Bayeux Tapestry

[Mishatu]

So, my sweetheart is a huge nerd, both in the traditional sense and the modern sense, and at a Renn fest we attended a couple weeks ago, he went nuts over bits of the Bayeux Tapestry we saw in one of the stands. Being a huge sucker for punishment, I told him that I would be delighted to stitch the entire thing for him if he can get an image.

We've found a book on Amazon that should have the entire tapestry in it. I'm planning on embroidering it, as I feel like I'll be able to get the most detail that way.

ANYWAYS. My whole point of this post is to ask a couple of questions. What fabric would be best for this sort of work? What kind of stitch do you think would work well (not necessarily the Bayeux stitch; bf doesn't care what kind of stitch I use!)? And, most importantly, am I the only one here crazy enough to try to stitch the whole thing?

(And if someone happens to have some delightful patterns, I would be ecstatic to see them)

[Eliste]

Wow! Ambitious project! I look forward to you putting your progress up somewhere so I can see it take shape.

What fabric would be best for this sort of work? What kind of stitch do you think would work well (not necessarily the Bayeux stitch; bf doesn't care what kind of stitch I use!)?

I'd suggest linen, because its a general good purpose hand embroidery fabric, but it really depends on your stitch selection. When you figure out what you want to stitch, you might find some of the discussions on Needle'n'Thread helpful in figuring out what fabric to use.

I definitely think that embroidery is a better option for this than any counted technique, as you'll get more detail in it. Simple stitches will probably work best as more complicated ones may be too much for the details. You could look into crewel techniques, which you can stitch in normal floss instead of wool, which might work well. Actually, having just looked it up, it appears the original Bayeaux Tapestry was done with Crewel so it would be perfect.

Crewel likes a solid base fabric, so linen would work. Benefits of this is linen isn't tooo expensive, lasts a long time, will handle well for the length of the project, and can be washed easily later. Just make sure its not too thin. You might want to back it with something as well for stability, but you can get away without to much extra with linen. Also the BT itself was embroidered on fabric, not traditionally woven which would be . I'd make sure its not white-white material, but an off white or cream. That way the end result will look a lot more like the original.

Here's another link discussing crewel and linen. That article is talking mainly about crewel in wool, which you could do, but I think for the look you'd be better off doing it in normal floss or floche as wool has a tendency to get fuzzy which will mean the details don't look as well. Also its harder to do the details with the thicker wool threads.

And, most importantly, am I the only one here crazy enough to try to stitch the whole thing?

Possibly. On this board, almost certainly but I'm not ruling out the crazy historical embroidery fanatics out there.