COAT of ARMS
What is a Coat of Arms?
A coat of arms is an heraldic visual design on an escutcheon (shield), surcoat or tabard. The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central element of the full heraldic achievement which in its whole consists of shield, supporters, crest and motto.
A coat of arms is traditionally unique to an individual person, family (except in the UK), state, organisation or corporation.
A Coat of Arms as a flag
The correct way to represent a Coat of Arms in flag format is to only include the contents of the shield.
You can of course have everything else on a coat of arms included but this will generally mean that the flag is very centre centric and in the case of a stitched flag to be flown, possibly too heavy to successfully fly outdoors.
Coats of Arms as flags are used to identify ships (where they are called ensigns) and embassies and they use the same colours and designs found in heraldry, although are not usually considered to be heraldic.
A country may have both a national flag and a national coat of arms, and the two may not look alike at all. For example, the flag of Scotland (St Andrew's Cross) has a white saltaire on a blue field (base), but the Royal Arms of Scotland has a red lion within a double tressure on a gold field (base).
College of Arms
We have good links with the College of Arms - click HERE for their official website.
Designing a Coat of Arms
If you have one, send us a picture / screen grab or sketch of the coat of arms (image1 below) which we will then adapt to the scale and format you require whether that is as a banner with tabs, a gonfalon, a flag or other format.
Whether you decide to go for a printed or stitched end product, we will need to produce a final representation of the coat of arms and its placement on its ground and we can do this for you (prices start at £30 plus vat per design (up to 3x drafts) and the client keeps the vectorised ai and pdf digital file for future use across all media) and its a great investment.!
Part of the process of digitising the coat of arms design is to remove very small detail which is not transferable to stitched format remembering there always has to be space around each layer of stitching to be able to trim back and reveal the detail beneath.
Once a final design has been agreed by the Client we send a no obligation 14 day quote with all the suggested print and stitched and fabric type options for consideration.
Printed Coat of Arms
If the choice is taken to proceed with a printed flag then the prices on our printed flag webpage apply - click HERE.Stitched Coat of Arms
When creating a stitched coat of arms, its important to consider a variety of textiles and textures to bring the investment piece to life.
Options include taffeta, linen, two tone fabrics, matt polycotton, MOD spec woven polyester and satin amongst others (CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FABRICS WE USE). There are many examples of the variety of combinations throughout our website.
To create a fully stitched flag, we follow a traditional process of projecting to the image to scale onto our studio wall and trace the design. We then take the chosen fabrics, trace each piece and layer and pin them in reverse on the front and back of the flag ground in reverse order. We then applique the design in close zigzag stitch and trim each element as we go to reveal the finished image.
Once the design has been fully stitched and trimmed, we cut the ground to size, fully hem (and where needed add piping and/or fringe) and then finish with tabs, a hidden sleeve through which to thread a hanging pole as agreed at the point of quote.
Time and patience are key throughout this process, creating a beautiful piece of art such as a coat of arms doesn't happen overnight so we ask for a minimum of 2-3 weeks lead time before we ship.
