Indoor Heraldic Banner

As well as a silk banner, I made an indoor heraldic banner for  my friend.

I used velveteen as the base material and cotton broadcloth for the backing. I usually pre-rinse my fabric in hot water and dry and iron it before starting a project.

I enlarged the owl shapes and cut them out of felt (which I also used for the band across the top). I like using wool felt because it is easily available and doesn't fray.

I whip stitched the felt down and then embroidered over the edges. I couched a piece of gold cord across the edge of the band across the top.

 I embroidered on the details of the owls.

 I gave the owls multi-layered felt eyes to give a sense of depth.

Once all the details were done, I put the backing fabric and the embroidered velveteen panel face to face and machine sewed around most of the edges. I left a small section un-sewn. I clipped the corners to reduce bulk and then turned the banner right side out, pulling it through the un-sewn section. This technique is called 'bagging out' and is useful for sewing banners. It is important to make sure that the inside seams are sitting nicely; I run a bone turner or blunt knitting needle along the seams on the inside.

The final steps involved hand-sewing the smalls section shut and then turning a section of the top down and towards the back to make a hanging rod pocket. I whipped the section down, making sure my stitches did not show through on the front of the banner.

Finally, I sewed a section of creamy gold onto the bottom of the banner to finish it off.

Good starting points for researching medieval banners include:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraldic_flag
http://www.larsdatter.com/banners.htm
https://www.southerntailors.com/blog/the-origin-and-evolution-of-the-gonfalon/
https://www.theheraldrysociety.com/articles/heraldry-in-italy-during-the-middle-ages-and-renaissance/
https://www.southerntailors.com/blog/the-origin-and-evolution-of-the-gonfalon/

Heraldic Bunting

The head of my SCA household had an idea recently - buy some pre-packaged canvas flags and decorate them with the heraldry of the household to create a decorative bunting. I thought it was a brilliant plan; quick, easy enough for all experience levels, cost effective, and visually impressive.

I had some cheap poster paints in my heraldic colours and just got some fixative to add to make the paint into fabric paint. The coverage was not great, and the result was pretty streaky. I put this down to the cheap acrylic poster paint, and next time I would invest a bit more on pigment-rich, higher quality paint.

The flags are canvas with holes punched into them. I decided to buttonhole edge mine because it can get quite windy here, and I would hate for them to fray and fall apart.

This is a great project for younger people to get involved in; I printed my device off from the Roll of Arms and put the print up against a window to use it as a "light box''. After that, it was just a matter of painting in the lines and putting down colour. I followed the directions on the fixative bottle; in this instance the flag had to dry for 24 hours before being ironed with an indirect heat to set.