By request, the Caerleon over-sleeves I showed you the other day, with the Swiss kirtle: Black linen shell, with a gold linen lining. No interlining. Gold linen buttons. The Caerleon company motto is painted on the inside of the sleeve cuff, so that when I have the cuffs turned up, they face away from me (see top picture). The motto is Ut simus invicti: "together we are undefeated." There's an Ansteorran star painted inside the top of the sleeve, so that I can turn the top down over where I have the sleeves pinned onto my dress to show the star, if I want. The motto, star, and the three white lion heads (which are the device of the company, though properly they're shown vertically on a black field), were all painted in plain old craft store acrylic craft paints, mixed with a little fabric glue and water, to help the paint soak into the fabric and resist cracking. I mix the paint with a tiny bit of water, and some fabric glue or Tacky glue (at a ratio of about 3:1 paint:glue, with just a few drops of water). The water helps the paint-blue mixture flow on a brush; the glue basically turns acrylic paint into fabric paint, allowing it to soak into the material rather than forming a crust on top which could flake off, and it also makes the dried paint flexible to help prevent cracking. (Eventually, yes, the paint will crack and flake; but this mixture lasts a long, long time. I have a banner I made many years ago for another group I belonged to, which hung in a tree by my campsite for about four years in a row, and it never showed any damage from the elements). Previously... The sleeves above are my first set of sleeves. There's an introductory period to membership in my company, and certain conditions that you have to meet to be fully inducted and to earn the right to wear the lions. Before that, you can wear the motto and colors only. So my firs set of Caerleon sleeves were simpler: Gold linen with black borders at the top and bottom of the sleeves, and the motto painted in the same way, with the paint-glue-water mixture. .
