The napkins for the King & Queen

Finally getting around to posting on this. Previous mention of the napkins here. I had the napkins ready to go by the time of the Coronation at Purgatorio. However, I didn't get them into anyone's hands soon enough to get to the site in time (in my defense, school had just started about 2 weeks earlier). I was able to bring them to the October Crown tournament and deliver them in person.
So for my napkins for Alfar & Eilis, I took elements from their personal devices and embroidered them onto the blocks. I also learned a couple of new stitches for them. I mentioned this to Her Majesty when I presented them, but she seems to not really care very much about them. I got a brief "thank you" and I think I saw the napkins get put aside rather quickly. She gave me a rose for the effort though. That's nice.

His Majesty's device: for this a put one portcullis in the corner of the napkin. I worked it in Bayeux stitch with chain stitch for the chains. After finishing it, I fully realize that Bayeux stitch was the wrong one. The lines are just not big enough. I learned that Bayeux is better for covering larger areas. I also put the cross-gurgity in the other three corners, one in each color from his device. For these, I learned ladder stitch. This was nice because the ladders make a nice border edge that you don't need to do a stem or outline stitch for.

Unfortunately I can't find my pics of the crosses at this moment.

Her Majesty's device: for this I did the knot-work in the Hungarian braid stitch. It takes forever because it's fiddly, but I like the slightly raised line it makes. I put one of these in every corner of the napkin. Then I took her purple rose and worked that in Bayeux stitch. This looked a lot better than the portcullis on Alfar's napkin.

I entered the napkins in the Wreath of Athena competition at Crown. I have no idea how well I did. It's a populace vote competition and I find embroidery often doesn't "cut the mustard" since I think a lot of people think "oh I can do that." But the truth is, they don't and they won't put the time into it either. So meh. Sometimes people suck when it comes to crafting.

Here's a couple more pictures of me from the event. I spent the majority of the day hanging out in the salon with the needleworkers guild. it was nice to have an on the eric view of the tournament but stay in the shade. At one point the Youth Point kids came through. They were "pillaging" the different camps as part of their studies on the Vikings that weekend.

Heidi working on some gorgeous blacckwork.

Don't let that last pic fool you. I spent the day of Crown busily working on my own emboidery. I was working on blackwork sampler and some Hungarian braid stitch for the great game board project.