A Secret Santa Project
About six months ago, I picked up the book Purses in Pieces: Archaeological Finds of Late Medieval and 16th-century Leather Purses, Pouches, Bags and Cases in the Netherlands, by Olaf Goubitz and was instantly entranced. While the purses featured in this wonderful book are all from leather, I've found it to be directly translatable to heavy fulled wool.
Thus the bag on the left. It was made using a single piece of very heavy fulled wool which was cut and the folded over. The top gap is an other cut which helps the belt thread through the top loops. I chose to line this one with a nice linen and then to add an interior pocket pouch, as can be seen in the photo below.
This particular project was a Secret Santa gift to Sir Richard Fitzallen. who is a Knight from the Crusades in the SCA. His device is appliqued on the front flap using a combination of intarsia, piecework and embroidery. The intarsia field is done in fulled wools, over which the white fulled wool castle tower is appliqued. It's stitched on using perl cotton and the estoiles are also executed in per cotton.
This is a very simple project and was actually planned that way, as compared to some of my more embellished projects. It was very hard to hold myself back but I wanted something that would be capable of fitting in with Sir Richard's persona and wouldn't be out of place with his kit.
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The interior of the bag, showing the linen pouch pocket. |