel myself getting more and more drawn in .......

Medieval Stars

                                 I finally decided to stitch the flag of Saint George .

I decided that the stars should just sink into the background , not to make a big thing out of them with bright colours and definitely no beads  .
I only put a little yellow colonial knot into the centre of three of the stars .
 It got me thinking though , about medieval stars and how we often see them illustrated in early illuminations .

 I,ve been meaning to do something from the Bayeux Tapestry for a while and have a proper go at the Bayeux Tapestry stitch  .
 I thought I would start with something small .

    1066 Halley's Comet - Isti mirant stella - which translated means "The people marvel of the star ".
I chose to stitch it as it is now , with faded colours , although , it is said  , that on examining the reverse side , the colours have not faded all that much .
The  Bayeux Tapestry is actually Crewel embroidery and not a tapestry at all .
The word crewel comes from the old Anglo Saxon word "cleow " which is wool fleece spun into two fine threads and then twisted together .
 Worsted means a fine smooth thread which has been spun from long staple wool . Staple meaning the length of the fibre in the fleece .
 Crewel work is embroidery with this fine wool .

Sigh, my photos didn't come out , where I show you how I do Bayeux Tapestry stitch .(boring bit  ---Picasa have stopped running and I,m supposed to change over to Google Photos which is not as good as Picasa so I,m told .  So I will go away and see what I can do and put those pictures on next time hopefully . I am not a rocket scientist ! )

 I amused myself for a long while looking at the sun , moon and stars in old illuminations .
I love the flower like stars of the illuminations of the Visions of Hildegard von Bingen .
 I love the bright colours of these 11th and 12th century illuminations .

 I bought some lovely blue linen which looked lovely on line but turned out to be too thin really for my crewel work , so I decided to use it to doodle and experiment on .
I thought I,d give this very expensive Bohin white fabric marking pencil a try . I usually am quite happy with an ordinary pencil , well a soft lead one anyway ...my pencil has nearly worn out !

                               I drew it on freehand and actually went over it twice .

 By the time I had stitched around the star , the middle circle had worn away .
So, if I use this again in the future , I can see that I should only draw a little bit at a time .
It makes a beautifully fine line though .

It is a scorching hot Bank holiday Monday . The beach is filled with happy families once again . The roads are busy with people driving from place to place .
I take my little dog out nice and early ,while it is cool ,for her walkies , usually over at Goonhilly or the woods .

Then hang out the washing and retire to the Summer house to read and paint and stitch .

Too hot to do any gardening ....although maybe later as the sun goes down .

I,m thinking and praying for all of you caught up in Hurricane Harvey . Hope the rain will stop soon and help arrive swiftly to those of you who need help and rescue .