Repairs and refurb before and after

This Knights Templar banner arrived with us in a serious state of disrepair.  As with so many banners of its age, the ground silk was rotten, weak, water stained and frayed and disintegrated to the touch.

We carefully removed all the hand embroidered detail elements of the banner and cleaned them to remove a build up of dust and years of neglect before placing them in an air tight container with a partially closed vial of fabric friendly mould fighter.

We then recreated the banner and carefully hand stitched the detail to a back padded ground of Dupion silk, using 'gold' thread'. 

A good amount of the original silk ground fabric within the embroidered 'patches' were thin and fraying so we inserted matching colour scraps of fabric and over stitched the grain of the fabric to stabilise it wherever possible, and we hand tacked all the gold detail to the ground once mounted to ensure it didn't unravel again over time. 

We added tab tops, piping, fringe and cord (sourced from the USA) and made custom matching tassels as the original notions were all beyond repair.

Masonic banner:  original state

Masonic banner:  refurbed, repaired and restored