Chitterne Now and Then
Blog Archive - July 2011

Sunday 31st July 2011 - "Your Blog"

Comment: A friend and I parked outside the village hall last Friday while we stretched our legs out to Yarnbury Castle, Clay Pit Hill and around. I bumped into your site while I was looking up some other information. I just thought I’d say what a pleasure it was to browse through it. Keep it up, the site is very informative and of course your jottings are the future’s history of Chitterne.

May I also take the opportunity to say thank you to the charming lady who so kindly agreed to us parking at the village hall.
DR of Gillingham

Wednesday 27th July 2011 - Illuminating 2

The letters around the edges of the baptism roll were sketched in pencil. I had to change the title to "BAPTISMS" because Baptism Roll wouldn't fit the design I had in mind, too many letters. But then "CHITTERNE" across the bottom was one letter too long to balance BAPTISMS so in the end it was a compromise. Luckily ALL SAINTS and SAINT MARY had 9 letters each for the two sides.

Next the outines of the pencilled letters were inked in. This was very scary because the ink is permanent and I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea to ink the letters or leave them in pencil. I decided to go for ink then rubbed away all my pencil lines. Next job is to colour in the letters and tiles.

Wednesday 20th July 2011 - Illuminating

Where has the past month gone? In a whirl of Flower Festival, kneeler stitching, and gardening, so where were we? Ah yes, making a banner for the Flower Festival; the process seems to intrigue a few folk so I thought I'd explain how it's done by recording the making of a new Baptism Roll.

This is the first Baptism Roll I have attempted so first I needed an idea of how it should look. Usually with the Flower Festival banner the festival theme immediately suggests a picture of the finished banner in my mind's eye, complete with the type of font and the colour. So with The King James Bible theme I knew straight away that it would be black, gothic type script, no further thought necessary.

The Baptism Roll was quite different. I had no idea what it should look like, other than that it shouldn't be the commercial type you can buy ready-made, which are pretty abysmal, no, they are totally abysmal. Though why it should bother me so much when I'm not a great fan of baptism anyway is another story! So, to get an idea I resorted to the ruminative method, that is I let the baptism roll simmer on the back-burner of my mind for a few days and sure enough an idea eventually bubbled forth. The plan is to make a lettered tile border all around the central section where the baptisms will be listed.

Next to plot out the idea on the card using mathematical calculation. Not my strong point, centimeters and millimetres have me foxed! I still use inches with the festival banner, but the card for the new roll is metric sized so I have to use the dreaded mms. This photo on the right shows my second attempt at drawing the lines for the border. Then I sketch in the position of the letters to see if they will fit and how they will look. To be continued...

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