Mike F wrote:Based on the embroidery topic, are there records of charges being embroidered on a surcoat? I'm thinking primarally for my Agincourt (1415) garb, but I also have a mid 14th centruy surcoat I'd like another one of.
Got access to interlibrary loan? Get yourself a copy of "The Jupon, or coat-armor, of the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral" by Janet Arnold, in
Church Monuments VIII.
Mike F wrote:By embroidery, I mean the sort of patch-style thing with thread we see nowadays.
Perhaps you mean
appliqué?
Mike F wrote:Also, since my arms have a gyronny (see left) should I make the charges first, then sew them on, or shall I make the gyronny then embroider directly on that?
Since you have a gyronny ground, you should be drawn and quartered and your head put on a pike as a lesson to everyone with complicated-to-stitch heraldry. Sicko.
Oh, wait -- that probably wasn't the sort of advice you were looking for ...
What I'd tell you to do, if you're making a dressy surcoat with your heraldry, and there's no upper limit on your budget:
Piece together the gyronny ground (and, since we're going dressy & pricy on this idea, might as well pipe-dream up some silk or some velvet). Don't cut it to the surcoat shape yet -- just draw the surcoat shape onto the fabric. (You'll want to be able to keep the fabric taught as you're working on it.) This would be a good time to press out the seams on the back of the fabric.
Draw the outlines of the wolves and sun onto the surface of the fabric. For any areas you want to have a raised or padded effect, stitch down a layer of gold-colored felt. (Add a second layer of felt for bits where you want things to be extra sticky-outy -- the wolves' left front legs, perhaps, or the center "face" of the sun.) Additionally, baste some cotton (or lightweight linen) fabric on the underside of the fabric where your figures will end up being; this is just for additional reinforcement of the fabric (serving the same function, more or less, as the interfacing used on the reverse of machine-embroidered garments today).
Couch gold purl around the outlines of the sun and wolves, and couch gold passing thread for the fill-in bits. Perhaps, instead of the gold passing thread, I'd gild some leather (or, money being no object in this hypothetical case, buy some gilt leather from someone else), and use that for the ground of the figures, with couched gold purl on the outlines.
For a less-dressy surcoat (for typical SCA combat) and the assumption that your budget is
not astronomical:
Again, piece together the gyronny ground, as above, but this time, since we're going for affordability, maybe a cotton twill or linen twill of good weight. (And again -- draw the outline of the finished piece onto the fabric, so you'll know where the cut lines will be, but don't cut it out yet. And press the seams on the back, too.)
I'd probably go with a bit of padding (felt in roughly the same color as the yellow fabric you're going to use for the applied figures) to add some dimensionality to the figures (much as advised above for goldwork), and maybe also use cotton or interfacing or some other reinforcement on the reverse of the fabric where the figures are gonna be. (But for appliqué, it's not as necessary.)
Then I'd draw the figures on yellow fabric. But we're not going to cut them out yet -- first, we're going to embroider them. For all the interior lines, I'd use split stitch -- since we're being budget-conscious here, I'd point you at perle cotton in DMC 310 (and a chenille needle), rather than black silk thread, but if you have a place near you that sells silk embroidery thread, go for it. Don't stitch all the way to what will end up being the edge of the fabric -- leave a couple of milimeters from the edge.
Before you cut out the wolves and sun, it's a good time for you to think about the method you want to use to attach 'em. Personally, I'd probably cut close to the outline, use Stitch Witchery or Wonder Under (having tested first on the yellow fabric to see which one would be more suitable) to bond it to the ground fabric over the felt pads, and then couch a thick black thread (probably more of that DMC 310 perle cotton) all the way around the edge, to cover the join between the yellow figure and the ground fabric. You may feel more virtuous by creating a little margin around the edge that you can turn under, carefully stitching little buttonhole stitches all the way around the edges. Or you may decide that you like my method, but you want to use your sewing machine's zig-zag stitch and then touch up the sun's points with Fray-Chek. Whatever, dude. 
It's your surcoat.
In any case -- once the figures are embroidered and/or applied to your satisfaction,
then cut the gyronny-pieced panel into the surcoat-piece shape, line it, and sew it all together.
On the other hand, you could use
Cennini's instructions for gilding velvet or wool, or for making "devices out of gilded paper" ("Now and then, for these tourneys and jousts, devices are made on the covered horses and on the uniforms, modeled, and sewn on these productions.") Or any number of modern fabric-painting techniques, including
silk-painting.