Seljuk Lion Embroidered Napkin

 

In July I attended Polit Uni online and was lucky enough to see Mistress Miriam’s embroidery class. Mamluk and Middle-Eastern embroidery was a new area to me, and I suggested to my local group of embroiderer’s that we challenge ourselves to try some embroidery from this region.

I was particularly taken with this strange looking lion found on a 10-11^th Century textile which is now held in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston https://collections.mfa.org/objects/66368 (Accession Number 31.445, dimensions 11 x 9 cm).

It was found in Mesopotamia but believed to be of Egyptian make. The stitching is predominantly split stitch in silks, highlighted with metallic threads on a cream mulham (silk/cotton) base fabric.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use it as decoration on a pouch, or to decorate a tunic with the design, so I decided to work it in cotton on a cotton base fabric to see how it looked, and decide then. I used two threads of DMC cotton and the design was marked out in frixion marker. Originally I planned to use blue thread, but changed to classic black.

Even though the sample is unfilled, it worked up fairly quickly, which actually has done little to solve my dilemma. I think I might work the design as an outline on a tunic because the design is quite striking even as an outline.

I knotted the ends of my threads for durability as the sample is worked on a napkin which will get thrown in the washing machine.I also did a running stitch in black around the hem of the napkin to finish it off.

 

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Mistress Miriam for sharing her knowledge, and the MFA Boston for their excellent online resources.

Mamluk Counted Embroidery

I started a new embroidery challenge with my local group of SCA embroiderers last month after seeing Mistress Miriam's Mamluk embroidery class at Politarchopolis University. Mistress Miriam graciously shared her notes so that we all had a sound research base, and I've been quite excited about the opportunities for future projects. I want to do some non-counted pieces, but I thought that I should try some counted work first.

I haven't done any counted embroidery since my early teens (I started cross-stitching at about age eleven) and I have already learned a lot. I have spent more time unpicking errors than actually stitching so far.
I have learned
* that I had a false appreciation of how good I actually am at counting
* the medication I was on has affected my eyesight more than I realised
* I shouldn't try and do counted work when I need to concentrate on something else
* my recollection of how much I dislike counted work was underrated 😃

It has been a very stressful week with multiple catastrophic technical issues (which is probably not the best time to work on this type of embroidery) so there have been a lot of errors. I have re-started a couple of times. The base fabric is a very loose weave, so the black thread has a tendency to slide under the base threads. To combat this I am working over two threads rather than one.

I am slightly further along than shown in this picture; I am onto the next line of embroidery (which now has an uneven motif in one corner). I decided to leave the wonky mistake in as a reminder to myself to concentrate.