Ermine, why ermine?

As I was not at Spring War this weekend due to my work interfering with the more enjoyable things in life, it did mean I had a couple of days to kick back and work on the jupon.

I make much more progress on things when I'm doing them at home, uninterrupted. I even remember to transfer the jupon pattern to cardboard, and make little cardboard templates for the scalloped edge and the compass stars, which leads into my next comment. My jupon displays my device, which looks like this:

Now when I designed this, I intentionally went for a simple device that I could easily reproduce. Compass stars are nice straight lines. I can't draw beasties to save my life.

However, as I have been putting my device on various banners, shields, and now my jupon, I find myself asking the question "Why on earth did I think ermine was a good idea?"

I was looking at my mostly completed jupon on the weekend thinking "now all I need to put on is the lacing rings down the side" when I looked at it and thought "something is missing". Yep, I had forgotten to put the ermine spots on the bend. I am now in the process of sewing the little bastards on. It will probably take longer to sew on the ermine spots than it took to sew the rest of the jupon. I thought about painting the ermine on with fabric paint, but the fabric is velvet and the pile makes painting look a bit dicky.

Swearing and cursing aside, the jupon is looking very nice. The scallops came out well this time being a bit larger and being well clipped on the curves to help them sit flatter when turned inside out. Once finished I'll post photos. I'm hoping to have it ready for the Steel Rose tourney.