Work in the city kept the guilds busy. Word spread of the artist study and soon all the guilds were working on Ink Circle patterns.
As you go about your business in the city, you notice that there is a flutter of activity. You see vendors setting up displays of specialty threads, favoring shimmering threads and a beautiful array of purples. Bunting banners and pennant garlands are being distributed around the city, all made from luxurious fabrics dyed a rich plum color. You wonder if The Weaver had a hand in making the beautiful colors.
You spot a member of the Magic Guild aiding in the distribution of the banners. Curiosity gets the better of you and you approach.
‘What’s going on?’ you ask, figuring if anyone knew, she did.
‘Don’t you know?’ She asks, raising an eyebrow.
You shake your head.
‘Oh, that’s right, this is your first year here, isn’t it?’ She asks.
You simply nod.
She smiles widely. ‘You are in for a treat,’ she says and starts to dig through her bag. She pulls a piece of paper and hands it over to you. ‘You didn’t hear this from me.’ She gives you a wink before continuing on with her work.
You watch her go before looking at the paper in your hands. There isn’t much written, and it only leaves you with more questions.
‘Magic is in all of us,’’ it reads. ‘The key lies in blackwork.’
Curious as to what it means, you decide to head to your guild’s library to find out more.
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Your Quest
Rumors of the upcoming festival have inspired you to start preparing for the festivities. With your only clue so far being a cryptic note about blackwork, your goal is to research as much as you can about this inspiring technique.
Spend some time looking at historical accounts of blackwork, instructional videos on the technique, and most importantly -- tracking down a pattern you'd be interested in stitching!
The pattern can be a free or paid pattern, and can be plain black or designed to use multiple colors or variegated threads! It can be traditional blackwork designs, modern nerdy designs, or even designs that incorporate both blackwork and cross stitch!
This is meant to be an introduction to blackwork, so try and stick to small/medium sized designs for now.
Remember, no stitching is required for this quest. Just some of your time researching this technique!
If you do decide to stitch it though, you can turn that in on the Bewitching Blackwork main quest instead.
Resources
We can't really give you a bunch of resources for this without just giving you a list of artists to pick from. You're mainly going to be googling things or searching on social media. But to help, we've compiled a list of links that touch on the historic use of blackwork and a few freebies to get you started.
- Practical Blackwork
- What is Blackwork Embroidery
- Blackwork Embroidery Lessons
- Blackwork Archives
- Using Cookie Cutters for Blackwork
All done? Reply here with a link to your chosen pattern or tutorial. This should be directly to the designer's shop or website, not a Pinterest link or direct pattern. Let us know a bit of what you learned about blackwork while searching for a design!
If you did this quest back in August 2020 on the discord feel free to re-submit the links you found then, find a new one, or both!
Reward
- SQ_R_BlackworkResearch.png (3.11 KiB) Viewed 18098 times
