Heraldic Banner

A little while back, the person who helped me get settled in the SCA asked if I would make him a banner. He wanted the badge of his household, which is a rose en soleil (white rose on a golden sun) of York on a murry and blue background.

I had brought the materials for the project, and had it sitting there nagging at me for a few weeks. Then a couple of weeks ago it was announced that there would be an Arts and Sciences competition at the Baronesses Birthday Tourney - anything heraldic! So I took this as a sign.

The materials are all brocade materials. Unfortunately, they are all synthetic, but that was all I could get. I did manage to get the yellow for the sun rays in a cotton, to give a bit more texture. I decided that since speed was of the essance, I wouldn't go to the trouble of using period technique, I was going to cheat seriously!

The first cheat was the design. I found the above heraldic clip art and blew it up on the photocopier. This become my pattern. I stuck the image on some cardboard. I made two peices. One of the rose and the other of the sun rays.

10th August, 2004

First part of the project was making up the backgrounds. I worked out that I had brought enough fabric for two banners. So I cut the materials in half, and sewed the two backgrounds together. I didn't want any stitch lines down the middle, so instead of sewing the seam at the middle join down, I bought some heming tape and used that.

Next was the fiddly bit. I got some Visloflex and ironed it onto the back of the white I was using for the rose and the yellow I was using for the sun rays. I decided that instead of cutting out each individual sunray, I would just cut out the rays as one piece.

I did the same with the rose. It looked a bit funny cause there was no detail on the rose. That would be added later by the string pearls I had.

The designs were put onto the fabric by tracing the templates made earlier.

After cutting out both the rose and the sun rays, I pulled of the backing paper of both. First, I ironed the sun rays onto the background, then I iron the rose on top of the sun rays.

At this stage its taken me about 2 hours of work (for both banners).

11th August, 2004

Now was the fun bit. I put the banner, specifically the rose section, into one of my quilting hoops. I then stitched the pearls around the edges (covering the edge and hopefully protecting it a bit from wear) and the inside highlights of the rose. I used some of the pearls on a string that I had hanging around from a previous project. It took me about 3 hours to do the rose.

12th August, 2004

Tonight was the outlining of the sun rays. I used a nice soft cold cotton cord for this. Only problem was that the rays were just a tiny bit too big for my quilting hoop, so I had to sew them into my big embroidery frame, not nearly as easy or effective as my quilting hoop. It took about 2 hours to outline the rays, again covering the raw edges.

14th August, 2004

All the "embroidery" is done, so now just need to make up the banner. I knew that the banner was too wide, so I cut a 4 inch strip of each side. I sewed along the edge to make a tube. Then turned inside out and ironed down. Each strip was then cut into three strips. These are going to be the hanging loops for the banner. I got some cheap backing material, pinned the loops in place and sewed it all together. I left a small hole at the bottom to turn the whole thing right side out. Ironed all the seams. There as some sagging so I sewed all the outside seams down, closing the hole at the bottom at the same time. This took another 3 hours. One banner is complete.