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While I was looking for ideas for the design of a soft parry, the idea came up that the apron for Viking Garb could be used as a soft parry similar to a cape. So down the rabbit hole I went and discovered the Scar Boat Burial via the Orkneyjar site and fell in love with the design of the mysterious whale bone Dragon Plaque. There is a lot of great information about the Orkney Islands and some beautiful images available for download too. It's well worth a read even if you're just a history buff and not researching. See link in Sources below.
The first challenge was to reproduce the image on an even-weave fabric. I printed out a photo and sat down with my drawing tools when I noticed something interesting. The design itself can be laid out using a series of circles, then the details built up from that framework. Image 1 above.
I do have a projector that I usually use to transfer images onto fabric for embroidery, but in this case I only used a ruler, circle templates and freehand with my trusty #2. I selected the center of the fabric and laid in the largest circle (yellow) followed by the middle size (red) and the small (green).You'll notice that my version on fabric is slightly more symmetrical than Image 1 above, but I'm a little obsessive with symmetry so that's perfectly OK with me.
I'm using a 39" long by 12" wide piece of 100% cotton utility fabric (unbleached) for this. It'll stand up to some wear when it's done, and some punishment while I stitch too. A lot of this is experimenting with new stitches for me, so I'm expecting a fair amount of frogging.
I'm using warm colors that complement the fabric so this should look nice when it's done.
The circles on the dragon are made using a buttonhole stitch. The collar is just a basic satin stitch in a burgundy, a gold and Ecru. I have also added in VanDyke stitch on the front of the mane and started working on the braided chain stitch (also called Hungarian Chain) which will run the length of the apron. I'm using DMC Pearl Cotton for this, I really like the satin sheen it gives to the embroidery. I'll post a full list of the colors used and amounts when the project is completed.
Sources:
Orkneyjar - The Scar Viking Boat Burial, Sanday http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/scarboat/
ANNE WANNER'S Textiles in History http://www.annatextiles.ch/index.html
If you're looking for more images of the MANY extant examples of whale bone plaques that have been found by archaeologists please visit my board on Pinterest! Click Here