Crazy Pennsic Project
Categories: silly projects, sewing, SCA
So, the short version of this story is that I took on a somewhat ambitious project for friends (the Tadcasters) before Pennsic. I’ve learned to use several of the awesome features of my embroidery machine and gotten the hang of the digitizing software to some extent. The whole project took longer than I expected but not by much and I didn’t even curse people during the process. Plus, Andre has a spiffy new cloak. If you’ve never seen Andre fence with a cloak, you should. He’s amazing. Plus he has this new cloak you should check out.
The following are project notes, mostly for my own reference and rambling…
The longer version involves many hours poking at a sub-par image file to make it into something digitize-able. Why is it that every other group in the SCA has a pretty, clean, happy jpeg image of its emblem but the Order of the Golden Rapier has a poor photo of an enamel pin? Anyway, once I got to the point of digitizing, there were then several iterations to get things right… some test sewing… more edits and iterations… test sewing… changes… etc.
Thanks to IanRaven, the OGR has bottom fangs! HURRAY!
The digitizing is really quite fun once you get past the pixel-by-pixel editing in Photoshop to get a clean image to digitize! The software is slick and easy - and I don’t use these terms to describe software often. Given the original cost of the DesignerPlus software from Bernina, I’m glad it was so simple. The tutorial actually helped out a lot as well. Oh and the repetition of digitizing the same image over and over until it came out the way I wanted it to! This project took so many iterations in part because the original image was so poor. I’m curious to see how things will go with a cleaner original.
The construction of the cloak was pretty straight-forward, especially since I took the pattern from Andre’s original cloak (yes, that’s a gaping hole).
Corduroy and wool twill with generic machine embroidery stabilizer ($1.29/yard from Joann’s). The corduroy didn’t take the embroidery well - tufts came through. I might be able to remedy that another time I think. The math on the dags worked out well and there are 10 OGR emblems on the cloak. Trace, embroider, re-trace because the marking pencil wore off… cut, pin, sew… futz with the collar… hand sew (gasp) the collar closed…
It was presented to him by the Tadcasters at Iron Bog’s baronial court at Pennsic. The best part of the court presentation was definitely everyone grinning at Andre as he tried out the cloak. It apparently flies well and pleases the fencer because he has since been dubbed “Don Linus” for clinging to the new cloak. Hurray!
More photos over at Flickr… More Pennsic photos as time permits!
tags: bernina, bernina artista 730, designerplus software, embroidery, fencing, fighting cloaks, machine embroidery, order of the golden rapier, sewing, silly projects





