How to make your own Medieval seating chart

Guest post by Sunspirit

Tribesmaid Sunspirit made her own Medieval seating chart. It's absolutely gorgeous, and full of details like knights, shields, mythical animals, and ye olde maps. Here's how you can make your own.

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What you'll need:

  • 1 A3 piece of cardboard in a rustic color like beige
  • 1 pencil – trace everything up with the pencil before you use the ink pen
  • 1 ruler
  • 1 black ink pen
  • Old maps for inspiration
  • Crayons
  • A series of animals that will be the “table numbers”

Step 1: Inspiration
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Find inspiration maps on google or in your local historic archives. I did both. For example I found these to inspire me to draw the frame, how the land and water should be colored and how landmarks like forests and mountains should look.

Step 2: The frame
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Mark ½cm from the edge of the cardboard all around it and then draw a line between them to form the first edge of the frame.

7485459454 aa0f7e35a6 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)In the top two corners you draw two shields one with a girl above it and one with a knight. The shields can be colored to represent you and your fiance/e.

7485426142 f051d3f640 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)Then you mark a new line with dots 1½cm from the edge of the cardboard and connect the dots so you get a “trim” for a frame. Remember to leave room for a box in the top where you can write your names or table chart or whatever. Within that trim you make a pattern of you choosing.

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Step 3: The tables
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Depending on how many tables you have you now draw a number of boxes equal to the number of tables at the reception and big enough to fit the number of names seated at the table. The boxes can be shaped so they look like rolls of pergament. The animals chosen to represent the tables should be drawn above the boxes. We have six tables.

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Step 4: Land and sea
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I chose not to outline a specific shore but just let the pencil dance over the paper. But you can choose to sketch the country you live in. The more detailed the fjords, bays and rivers the greater it looks. On the land side you mark the outline with a brown crayon and the shore side with blue.

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Step 5: Details
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Now you can draw all the details you want, lakes, forest, mountains maybe a castle or fortress. And in the sea you can draw a mermaid, a ship, and a sea monster.

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Step 6: Write names and add final color.
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Comments on How to make your own Medieval seating chart

  1. This is so awesome!!! Kinda reminds me of the maps you find in fantasy novels, like those of Terry Brooks! 😀

  2. Oh man I wish I were a good enough artist to pull this off. We aren’t having a mideval wedding but we are naming the tables after animals for our forest theme. Styled a little differently this would be perfect! (We’re having it on a lake so I would have the lake be the center and the land around it….) Oh the ideas!

    • Huh, that looks like a really helpful website! Probably would have been a lot easier and taken a lot less time than sketching things out on scrap paper during a car ride…

  3. Oh heavens! I remember when Sunspirit first shared this with the Tribe way back in the NING days.
    It blows me away just as much now as it did then!
    She is s incredibly talented and the piece is utterly stunning.
    I can only hope she’ll submit a full profile after their wedding day!

  4. Oh. Em. Gee. Now you just have to label the head table “Hic Sunt Dracones”.

  5. Thanks for the sweet comments 🙂 I can’t wait for our big day to arrive, and see the theme coming together.
    – Sunspirit

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