Unicorn embroidery finished!

...or, at least it's almost finished. The actual unicorn is done, but then of course I will be a lot more work later when I attach it to the dress. Then I have plans for even more embroidery which will go on the same outfit... But for now I'm happy. It's a bit too cute and princessy but together with the rest I think it'll work just fine.

If you didn't read my earlier post about this embroidery and the 14th century original, here it is. 

My version looks quite different despite my attempts to follow the original closely. As I mentioned before I had some trouble with the head, where the lines were drawn just a mm outside of where they should be, resulting in the head looking 'thicker' than the original. I really wanted to fix that but I couldn't, not without redoing the entire head. But other than that... Well obviously I had to create the parts that were too worn off to be seen in the picture, and I chose to add the same kind of tail and horn as can be seen in other medieval unicorns.

14th century outfits finished!

As the wedding of our dear friends K and A approached, we scrambled to finish our 14th century outfits. Isn't it strange how you always work on a project up until the last minute, no matter how much time you've had?

The deal was this: Marcus did the main part of the sewing (on a machine, neither of us particularly enjoy sewing clothes by hand... I know, it's almost blasphemous to say so but get over it!) and thus put together both of our outfits, while I made buttons (lots and lots!) and did the embroidery for both of us. The actual fastening of the buttons on the clothes we both worked on.

I had hoped to get much more embroidery done... but it took forever! The small collar embroidery took longer for me to finish than it took Marcus to sew both of our outifts! Gaaah! *frustrated* But the outfits turned out pretty good I think, even though they're not as heavily decorated as I had wanted them to be. Or what do you think?

Here is a close up of the collar I made for Marcus. The pattern I found online somewhere, I'm sorry to say I forgot to note where it came from...

At least I know where I got the inspiration for my embroidered belt. Have you seen the gorgeous Malterer tapestry? See the borders? Yeah, that's it!

At first, when I thought of the 14th century fashion I imagines Marcus in tights and a short tunic, a bit like this. And for me, something like this one. The thing is, neither of us really appreciated that style! So we searched for alternatives and found quite a lot of late 14th century sources with a completely other feel to it. The inspiration for my dress came from a multitude of sources from the late 14th century, with buttons along the front and wide sleeves, and a rather tightly fitted body. For Marcus' we went with the long and flowing outer robe over a tightly fitted tunic. (Like the robe of the man to the left in the picture to the right, and the inner tunic of the gentleman in the middle of the pic to the left!)

So here they are, our finished outfits. Or well, at least semi-finished - I am still determined to to put on some more embroidery and perhaps other decorations as well, but that could take a while for me to finish. So for now, here they are.