Shift Design

For the design, I am doing a floral band with honeysuckle, rose, borage, a gilliflower, and a strawberry. The designs of the flowers are all hand-drawn by me, using the same templates I created for my polychrome coif. 

When I originally drew the band, I made it two inches wide, based on Janet Arnold's drawing of shift 1979-14. However, my husband pointed out, and I agreed, that the design seemed a bit too wide- and re-examining Arnold's drawing, it does seem to indicate that the design itself, not counting the "border", is less than two inches. I shrunk my design down to 85% of the original, which gives it a width of 1.625 inches, which seems visually to be more accurate.

The floral band will repeat 1.5 times (approximate) on the bodice of the shift, and 2 times down the length of the arm. I chose to do 4 isolated animal motifs, as this is in keeping with my inspiration piece. I chose the owl from Richard Shorleyker's "A Schoole-house for the Needle", as I am a senior member of the East Kingdom's embroiderers' guild, Athena's Thimble, and owl symbol is the owl. The other three motifs- a grasshopper, cat, and turtle, come from textile t.88-1925 at the Victoria and Albert museum. This is a late 16th century English piece that is ink on linen, and is surmised to be for embroidery. (These animals also have special meaning to me, and I like the idea of wearing them close.) The animals are all about 1.25-1.5 inches square, in keeping with the original sizes of the extant shift. I may need to move the grasshopper ever so slightly to the left, so his back end isn't so close to the floral border.