I’ve been working all week on the design for my new Canterbury Knight quilt that is the companion quilt to Canterbury Silk. It may be questionable whether I really made progress yet or not.  🙂

I thought that getting the knight and horse right would be the toughest part, that is until I started trying to get the border right. LOL. I am still thinking about it…is this the right border? Should I redraw the knight and his horse? I researched and found that a lot of Medieval illuminated manuscript central pictures have fairly elaborate backgrounds, especially where knights are concerned. Almost all of them I could find on the Internet and in my reference books appear to have a castle, so I put in a castle. They also often have trees and streams. I plan on adding those, but just haven’t gotten to it yet.  I found a piece of pure silk that has some wonderful colors for the background of the central part.  It will require backing with a fusible interfacing, but I think I will use it.  It kind of resembles what I put in the drawing, but is much prettier.

Anyway, here’s my design concept so far. There is much work on it yet. PLEASE DO NOT copy and paste this design elsewhere. If you want to share this whole post, that’s ok.

Design concept for Canterbury Knight

I am still unsure about the border.  I have identified several potential border designs from ancient manuscripts.  I may back the whole thing in black and use the rest of this design.  I may replace the berries with flowers in some places.  But I do want creatures…birds, and especially an owl, and animals…mixed into the border.  I am thinking I will have to draw it from scratch (another week of work).  The A is only a placeholder.  I’m hunting through my resources for the right embellished A in the verse.

Sew have I really made progress, or am I going to redraw everything…that is the question.  🙂

Sew happy everyone!  Merry Christmas!