Although, I did the panel in tent stitch, because that's what the V&A Museum website said. Then I spoke with Mistress Cellach, who said "No, those are all cross-stitch- the Museum hasn't updated the website." And sure enough, looking at the high res photo, it's clearly cross stitch- which was a valuable lesson for me: Look with My Own Eyes. Not that I doubt museum professionals- they have far more experience than I do, but in this case, the website didn't include all the relevant information.
So I now have this odd, cruciform panel. Reading through "Emblems for a Queen" by Michael Bath, I noticed some uncut panels, and I decided to incorporate corners into this panel, and turn it into a pillow, so it's of some use. I'm creating my own emblems for the corners- spiders for the top two, and flower slips for the bottom two. This mimics the corners of some of the existing panels. Although no panel includes spiders in the corners, panels do include butterflies and snails, and spiders are a completely legitimate 16th century embroidery motif (as well as being a part of my heraldry). However, I haven't noticed any uncut panels with "insects" in all four corners, so I will fill the bottom two panels with floral slips, which seem to be a reasonable accompaniment to the insect corners.
I plan to complete the corners in tent stitch- this will match the body, as well as serve as a reminder to Look with My Own Eyes.
