Baronial Archery Champion Cloak

Cold weather is here in South Australia, and I have been thinking about warm clothing options for winter months. As I was considering options, I came across pictures of this cloak I made several years ago and forgot to post about.

The cloak is made of heavy wool, and the style is inspired by this extant piece:

Cape of Garzia Medici -held at the Pitti Palace. See more info here:The clothes of Cosimo I, Eleonora di Toledo and don Garzia - Auris Lothol (auris-lothol.info)

(A big thank you to Salome for this reference!)

The cloak was created for the Baronial Archery Champion of my local SCA group to wear. The plan is for every Archery Champion's heraldry to be displayed on the cloak in chronological order of winning the Championship.

The wool is fulled and slightly felted, and so doesn't fray, which meant that it did not need to be lined.

There are currently two other Champion cloaks in use in my group; red for the Heavy Champion and blue for the A&S Champion.

The neck is bound with yellow twill tape which also serves as ties. All the sewing was done by hand, and the little arrows were embroidered.

Embroidered Heraldic Patch for the Archery Championship Cloak

Recently I finished an embroidered heraldic badge for a friend.

Last year I made a woolen cloak as the regalia for my Barony's archery champion.

A friend of mine won the Championship and I offered to embroider his device for the cloak, as he doesn't embroider. The patch is just a small version of his heraldry, embroidered as a slip on a calico base and then added to the cloak.

I actually had two attempts at this because I was really unhappy with the first one.
I traced the design onto the calico with pencil and then I used a small piece of iron-on interfacing on the back as a stabiliser. I have found that this helps to stop the base fabric warping and puckering. I used a small hoop for this project.

This is the second attempt. I did something a little different, and used some small chain stitches as well as the split stitch that I usually use for these badges.

The flosses are cotton and also cashmere. The cashmere is the central stitching behind the tree. It is fairly delicate floss compared to the cotton, so we will see how it stands up to wear and tear.

Dragon Device for Championship Cloak

This week I finished a small embroidered device for a friend. It will be sewn onto a Champions Cloak to signify service as Champion in heavy fighting. It was a fairly simple piece, except for the dragon. I had to embroider the little dragon by eye because I couldn't trace the design onto such a small area and the satin ribbon wouldn't take the chalk. I am quite pleased with how it turned out.

The design was marked out on felt with Frixion marker and the satin ribbon sewn down.

The dragon was embroidered in split stitch with crewel wool.

The shamrocks were embroidered with chain stitch in crewel to give texture.

Silver thread was couched along the edge of the satin and black crewel was used to outline the shamrocks. Another piece of felt was sewn to the back to cover the stitching.