And today – last but not least – I will show you the final progress pictures of the pearl embroidery for my 12th century belt project! 🙂
Even though I was tremendously looking forward to finishing this quite important embellishment step for my project, I couldn’t help the feeling of a certain amount of sadness as soon as I attached the last pearls to the surface of my new 12th century belt.
During the last weeks I was busy preparing for Gulf Wars and actually wanted to work on my “leg armor” for SCA “Heavy Fighting” today. Given the amount of layers and the thickness of the material I decided to do the sewing with the help of my sewing machine. But, well, after several hours facing a never ending fight with my sewing machine, I think I finally have to face the sad truth. My sewing machine really hates me and doesn’t want to cooperate with me at all. *sigh*
But life is too precious to end the day feeling frustrated and defeated. Therefore I finally decided to stop fighting my sewing machine and to embrace something I really enjoy – my new 12th century belt project and pearl embroidery.
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Last time I already added a good amount of pearls to my new 12th century belt but I was far from being done with my pearl embroidery at this point.
The bezants with the additional pearl embroidery look really great but I had the feeling like I could add a little bit more and do better…
And today let’s talk about one of my other favorite topics besides Klosterstich and surface couching – pearl embroidery! 😀
Well, pearls per se were and still are something very special. Their availability is quite limited and their price is rather high due to the natural production process.
Besides the beautiful appearance and shine pearls possess naturally, their rather restricted availability as well as their quite high monetary value might have added to their great appeal in the medieval age. I think that the usage of pearls for jewelry or pearl embroidery used to reflected the wealth of the person who could actually afford to use them in either high quality (large, round and with a perfect surface appearance) and/or in a very high quantity.