The Crowning Glory

I put the Crown on last night. It was a lot trickier than I thought it would be but WOW does it look good.

I can see the end in sight!!!

Flag 14/10/05

Yippee, Yahoo!! I finished sewing the last of the embroidery last night, All that is left to do is put it all together and present it on Nov 5th to the regiment.

Alf's Flag

The History
I joined Alf’s Dragoons in early 1992 and I recall talk of an embroidered badge for the Regimental Flag being bandied around forever. The first to attempt this project was Bridget, who joined the Nursing corps in 1993. After Bridget moved on, Michelle took up the challenge and it eventually found its way to me some time in 1999-2000.

The cross stitch which had been previously attempted just looked wrong, I tried a Florentine stitch and that just didn’t sit well either and to be honest at this time, that was the full extent of my needlework knowledge. I knew that you could do fancy embroidery stitches but I just didn’t know how or even where to go to find out what I needed.

As I pondered the problem of my lack of ability and how to provide the Regiment with a fancy type badge, Tania presented the regiment with an Appliquéd Badge for the centre of the Standard. At last the Regiment had a flag they could be proud of.

I still had a picture in the back of my mind of something else. I couldn’t do anything about it so I filed it away to be bought out at some time in the future.

In 2001 I became involved with SCA, a medieval recreation group who focus on not only fighting but the “Arts and Sciences” of the period. I saw people doing embroidery that I never thought could be done without a REALLY expensive machine and megabytes of programming. I watched and learnt and started on my journey.

I worked really hard on perfecting my skill and creativity with needlework and in 2003 I was accepted into the “Worshipful Company of Broiderer’s” as an apprentice and I had a whole new world of research and authenticity opened up to me.

NOW as Alf’s we tend to do things pretty much our own way, as long as we keep an air of Victorian life about us, there is no one to say… “that’s not period” and that is just how we like it. I learnt in SCA the value of understanding the context of historical articles and to honour the context of their creation. It is still OK to develop your own creation as long as you know, understand the authenticity and can explain why you did it your way – there is a lot of that in this project!!


The Initial Research
I set out to find a genuine extant Regimental Flag c1880. I thought this couldn’t be too difficult given that we were a Victorian Colony mostly settled by ex-military. It was a little harder than I thought, but finally found a beautiful set of Flags in the St Andrew’s Church in Cambridge. These Flags are often held in Cathedrals, churches and Museums when they are retired.

Design
After my first bits of research about, what colours were and the history of colours, Ralph and I put our heads together in mid-November 2004 and came up with the basic design of the flag. I started to put it all on paper on November 21st 2004.

The central roundel was of course our logo with the Alf’s 5th Waikato Dragoons Device in the centre. This was topped by a Queen’s Crown. The supporters, a Lion and a Pukeko flanked the roundel (later changed to smaller emblems in the corners of the flag, as the supporters were really too big and we found no evidence of supporters on a Regimental or Queen’s colours). Underneath was the Motto in gold, “God save the Queen, Wizard save the Empire” Some time in May 2005, Ralph said – “wouldn’t it be neat in Latin” so it became “Deus savo Regina, Veneficus servo Empire”. Towards the end of the project we decided that the Latin just didn’t look right so we changed back to what everyone knew. Fortunately before I started stitching.

I would initially complete the first 5 Battle Honours and encourage the Ladies and Gentlemen of the regiment to complete the rest in time.

It was then up to me to research, design and sew the individual pieces of the flag.

Central roundel.
This was by far the easiest piece to design. I just took the Alf’s Logo and blew it up, found a font the right style and size and trace it all on to the ground fabric.

The majority of the design is stitched in split stitch, with the lettering in satin stitch and a couching technique called Bokhara couching for the white.(although I think the bokhara stitches are wider than they are supposed to be) All worked in DMC cotton on a linen ground.

A black border will be couched on once the piece is on the flag.

Queen’s Crown
I did a lot of searches on line and in some of Ralph’s books for a suitable crown and found a number which helped me with the design.

I chose split stitch again for the red of the crown – slightly shaded. The gold is couched and for ermine I have used satin stitch. Once the crown has been stitched to the flag, the pearls will be sewn in place and stitching gold thread around the edges will finish the piece.

The threads are all DMC cotton and metallic thread on a linen ground.

Supporters
The supporters have been a bit of a problem since the start. I searched through many city coats of arms before finally settling on the lion from Herefordshire and the Pukeko from Hamilton.
The main issue I had with the supporters apart from – “oh my I will never get these done in time” was that as my research continued I found no evidence for supporters on a regimental flag in the way that Ralph had envisioned. There were often smaller emblems or mascots in the corners however and I finally convinced Ralph to accept this.

At the time the flag was presented the supporters had not been started, but they are still planned to join the flag – after I have had some time to complete some other projects.

The supporters will be stitched in split stitch in DMC cotton on a linen ground.

Banners and Motto
These were pretty much easier than the roundel, Simple ribbon shape with the lettering inside.

The motto is couched DMC metallic thread and as with the central roundel, finished with black cord once in place.

The honours banners were a little different, as I do not intend to sew all 95+ of them. This, we thought would be a good project for the ladies and gentlemen of the regiment to complete. I completed the first 6 and as many of the regiment have little skill in this area, I wanted to make it simple enough that everyone would feel they could participate.

The ground is lawn – cheap and easily available. The thread again is DMC cotton. The border is stem stitch, the lettering Split stitch and the gong is satin stitch. This is the only place on the flag where I have used 2 threads to sew. This will make it easier for novices to achieve a good effect.

Construction

The first thing I had to do before I put in the first stitch was transfer my designs to linen. To start I chose only the central roundel and the crown. I used the window as a light box – in retrospect I would rather use a transfer pencil as the fabric moves very easily.

I started with the central roundel and put in my first stitch on 10th December 2004.

Before long I got really tired of all that green and started work on the crown so I could add a bit of variety to the task.

These two pieces were by far the most complex and time consuming of the whole project and it felt like I was working on them forever. I am glad I started here because once they were done I felt like I had broken the back of the job.

It wasn’t too long before I saw real progress.

On the 19th June I finished the Crown and the roundel was finally completed on September 2nd 2005.

With the two main pieces complete, I advise Ralph and Annette to start hunting for flag fabric, and sat back to congratulate myself. Of course 3 days later I had a big panic when I realised that I was only 2 months away from the presentation… I had better pull my finger out!!

I started work on the banner on September 6th. This took a month – although I did have to take a break with the flu!! I finished on October 2nd .

But eee it did look very specky!!

I then began work on the honours banners, and just getting a weeney bit worried that I would not have the flag fabric in time. Nothing to fear, I got a call from Ralph and collected the fabric on October 10th. I laid all the pieces on the flag and was so excited I had to sew the first piece on THAT NIGHT!!

I then got right back on track and put the last stitch on the Battle of Hinemoa Park banner at 9.45pm on October 13th.

Which brings me to right now really - Have just spent the evening updating all my documentation.

And sew it begins

I have really enjoyed reading other people's Blogs, getting ideas from them and seeing how they go about things. especially since I am a bit starved for stimulation at times. SEW...I thought it was about time I started a Blog of my own. I have things I want to share and it is a bit hard to post them on lists. last night I finished the embroidery part of a project I have been working on for the past year. and now I have somewhere to show my work!!