Heraldic relic pouch in-progress

Several months ago, at Christmas Revel, Her Highness Emma (she has since become "Her Majesty") complimented a knitted wool pouch I had in my basket.  Well, when you say nice things to craftspeople, sometimes you get nice surprises.  I decided to design and knit a relic pouch as a commemorative token of her reign.  Her personal arms I found on OSCAR, a society-wide heraldry database; the stag chart came from a late-16th century German needlework book, the floral motif was inspired by similar charts in the same needlework book and extant pieces of heraldic knitting such as a Spanish cushion featured in Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting, and the oak leaves and crowns were designed by me, though a trial and error.  At Gulf Wars I took a class on knitted pouches, and the teacher pointed out the utility of incorporating simple horizontal bands to give the composition structure.  After arranging the major design elements, I added in the checkerboard bands to separate the pattern blocks and add some height to the finished piece.

The extant relic pouches and cushion mentioned above were knitted of very fine silk.  As much as I would enjoy the challenge of knitting with silk, my budget absolutely does not allow it.  As a substitution, I chose to work with 5/2 mercerized cotton (purchased from a Gulf Wars vendor), which has a sheen similar to silk, and is not as likely to stretch as wool.  The ground color is a deep royal blue, which would have been achieved in period by dyeing with indigo, and the foreground color is a vivid gold, which can be produced from a number of different flowers or yellow onion skins.  Cotton and other plant fibers are less apt to absorb enough natural dye to hold a deep hue than protein fibers such as wool or silk, but the commercial dyes used to produce the materials I purchased mimic the aesthetic results a dyer could achieve with silk and the proper plant dyes.

That's all for today.  I leave you with a pair of pictures, one showing the public side of the work, and the other showing the inside, which will soon be covered with a lining to prevent the floats from snagging.