Bayeux Tapestry Fun - Lion

I,m still working on Harold , but I will have to put him aside for the time being as I presently cant visit my grandson due to all  the Coronavirus thing .
 No , we're o.k, we haven't got it , nor have his family , but we are all having to be very careful at this time .
 I know there are a lot of you out there who are having to self isolate , I,m very proud of you for doing this , it must be very hard to keep cheerful .
   We will beat it !  Pick up your needle and thread and stitch yourself calm !
       Stay cheerful  !

 I had wanted my grandson to have the fun of sewing in the arrows for me , but it  can wait .
They have also just got a new puppy , so not being able to visit means we are missing out on all the puppy fun too .
  So I finished off Harold's shield  .

I,m not very comfortable with his white shoes , but that is how they are on the real Bayeux Tapestry . I wonder if this was a conservation/repair , because most of the other knights are wearing brown shoes/boots ?

                  Anyway , I still have to finish embroidering his face .

 There is nothing sweet about the Bayeux Tapestry , except this adorable lion !

 So I sketched  him out on another scrap of cotton calico material and a few of the other birds and beasts .

I,m going to do this  bird/ eagle next  .

                                 Stay cheerful and stitch  yourself calm !

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 2

 I get tingles down my spine as I begin to work that iconic Point de Bayeux  or Bayeux Tapestry Stitch .
 Does any body else get that feeling ?
  It was designed that the thread is not wasted when filling in large areas of the design , because the thread does not pass over the back of the linen .
  The wool was precious then , being hand spun and dyed .. and it is expensive to buy today , sometimes quite hard to find too .
 If you're interested , I did talk about how to do this in an earlier post . Here's the link to it  -
 http://pixiepinsandneedles.blogspot.com/2017/09/le-point-de-bayeux-bayeux-tapestry.html

 The Bayeux Tapestry stitch seems to go fast !
  I might be wrong and it's just my own thought on it  , but as I stitch  , I get feeling the Bayeux Tapestry was stitched fast  .

I have embroidered a small area of  King Harold's face , I have penciled in his moustache , but decided to leave it until last , as I feel I want to get to know my good King before all the blood begins to run down his face .
 It is thought that the next character who is being struck down with an axe by a knight on horseback , is also Harold and I am wondering if the character before this standing next to the knight holding the Dragon Banner about to throw a spear , might also be Harold ? So we see the whole sequence unfolding .

 

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 .......