I’ve been busy the past few weeks with making wall hangings to sell in my renfaire shop. In addition to favorites from last year (I’m making twice as many “Weird Hobbies” this time, so maybe I won’t run out on the first day again), I have eight new designs. And a half-scale version of the Lady and the Unicorn “tapestry” hanging on the back wall of my shop.

I plan to be at the West Texas Renaissance Festival in Odessa for the first weekend of June, and back at the Hub City Renaissance Faire later in the year.

“But that’s not what the DEVICE looks like!”

(See also: “Someone else is making/selling stuff with the device instead of the badge – why aren’t you?”)

I do a lot of surface-design work with populace badges for SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) groups: On Spoonflower I have allover patterns, banners/gonfalons, cut-and-sew badges, mug rugs (mini-placemats big enough for a mug and a snack), and banding (cut-and-sew trim) for every SCA group that has a registered populace badge and many that don’t. On Zazzle, Redbubble, and CafePress, I have buttons and stickers and car magnets and tote bags and coffee mugs and t-shirts… You get the idea.

Anyway, about the device vs. badge issue. It’s like this: At any given time, only a group’s leader(s) – the king/queen, prince/princess, baron/baroness, seneschal, or someone acting specifically on their behalf at that time (a herald at an event, for example) – has the right to use the full device with the laurel wreath(s) and all.

Many groups have a populace badge that’s basically the same as the group’s device except without the laurel wreath. (That laurel wreath is how you know it’s a group device instead of a personal one.) Some use an isolated element from their device, and some have a populace badge that seems to have nothing to do with their device (see: the Kingdom of the East, which has neither anything blue nor a tygre in their device, but their populace badge is… a blue tygre). Either way, if it’s not registered, it doesn’t count.

“Why can’t I just use my group’s device if I want to, instead of the populace badge? Does it even matter?”

From the heraldicart.org website:

In the context of the SCA, the July 1980 letter from Wilhelm von Schlüssel, then Laurel Sovereign of Arms, states “the arms of a branch are reserved to the head of the branch. In the case of a kingdom, principality or barony this is the King, Prince or Baron. In all other cases it is the seneschal. … At any event held in a branch the arms of the branch may be displayed whether or not the head of the branch is present, to indicate that the branch is hosting the event. In grand marches the arms of branches may be carried by groups marching as those branches. Otherwise nobody can display the arms of a branch as if they were personal arms.” […] As Lord Hubert de Stockleye says “A branch’s populace badge may be worn by any member of the group. … A populace badge is a badge designed specifically for members of the branch to display on their clothing, banners, and other items.”

I see a lot of “SCA merch” online with the full devices, and friends, I’m here to tell you that there are never that many people at any given time who are allowed to display those devices, and two or three people per group just isn’t big enough a market to make it worth the bother (which is possibly why the merchants selling heraldically incorrect stuff do it anyway). If you’re Baron of the Barony of West Hogglenose-in-the-Dale (a totally made-up name, by the way – there is no West Hogglenose-in-the-Dale), you can display the device of West Hogglenose-in-the-Dale while you’re Baron, but once you step down, it’s time to dig out the stuff with West Hogglenose-in-the-Dale’s populace badge and use that instead. (You also shouldn’t use the barony’s device to mark your personal stuff even while you’re Baron.) I used to think that those heraldically incorrect items were being sold by people who are not actually members of the Society for Creative Anachronism and thus have no clue what our rules are (like the non-SCAdians who sell “SCA legal” armor that’s nothing of the sort), but my own observations of SCAdians have taught me that actually, a lot of real SCAdians either don’t know what the rules are concerning use of a group’s device vs. badge (because their group’s herald is a slacker who can’t be bothered to tell them – or even to know it themself), or they just don’t care (and their group’s herald and leader(s) can’t be bothered to tell them… or the herald and the group’s leader(s) are the ones setting the bad example, as is sometimes seen.) completely ignoring our hobby’s rules about how/when certain types of heraldic display are permitted is how we end up with a group’s device on the loaner shields, for example, or tabards made to throw over curious modern folk who wander into one of our events.

Not all SCA groups have a registered populace badge, of course, and that’s another problem. It is a commonly held and incorrect belief that the badge is automatically ‘just like the device but without the laurel wreath’ and thus doesn’t need to be registered if that it what the group decides to go with. If it’s not registered with the Society heralds, it doesn’t count. (If you don’t know whether your group has a populace badge, ask your local herald. If they don’t know, either, they should look it up. If they decline to look it up, you can go to Name Pattern Search Form and look it up yourself. Be aware that sometimes a populace badge may not be listed specifically as a populace badge; I know of at least one case in which the herald who sent a submission did label the badge as ‘for the populace’ but it somehow didn’t get listed that way later in the official Letter of Acceptance. *shrug*) Of the more than 600 current SCA groups, fewer than half have a registered populace badge; a high percentage of these sans-badge groups are baronies, which means they’ve been around more than long enough to have gotten their act together and registered a populace badge. (Yes, they usually have many badges registered, just not one for use by the general populace to indicate membership in the barony.) If your group doesn’t have a registered populace badge, consider badgering your local herald until this lack is remedied.

Images from my Renaissance Faire Shop, 2025

My shop sign:

Having a thematically appropriate shop sign (it’s a Renaissance faire: no vinyl signs, please!) is a big plus when it comes to making a good impression and attracting customers. And lots of attention from local news people reporting on the faire: I don’t know if it’s entirely because of the “historical-ness” of the sign, or partly because the sign hangs perpendicular to the row of shops and therefor is just easier to see, but this sign always gets into video/photos from a faire. I could have gone with a painted wooden sign, but since everything I sell is made of fabric, a fabric sign just seems right.

Shop interior, right-hand side:

As you can see, I’ve changed things a bit from my 2024 setup: There are fewer mug rugs out at one time (the extras are in a box under the table, hidden by the fitted tablecloth — the red table runner hides a split in the tablecloth for access to the space underneath), and the rolled wall hangings are standing upright in their crate to make them easier to search through. There are also more wall hangings on display, because I have more designs. (I’m running out of wall space under this 10×10 canopy! I may have to seriously consider getting something bigger.)

The red string on the first three wall hangings is to keep them from flipping over every time a breeze gets into the shop. (I’m still looking for a good solution to this.)

Shop interior, back wall:

Another thing that gets a lot of attention for my shop is that “tapestry” on the back wall. (Plus, there’s often a big man in armor sitting in the wooden chair in front of it. He attracts a lot of attention for the shop, too.) The 4×6-foot tapestry is printed on heavy basket-weave canvas (because at this scale, the fabric needs to have some texture) and backed with cotton osnaburg. I’ll have smaller versions in my shop next year, and at least a few of the full-sized ones.

I had to put some of the wall hangings in front of the tapestry, because there wasn’t room anywhere else. (That’s another thing I’m working on; I’m already working on a new shop layout for 2026 that will give me more wall space to hang stuff.)

Shop interior, left-hand side:

Here’s the shelf with all the throw pillows. (The ones in the top row are velvet and feature images from the famous The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. The rest are cotton twill, and most have artwork from the Luttrell Psalter.)

The table toward the back holds a display tray with bookmarks (new in 2025), as well as the mini-crate that holds my business cards, and a bigger crate for paper bags to make the whole check-out process easier. (My card reader is tucked away behind the sign on the table.)

Requesting a custom textile design from Red Tansy

The tl;dr version: The more information you give me about what you want, the less time it takes me to create it. The less time I need to work on creating a design, the less likely I’ll need to charge a fee for that time.

I generally don’t charge for the time it takes to create a design, unless it’s a very complicated design or a lot of revisions are necessary. In order to avoid the latter, the customer should 1) know what they actually want, and 2) let me know what they actually want.

A vague description such as, ‘I want an old-style floral pattern, and I want it to be kinda small, in yellow and lavender’ is better than no information at all, but I need to know what yellow and lavender, and I need to know what ‘kinda small’ means in this context. Also, all my floral patterns are “old-style,” since I specialize in reproductions of medieval/Renaissance designs. What era are we talking, here, and what culture? Byzantine? Fifteenth-century Spanish? (‘Kinda small’ for a Renaissance damask could be a 12-inch horizontal repeat, if the original textile was twice that size.)

Also concerning color… I cannot work from Pantone colors; please do not send me a Pantone code and ask me to duplicate that color. I can work from a hex code (example: #8e0800, which is a lovely red), and if you have the hex codes for the colors you want, that really simplifies things.

If the customer doesn’t need an exact match – if all they need is ‘red and yellow/gold that look good together and aren’t too saturated’ – I can work from that, too. If they want, ‘THIS design [includes name of design and/or link to it in my online shop], but half-sized and in the blue from your “Renaissance Damask with Cats – Prussian Blue” because that’s my cat’s favorite color,’ the whole process of creating a design to those specifications would take less than an hour, and probably not require any revisions after I send the initial test image to the customer for approval.

(If the customer does need an exact match, they’ll need to purchase a test swatch of the design printed on the fabric of their choice. You cannot go by what the colors look like on your computer screen. Even many greys print lighter or darker than they appear onscreen.)

Unless I am specifically asked to do otherwise, all custom heraldic designs will be made using same colors I use for my other heraldic designs. (See any of my SCA/”Creatively Anachronistic” collections for examples.) This is because these colors look good together, have good contrast (the whole point of having rules about what colors can go next to each other in heraldry), and are strong without looking harsh. (I’ve noticed that many designers who do SCAdian stuff seem to use the same hex codes as are used for electronic submissions of heraldic devices… Thus, the yellow is intensely lemony instead of golden, the green is eye-searingly bright, the purple is too blue, and the blue is too dark.)

So that’s color. Another consideration is size/proportion.

Say a customer wants an allover heraldic ermine pattern. The color isn’t in question; ermine is black on white. But what size for those ermine spots? How far apart, or does that matter? (Also, should they be fairly simple, or should they be those extra-fancy ones with the spikey ends?)

There’s no way to cover every possible eventuality here, but you get the idea: the more information I have upfront, the more smoothly the design creation process works for both me and the customer.

Huzzah! It’s Renaissance Faire Time!

Tomorrow, I’ll set up my shop for the Cottonwood Renaissance Faire (because setting up the day before is soooo much easier than rushing to get everything ready in a mere two hours). The faire runs for two days: this Saturday and Sunday, from 10 AM to… around 6:30-ish.

Then, next weekend, I’m off to Lubbock for the Hub City Renaissance Faire, a one-day event. I had a wonderful time last year and am very much looking forward to it this year.

Photos of my shop from the 2024 Hub City Renaissance Faire.:

New in My Spoonflower Shop!

Sew-on banding (fabric trim) with SCAdian populace badges. Designs for all 20 kingdoms are already for sale, and I’ll be adding the other 200+ over the next few weeks.

The banding is sold as by-the-yard fabric. This means it can be made of any of the several fabrics that Spoonflower offers: basic cotton broadcloth, linen/cotton blend, silk/cotton blend, or even velvet, to name a few. Just cut the fabric into 2-inch strips along the fine lines marked for that purpose, tuck the quarter-inch seam allowances under, and sew as you would with a regular ribbon or trim. It’s a little bit more work to apply than ribbon, but the wide range of options for material are worth it.

(Image shown: “mockup” of a strip of banding with Atenveldt’s populace badge. The flax-colored edges at top and bottom are the seam allowances; they don’t show when the banding is applied.)

November, 2024: Latest Fabric Designs

One of the designs I added to my Spoonflower shop last week, a damask from Renaissance-era Spain:

I’m very pleased with the way it turned out. I made it in several colorways, including silver-grey on black. (Imagine this design on velvet!)

Then there’s this:

So many circles! I think I may now be done with roundels for a while (unless I see a Byzantine design that I really like, of course).

I’ve also added some new wall hanging/ tea towel panels, a Celtic zoomorphic interlace of running hounds in three different colorways, and several more SCAdian heraldic designs.

If something (relatively) more “modern” is your thing…

My other Spoonflower shop (Red Tansy 2 – easy to remember, right?) now has Charles F. A. Voysey’s lovely Arts & Crafts “Briar Rose” in several colorways, like this pink and grey on white version:

And this simple Art Nouveau design by Lewis Foreman Day: