This project eats a certain amount of intelligence.
Or maybe it’s fairer to say that it consumes a lot of intellectual brain power. The black banner of the Druid order doesn’t have much challenge to it at all. It’s gray and yellow on a black background. Put down one piece, sew it in the right place, put down the next piece and sew it, put down the next and sew it. Four times and you’re done. The order isn’t particularly critical.
The white banner is a lot more challenging on various mental levels. Angles matter. Shapes matter. Getting things correct has challenges of its own. Remembering how you did things the last time involves calling up memories from looking at the old version of the banner from a year and more ago.
And of course, looking at that “old version” makes you realize how much you’d prefer doing that one over again.
For example, interfacing. Last time, you sewed everything in place without stabilizing the fabric first with interfacing. Interfacing is some sort of lightweight felt with some sort of steam-activated glue. I don’t know how good it is for the environment — but it’s a LOT easier to get seams to lie flat if you do it this way.
Last time, I pieced my squares out of numerous strips of cloth. What a ridiculous solution that was. It led to all sorts of issues with the fabric not sitting right on the base cloth of the banner.
I don’t recommend that solution at all.
This time I folded cloth twice into squares, cut out a middle section, and created whole ribbons of cloth to form the yellow and green squares. And I pieced nothing. Some cuts of the yellow square made it possible to interleave the two squares to form the double-square knot that forms the outer border.
And of course, the third challenge was pressing. Any garment (or banner) looks great if you press the cloth about twice as much as you sew it. The more pressing, the more professional the final product. And yet, the more pressing you do, the more pinning you have to do, and un-do, and re-do — and the more likelihood that something will slip permanently out of place or in the wrong direction.
So here, I sewed the segments of yellow and green into place, then removed the gray trilithon and yellow rays of light, and pressed everything again and again. Then I attached the trilithon, and pressed, and then the rays of light — and pressed.
I think I did better than OK here on these banners. Overall, it appears that I’ve learned quite a lot — quite a lot! — from my year of practice between the pair I made for myself a little bit more than a year ago, and these for a customer. Of course, now I have to wait additional time. There IS supposed to be some trim on these banners, of course — and so I’m now dependent on UPS for a delivery before I can complete them.
It will be worth the wait. Of course.
