Middle Earth Ranger Forum

My 'other' period has been drawing most of my time and energy lately, but I still always have a few Middle-earth projects on the backburner. I've been on Spring Break since Friday, so I finally have time to get a few wrapped up. This time it's a revamped fancy loincloth for Aistan.
Fabric is 100% wool (body and edging), linen topstitching, with mountains (split stitch) and trees (laid stitch) of Wilderland done in embroidery floss. I experimented doing the mountains in a chain stitch, but it looked entirely too modern and quilt-y for my rustic tastes.
I've had the body strip kicking around for years, but it wasn't until I realized that the herringbone tweed would perfectly complement my geometric Beorning motifs that I decided how to use it. The mountain design is meant to mirror those painted on my otzi-style beltpouch and my hide shirt--because extra kit cohesion always helps!
Unlike my earlier breechclouts, the embroidery was worked on the edge panels before attaching to the body, so the backs of the stitches aren't visible on the back. Looking forward to getting many years of use out of it.

Love it. Looks fantastic.

Oh that's lovely! I do like the echo of the mountain motif - would you say the whole shebang is about together now? Or are you still reworking pieces?

That embroidery is amazing

Here's the latest reworked loincloth in an Anduin style. I've been doodling apiary designs for years (in anticipation of decorating my eventual honey horn), but I needed a spare 'clout to have in my pack so I adapted some of the designs to deco this instead. It turned out to be quite a rapid turnaround project: on Thursday morning this was a pile of fabric strips. Most of the work was done over 3 days, I did a little bit of tweaking and topstitching this morning.
This time the embroidery has been done with linen embroidery floss (its wonderful stuff, so much better than shiny cotton floss) on linen (dark unbleached, which I overdyed with bright yellow Rumex root. Apparently it did the same as on my hobbit lass's shortgown, and reacted or faded to a regular brown. Not that I mind). The flowers are done in a very pale green that didn't show up in the photo very well. Which, while not as colorful as I would like, is still authentic since a) colorfast green is hard to get with natural dyes, and b) linen doesn't take natural dyes especially well anyway.

The flowers, if it isn't clear, are meant to be clover, based on the description of Beorn's bee-pastures (Hobbit, Ch 7):
"It was the middle of the afternoon before they noticed that great patches of flowers had begun to spring up, all the same kinds growing together as if they had been planted. Especially there was clover, waving patches of cockscomb clover, and purple clover, and wide stretches of short white sweet honey-smelling clover."

I struggled for a while on how to depict the bees...how to make them not look like wasps, or cute cartoons, or egyptian flies. I found this specific design--in profile, with the wings represented by straight lines--on an image of beekeeping from c.1087 CE, part of something called the 'Exultet Scroll', by one Barberini.

Beautiful work. Absolutely beautiful.

I love it! Oh the bees are adorable.

Beautifully done! I really like the bees as well!

I thought the honey comb was instantly recognisible . Very well done.

very cool artwork