Kingdom Award Badges - Round 2 (With Pictures)

This weekend I kept chugging along with my work on developing cutwork patterns for our Kingdom award badges. I'm now moving on to a few of the slightly more complicated badges which require a bit of a different technique.

First up, the Thorbjorn's Hammer badge.

The pattern for this badge is actually fairly simple, but it has a couple of aspects that add an element of complication to the mix. Both are elements I'll need to master as there's lots of evidence these techniques were used for the cutwork book covers, so I may as well get working at it.

So the main difference between this and the previous two badges is that the main charge on the badge, the hammer itself, is actually a floating element. So, unlike the other badges where it was just a matter of cutting out a pattern, for this one I actually had to cut out the hammer as a stand alone element and then paste it separately.

The other slightly different element is that the hammer needs a bit of tooling on it so that the handle has the right 3-D feel to it. So I had to do small tooling on a cut-out pattern before it got stuck to the badge.

Here's a picture of the pieces cut out:

And then of course after they are painted (with fabric underneath to get the right contrast):

Next up is the Orion badge. It has similar elements, with the ring on the outside and a floating main charge in the middle. The main issue with this one is the harp because I have to cut out the harp strings, which will give me a bit of practice on really small cutwork shapes.

Here are the pieces cut out and painted.

I have two different purple fabric colours so I tested it with both. I ended up going with the darker colour on the left because it's more herladic, although I think I need to find some different fabric that's something in between the two for future badges.

Aaaaaaand, here are the two finished badges trimmed and mounted on a belt loop.

I actually think the Hammer badge is my favourite so far. Really happy with how it turned out. I think folks will really like wearing something like this (particularly if I can shrink it down so its a bit less cumbersome).

I think the Orion still needs some work. I'd like to get the strings straighter, and next time I think I'll use purple to do the outer ring instead of black, it makes the overall badge too dark right now. Plus, I think I'd try to find some lighter fabric for the purple.