Project run and play week 1

Croeso i Gymru - Welcome to Wales

Land of dragons, castles, myths and legends

Wales might be small in size but it’s big in history. It has the most castles per square mile in Europe, it’s the birthplace of Myrddin (Merlin) and Arthurian myths (as well as many other legends) and it possibly has one of the coolest flags in the World. How many other countries have a Dragon as their emblem!

The first theme for project run and play was On location – make the most of where you are. In a way this was my perfect theme as most of my patterns already reflect the location in which we live. I asked the boys and they agreed; Knights and Dragons. Or as the boys decided- why not Dragon Knights!

Well luckily I had the patterns ready for this. The Pendragon add-on armour set for the Ser Gawain Knight top (Pendragon is of course the name of Uther, Arthur’s father- who was born nearby and means Head/Chief Dragon) combined with the Dragon wings pattern. As far as the boys are concerned, you cannot have too much dragon in an outfit!

If you would like to vote for my project or any other designers project in this season, please go to Project run and play.

Some of the more eagle eye may recognise the top fabric themes from last year. The panels and fabric were perfect for this theme and the boys were outgrowing those tops so I made new ones (early Christmas presents!).

The dragon on the panel is an ancient emblem of Wales, being associated with Uther Pendragon, This is why I asked 42 custom fabrics to print it with matching scales. You can’t have a Pendragon top without the dragon emblem.

Owain Glyndwr also adopted this dragon in gold (red is and was the original colour) when leading an uprising against the Norman/English invaders of Wales (circa 1400’s).

The tops are made in cotton lycra throughout. As for the colour choices – one boy loves green and the other red. Which makes things easy and very Welsh!

One thing I’ve always thought the Knight theme was missing is some armoured trousers. Luckily I have a partly drafted trouser pattern so I simply blocked it for armour effects.

The front is padded and lined inside to help with those annoying knee holes that seem to happen as soon as they put any trousers on! And stops any seam irritations

And the back has a couple of blocking stripes to look like leg armour straps. I used a needlecord fabric for the main part of the trousers and the blocking armour pieces are made from matching cotton lycra pieces from the top’s fabric (padded, lined and quilted as mentioned with fusible fleece and cl). I’ll be working on this pattern for a release next year hopefully – with and without armour options.

the wings are made from woven fabrics. I used spraytime from Makower as I wanted them to go with the outfit but felt the wings and main body in the same scales would lack contrast. The spraytime fabrics are great as they have a blend of shades within each colour which meant they matched the scales fairly well. The wings are again lined with a fusible fleece and quilted.

Being Wales – of course the weather was gloomy with a hint of gloom and rain but we managed to get some taken before the inevitable downpour. The site is an old Abbey which has the graves of many Welsh Princes (Prince being used instead of King in Wales) dating back to a 1000 years or more.

The boys love visiting here and I like to think that the buried Princes would approve of two young Welsh lads practising swordplay above their heads. As you can see – they had a whale of a time.

It must be the Welsh blood – youngest decided to stick his sword in the ground and then pulled it out with a flourish. Not sure which of them would be the once and future king however. Sure it’s a one man job.

Sword play between brothers – that always ends well, right? (Loving the fact the Pendragon visor looks a bit like elf ears from the side – might be future idea to explore :))