Clothing my little people

 I am blessed with three amazing offspring in my life- all of whom love playing in our SCA games. The majority of our household started out playing in a later period (but have since wandered about periods and cultures) and so we dressed our smalls similarly. 

Quite possible the funnest part about dressing children is that often their clothing is made with the excess fabric or re-adjusted garb pieces handed down from other children and/or older siblings. 

These photos are a mismash of various items I've sewn for the dress of my children since starting the SCA in 2005. There are many many more. 

Late period German Standard for Gera

 I was recently excited to recieve a request from the lovely Gera Gangolffin for a banner with her arms, in the style of late period German heraldic display, specifically centered around the Holy Roman Empire. 

The following references were pulled from the Bavarian state library via their Image similary search tool. 

From "Wapen. Des heyligen Romischen Reichs Teutscher nation" by Jacob Koebel, 1545 You can also see a copy here at the Library of Congress. 

Gera's registered arms with the society: Gules, a pall inverted Or and overall a trillum argent 

The challenge here was to incorporate her personal arms into the styles of a German Standard. In most visual references of styles for this period, a standard would be tapered to a rounded end, with the badge or ensign of the people/place it represents closest to the hoist (attachment point on the pole), as shown in a lovely display here, by HE Cormac Mor of An Tir. 

In the case of these German visual references, there seemed to be much more body to the standards with very little evidence of the taper, although this plate does seem to show a rounded and smaller(?) end to the body (one of dozens surveyed).

Here are a few of the reference images used for inspiration in creating the mock ups presented to Gera (below)

I presented Gera with the following Mock Up Ideas, the top being her first choice

The bottom two, as is probably obvious, differ dramatically, as they are based on a more English/French style for the period, Which included the taper/dove tale end as well as a host of more detail in the designs body. 

Ultimately, I created this Standard for Gera to most appropriately mix her personal arms, and the style of her chosen period/culture: 

As a minor note, this Standard measures 22" by 90", which would be considered small for a field Standard (as far as can be determined by the pictoral references included, handily with a human body for size reference). However, for Gera's request and uses, this size is plenty large. 

My inference about the size depicted in the reference material is that when the point of the Standard is to be seen by soldiers from across a large, loud, chaotic and potentially smoke filled field, the bigger, the better. 

Amicus Musarum

 This was a requested Original scroll for Their Excellencies of Stromgard, Hlutwige Wolfkiller and Ivon Drengr for the recipient, Cara da Fortuna, in AS XLIX.

The layout and illumination is based on a 16th century, Italian, Book of Hours. 

Because of the amount of text and page/layout constraints for the original, I sketched some pieces as they were, and moved around other elements to work with our space needs.