Found an old friend from my past...

Here's Howard. For a long time I tried to find a decent picture of him, and until recently I couldn't. Suddenly there he is again! There seems to be an upsurge in interest. I no longer have my ear to the ground in that area, so I'll wait and see!

Yes, I've been painting, but mostly drawing, but. . .

I maybe posting some drawings later, but I want to get more practice in on that. So, in the mean time, and since it's been so long, here is what has been consuming some of my time:

Sorry about the colors, these are the first pictures I've worked with from my Android phone. It should be chartreuse (bright light green) and a deep teal linen.

Detail of hem treatment and a bit of cuff.

Neck and front detail.

This is all embroidered by hand on an applique of chartreuse handkerchief linen. The gown, or medieval kirtle is of teal linen.

Detail of smaller neck embroidery and some of the front.

A bit more of the cuff.

Shoulder and sleeve seam "guarding" embroidery

I'd been wanting to do this for a while and once I got started, I couldn't stop! The pattern is taken from a medieval bog find. Well, it was found nowadays, but the find itself went into the bog in medieval times. The seam guarding is various stitches that strengthen the seams. Since everything was hand sewn and not very many people had more than one main piece of clothing at a time, it had to last. So this is entirely hand sewn. It was for historical accuracy, but it was also because I was too lazy to get up and go to the machine for the long simple seams. I was either listening to an audiobook or watching a movie on TV. Since long straight seams are simple and don't take a lot of attention, it seamed just as easy to go ahead and hand sew them. Of course then they had to be flat felled by hand anyway. That means that each seam is hand sewn at least twice, and THEN embroidery is worked over them to help take some of the wear to which the are subject!

Ta-Da!

I can't believe I'm posting these, but (chortle) I couldn't resist:

For my Cat friends

For my Artist friends

For my highly reactive friends

For my Theater friends

Because it's just true.

For my SCA Friends

So I don't forget how

I haven't posted for a long time. (Duh) I've spent way to much time on Pinterest!

I'm really doing this because I'm having trouble figuring out how to upload my own picture to it. I know I can Pin from my blog, but I can't get it to upload from iPhoto. Rumor has it you can do this, but my iPhoto remains mute on HOW.

So to give it a try:

Well, finally. It turned out that all that work I did to make a pdf, it had to be a jpg to work. Sigh. My Sister-in-law sent me this one, I couldn't resist!