Gro Torstensdotter Pouch

31st Dec, 2004

During the process to register my device, a conflict was found with the device of Lady Gro Torstensdotter. I wrote to Lady Gro and she was kind enough to grant me permission to conflict with her device. Our devices were both a red background with three crescents, mine yellow, hers white.

As a thankyou, I wanted to make her a small gift. I decided to make a pouch. They are fairly easy to make, but very practical for people to use. I decided to use a seal bag from the reign of Edward I. While this is earlier than the period in which Lady Gro bases her personna, the techniques were still in use and it's such a pretty design!

Seal bag on a charter from 1280 of Edward I

The ground fabric for the pouch is a black wool blend (I couldn't get pure wool, boy did I try!). The vine is worked in stem stitch, as are the trefoils. They are filled in with red Appletons wool, also filled in stem stitch. This is the background at about 4 hours work.

The shield is red pure wool (from a cannibalised jacket from the op-shop). Again, the crescents are worked in stem stitch in Appletons wool. The shield will be appliqued onto the background of the pouch. In the original, the shield is placed into a cut out section in the ground, in a technqiue known as intarsia. I am still deciding if I will do that or just applique straight onto the ground. There is a slight puckering at the top of the crescents. I am hoping that this will decrease with pressing. The shield section took about an hour and a half to work.

2nd Jan, 2005

My name is Laren and today I dumpster dove for thread. Well, not quite! I was within about 10 mins of finishing the border of the pouch I am working on and I ran out of thread. I was really trying to finish the pouch before I have to go back to work. So I ended up rummaging through the scraps bin I keep next to me when sewing. I found a small length of thread that was enough to finish the trefoils on the border. Here is what it looks like. This is at about 7 hours work.

3rd Jan, 2004

Today I ironed the sheild section of the pouch. I managed to get rid of most of the deformation, but it isn't completely gone. However, now that the crescent is ironed, you can see the change in direction of the thread and it gives more defination to the shape. I have stitched the shield to the ground of the fabric (after putting fray stop around the edge of the shield).

I was then able to put the outline of string around the edge of the shield. I used a thick string, as I believe this will sit better than wool. I suspect that the original outling was done in gilt thread, but I don't have anything that will look good with the other materals, so I've used the string. I'll pretend it's linen.

I think it looks much nicer now with the edging on. I was going to put the lining in tonight, but I just realised I don't have any cord, so no point in doing that just yet. Back to work tomorrow, so I won't be able to get the cord until the weekend.

8th Jan, 2005

I started to put the pouch together today. I am lining it with red linen. I sewed that up with the sewing machine. It then took me about an hour to sew on the tassles and the handle. All I have to do now is work on the buttonholes for the drawstrings. I didn't want to do them today as I've been flat out all weekend and just wanted to veg out!!

10th Jan, 2005

The pouch in now finished. Boy, to buttonholes work up quickly when you are using wool!! They only took about 2 hours to do all of them. So all up, it took about 15 hours to do the whole thing. The finished bag is about 20cm wide, by 25cm high. I am pretty pleased with how it turned out, I hope that Lady Gro likes it.