• 
• 
• 
• 

  

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

  

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Time Out For Chickens

I actually put this together in December of 2007, as a gift for Brighid Ross, who was being elevated to the Order of the Pelican. I was working on the four bags that I had promised her in December and got inspired by a running joke that a group of us have had between us for about a year.

The joke consists of looking at situations (in the SCA, in life, whatever) and thinking of them in terms of chickens. Is the situation a chicken that belongs to you or to someone else? Do you need to pay attention to your chicken? Do you need to pay attention to someone else's chicken? Do you need to let your chicken roam? That sort of thing. At some point one or the other of us would get fuzzed up about something going on and inevitably someone else would ask "Is that your chicken?" As a philosophy, it's pretty handy. It forces you to really look at a situation and decide if you actually need to do anything about it.

For this bag, I used fulled black wool as the ground. I appliqued the chicken in two colors; goldenrod for the tail feathers and head/neck and a dark red for the wings. My inspiration for the image was from a Jelling stone which had a gryphon carved on it. I simply removed the front legs and designed wings instead.

Other applique work includes the three three-entwined-rings on the flap - a reference to Brighid's coat of arms which has three rings on it.

Chain stitch, running stitch, French nots and stem stitch - all executed in DMC #8 perl cotton - were used to embellish the appliques and to add the border around the central motif.

Lastly, I used the same dark red wool, cut into strips, to bind the edges of the bag.

A close-up of the embroidery on the chicken.