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Last week I designed my guidon and today I painted it. Yay! I ended up going with Essylt's suggestion of "mens animosa, mollis animus" for the motto because I really like the symmetry in it and it fit really nicely into the space I had for it. Plus it does a pretty good job of conveying the message, and it doesn't have to be glaringly obvious - I know the joke is there :D

My previous attempts at silk painting (now stuffed away in a box somewhere) left me somewhat terrified of the whole procedure but it went swimmingly, mostly due to Duenna Catalina's guidance. She has it down to an art - gutta in the morning, go out for lunch (mmm Ikea meatballs), then come back and do the painting. Also we have better paints and silk than the last time I tried. My gutta is a bit thin in places and I had some bleeding over the lines but its no worse than most other people's. Yay - I silk painted and it didn't kerplode!

Progress shot and finished shot following. The banner on the other half of the silk belongs to William Montrose (and is rather awesome, I must say).

I still need to put the hoist on it and hem it maybe - we tried putting thick fabric paint around the edges plus fray stop but looking at the frayed ends of the banners of people who have used this method before it might be worthwhile hemming it as well, I don't know.

Also Catalina helped out with my petticoat/hoops. Looking at the inspiration pic (which I should probably scan in) it has a really wide bottom guard. So seeing as the problem was it being way too short in the front I'm just going to cut it short all the way around and make a contrasting guard. It doesn't look like much yet, but here's a progress shot: