The MOAS office is so excited to announce the date of our Third Online Kingdom A&S Display, Saturday, November 6! To be a part of this next round please submit your information by Sunday, October 31st.
It’s autumn! In period, now would be the time to prepare for the long winter and the closing of activities: canning foods, stockpiling wood, fixing and creating wool garments for warmth. For us, though, now is a season of slow rebirth, as the Society takes its first steps to resume activities after the long pandemic.
After a long break, it can be hard to resume the old activities that once gave us so much joy. Let’s help each other out! Please share with us a project that you’ve started since a pandemic pause, or something you made during the pandemic to help you get through, or something from before the pandemic that you made and that gives you inspiration to start your A&S once more. Even unfinished projects would be fantastic, if they give you the spark of inspiration that is so necessary to restart after a long break. Remember: displaying your work is not only inspiring for you, but for anyone else who has been struggling to find energy after a very difficult couple of years.
Just send the following information to moas.display@eastkingdom.org with “Display” as the subject line.
SCA Name:
Barony/local area:
Optional – Link to EK wiki page (please consider including a photo of yourself as well if there is not one on your wiki page so that people can see who you are!):
1-3 photos of your item
A short description (1-3 paragraphs) of your item and its creation
Link(s) to any additional information about your item/art (your blog, hand-outs, google doc with more documentation, etc. – anything that you want to share with people!)
An example could be:
SCA Name: Richard Heyworth
Barony/local area: Carolingia
About My Project:
As the hopes of a pandemic-free summer began to fade with the Delta variant, I lost a lot of my motivation for almost everything, and this included embroidery, a hobby that provides me with a lot of happiness. I needed something to get me back into the groove, and I discovered that a good friend of mine had received her Silver Wheel award earlier this year but had not received a medallion or commemorative item of any kind. It was exactly the motivation I needed to get back into making things – “it wasn’t for me, it was for someone I cared about!” – and now I’m back, making embroidery, feeling that happiness I had been lacking.
The piece itself is some fairly simple goldwork embroidery, using real silver passing thread for both the inner and outer wheels, with Splendor silk couching stitches to hold it down, which I sewed into a brick pattern that I think looks rather pleasant. Once I had the wheels done, I used thicker strands of the silk to create the divisions in the wheels. The spokes were created using silver purl, and the silk thread goes through the middle of the purl, which is a sort of tube of silver, formed by wrapping silver around an inner core, which is then removed (not by me! I just bought the purl ready to use).
The backing fabric is black felt, and I cut out two pieces and sewed them together to hide the stitching in the back. I attached a pin backing to one side so it could be easily worn by the recipient.
The hardest part for me in this project (as you can see) was the ring of pearls. These are important because they provide protection for the silver thread against getting hit by things, but they’re each individually sewn down, and they tend to shove each other out fo the way and produce less than a perfect circle. These are going to take some further practice to get right – a goal for next time.
We hope this example helps! If you have any questions about what to include please reach out to moas.display@eastkingdom.org and I would love to talk about it. Any project you are working on, big or small, new or old, would be more than welcome.
Art brings joy and inspiration, thank you for sharing yours with us all <3
Lord Richard Heyworth, Special Deputy Minister of Arts & Sciences for Online Web Display