LJ Archives: May 2011

May 15th:  New Project:  Effigy Bodies

I started this corset ages ago, before I really got my butt in gear to finish my blue kirtle.



It's fully boned (though I suspect I'll pull some bones out of the back) with cable ties, and is made with two layers of duck canvas.  There are only a few tabs cut out now, but I will cut out a few more later to keep it from fraying too much.


And here it is with the silk taffeta outer layer pinned in place.  It looks very similar in color to the last picture, but it's actually a really great magenta color.  Since this silk was from a thrifted skirt, I had to split the large front pieces more or less in half. 



I also wasn't super happy with how the front was connecting to the side back seam when sewing it by machine, so I'm handsewing it in place.  I'm not entirely worried about making it look pretty because I'm planning to cover it with a decorative satin stitch that matches the binding.

Which will be this:


Bianca had several large pieces of this gold silk lying around, some with the bias already marked, which was awesome, considering the trouble I had finding any at the fabric store.

Yay progress!

May 15th:  Kirtle Progress:  Tablet-Woven Reinforcement

To do the braid around the neckline and lacing edge of my kirtle, I used a simple setup of 2 cards with an SZ twist, with all blue thread that matched the fashion fabric of the dress.



The cards were turned in a continuous forward motion, which built up a lot of twist in the unused warp threads.  I wanted to have the 'switch' to happen at the halfway point at the CB seam, which involved untying the end and combing out the twist.  After the halfway point the cards were switched to backward turns.



Instead of using a shuttle, I just used a needle threaded with the weft thread (the same 1000 denier silk as the warps).  I used the needle to beat the weft, and then sew it down to the edge in a circular, whipstitch motion.

Note:  This process KILLS the weft thread after about two inches of work.  I had to use very small sewing lengths.  It's also not great for your fingertips and fingernails, which will get pressed on and scratched up.

Also note that in this picture I used the backstrap method to tension it (the warps are tied to a belt around my waist).  I don't recommend it.  After a while you won't be able to reach your shed.  This happened to me, so I set up two fixed points with a doorknob and a table leg.

Also, I about wanted to kill the little hummingbirds on my protege belt, the pointy little devils.



The flash kind of ate this shot, but you can see how it turned out.  You end up with something very much like a herringbone braid that sits not really on either side of the dress, but on the very edge between the layers.

I worked this while the front seam of the skirt was still open, which worked out really well.  Corners were kind of a monster, but I found that if you work a little weaving after you hit the edge but without attaching it, you could work up a little 'slack' and sew it onto the new edge after the corner.  No pictures of it, sorry (it's very hard to convey what I want a picture of to my husband, and taking it myself just isn't going to work).  I'll try to explain it better when I teach it.

The dress is currently hanging up, waiting patiently for gravity to do its thing before I sew the hem.

May 13th:  More Tablet weaving Crazy

It seems that when most people do tablet weaving they use something like this:



It's decent.  The design dates to something like the 1930s and Angie seems to always burn through her tension bar, but it's much more portable than something like this:



These setups are pretty cool, and conceptually it's the only way to do the crazy warp-sewn braids like what I did on my blue dress (for the class I'm going to try to have the cards threaded between two clamps on a table), but even if you make it collapsible, it's not exactly portable in the grab-and-go sort of sense.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel:



Box looms.

Technically the figure here is doing narrow rigid heddle weaving, but it can also be used to good effect with tablet weaving.  The problem is trying to find one that can go double-duty.  While this one from Spanish Peacock looks awesome, it doesn't look like they're offering it right now, and there are a few other sellers/SCA merchants that look to offer something similar in the 200 dollar range, though they all seem a bit too short to get a good shed.  Alternately, there are directions available to make one from scratch, which is beyond my capabilities (I need another sub-hobby like a hole in my head) but not beyond those of someone really awesome and talented.

Perhaps someone as awesome and talented as my mom. 

Did I mention that my mom is awesome?  And occasionally reads this blog?  And has woodworking tools?  And loves me so much?

May 10th:  KA&S and Tablet Weaving

Kingdom A&S was pretty tiny this year attendance-wise, and since pretty much all of the attendees were either entrants or judges, there wasn't much going on in the afternoon.  The fabric sale fundraiser seemed to work pretty well, but it seemed all of the good stuff disappeared right off the bat, so I didn't get anything.  My blue dress was only lacking a hem, and I need to finish pressing that and do it so I can get some decent pictures, but it got decent scores -- I don't remember the rank it got but it scored somewhere around 35-39 on average (out of 50).  My embroidered coif got masterwork level, which was pretty awesome since I have a lot of "this old thing?" feelings about it at this point (all of the scores were in the 40s). 

Even sans hem, I wore the dress later in the day and got a ton of compliments on it, including one from Elizabeth lamenting that mine was bluer than hers (and next to her she looked navy).  Win!  Everyone was also super impressed with the warp-sewn tablet weaving I did around the neckline -- if we go to Uprising (kind of up in the air right now) I think I'll try to teach a class on it.

I really should get more photos of my completed work.  It's kind of embarrassing.

Tablet weaving is on my mind lately.  A gal on   is working on a fantastic tudor-era gown with tablet-woven trim, and it made me think about how we in the SCA tend to stick tablet weaving on all things Viking and not much else.  And then I stumbled upon this!  And this:

16th century silk brocade with tablet-woven edge
Philadelphia University Design Center (via A Fashionable Excuse)

I mean, I know that tablet weaving was done in the 14th, 15th, and 17th centuries, but I'd never quite made the connection that it was still kicking around in the 16th.  Plus, I got a ton of compliments on the hairtie I wore to KA&S (a very simple pink-and-white striped design in silk thread).  So...there might be more tablet weaving in my future.  Especially since I just ordered this and this for my birthday.  Yay me!

LJ Archives: April 2011

April 15:  *No Subject*

Thinking once again on the lovely blue and gold (now blue and white) number I'm 2 years into based on this inspiration piece:


I figured out a passamenterie technique that would be very similar to the one used on the neckline trim, thanks to the passament class at Collegium.  I'm thinking I could probably make something nearly identical using silk and maybe even some metal threads.

Awesome!

I'm hoping to take some pictures tonight, but my 15th century bodice and 15th century skirt have come together to make something remarkably kirtle-like.  I went digging for the sleeves that I cut out ages ago and THEY WERE NOT TO BE FOUND ANYWHERE!!!  I hate my lack of space and organization ability when it comes to my fabric and sewing needs!  Since I was mad and impatient I cut out some new ones -- I had a 1/2 yard leftover from cutting out the skirt AND my original paper sleeve draft handy, so I guess I was meant to stupidly lose it.  If I had planned on long sleeves, I would be completely fuming now, but as it is I can sort of wave it off.  They're all pinned together waiting for my lunch break so I can start sewing them together.

I have a feeling that the original sleeves will turn up in about a month and I'll have to make a sleeve-shaped bag or something.  I think it would be fitting punishment for going missing.

April 4:  *No Subject*

Last night I got so sick of blue fabric I decided to start mocking up my next project:  a recreation of Saint Birgitta's Cap from the Birgittine Convent in Uden.  It seems that I always miss the best costuming memes by about two years, and this is no exception -- it seemed to be popular with recreationists a few years ago.  I don't blame them -- the existence of an extant garment and plenty of corroborating evidence in artwork of the 13th-14th centuries makes it really easy to document.

My library doesn't have Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4 (they only have volumes 1-3, and Interlibrary Loan is dragging its feet) but I was able to find a very partial version of it on Google books with the approximate pattern, so I was able to make my version look more or less like it.  Since it's just a mockup, I used a cheapy puple poly-cotton blend and some ribbon that was only long enough to go around the head once.

These pics were taken over some fairly severe bed head, so cut me a little slack.







In the photos it looks a little small on top and a little big in the back, but it felt great.  the ribbon coming around the crown gives it a nice tightness and kept it on my head for hours.  I think it just needs minimal tweaking from here.

The extant cap is 14th century, technically a bit earlier than the blue kirtle I'm working on, but the style seemed popular for over the 13th and 14th centuries and doesn't seem to be unheard of as late as about 1475 (http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/images/chaucer/H252_0186rwf.jpg).  Also, it seems really useful as a foundation for attaching further headgear and veils, which is still a valid need in the 15th century.

The attachment mechanisms for this cap seem pretty similar to those of coifs of the Elizabethan era (http://www.extremecostuming.com/articles/howtowearthecoif.html), so much so that I wonder if one style didn't just lead to another over time, but that's research for another day.

April 3:  Kirtle Progress:  Skirt of Death

it's feeling that way, anyway.  12 gores was just a tad ambitious.  I was really hoping to get the whole dress finished by the end of March, but I've been languishing on this skirt.  I made a lot of progress over Conference weekend, and it's at least now recordable as something resembling a skirt. The final hem looks to be maybe 5/8 of a full circle, which is pretty good considering I used about 4.5 yards of fashion fabric.  I did some math that led me to believe the hem will be about 200 inches, and even if that's generous, that's still a pretty full hem.  Awesome!

I was a little worried about doing a true pinwheel technique on this instead of doing something more symmetrical to the right and left sides, but it was a lot easier to sew it straight-to-bias with my particular sewing method.  Plus, there will be no weird stretching along the seams.

The technique seems a lot more obvious on the reverse side.  I haven't quite finished tacking down all the seams yet (you can see the 3:00 seam still needs the treatment), but I've gone over a major hump with this.  There are probably 50 hours in that skirt, easily.

And my poor sewing finger laments!  Thimbles seem to just slow me down, so I just deal with the needle pricks.

LJ Archives: February 2011

February 3:  Kirtle Progress Update

I'm now about five months since my start date, give or take.  Not that it's really taken that long, I've been stopping for research purposes and when I hit humps in my work, as I'll explain farther down.





It doesn't look all that great from the outside...


But it gets a little more impressive once you look under the hood.  In keeping with the London archaeological finds, I'm using silk ribbon (strips of fabric in my case) to face the lacing edge as well as the neckline.



The silk adds quite a bit of substance to the lacing edge to give it some stability.  With the facing and a (future) line of tablet weaving woven onto the edges, it should take quite a lot of strain.



And here's the neckline facing.  I'll mention now that the ribbon is cut on the straight grain, but eased very nicely around the curved neckline.

I'm actually really proud of this.  It looks just like the examples in Elizabeth Crowfoot's book, Textiles and Clothing.



Where I'm running into problems is in the armscye.  The edging isn't working nearly as well as it was around the neckline, probably due to the interference of the linen layer and the fact that it's a closed circle.  when I reach the 'end' of the pattern piece at the side seam, I have too much wool and not enough linen, and nothing I do seems to alleviate it.  You can see how it's behaving well on the right side of this section, but twisting in on itself on the left.



It results in an ugly and unavoidable wrinkle in the top of the side seam.

While it pains me to do so (I've attached the first row of running stitches on both armscyes) I think I'm going to scrap the facings here and simply turn under the edge.  I only really did them here in the first place because Textiles and Clothing said one of the fragments MIGHT be an armscye.

Once I motivate myself to get over this hump (it's been about three weeks since I put this down in frustration) the rest should be very straightforward.  I have the makings of 12 gores which will probably take forever, and the sleeves which should hardly take any time at all.

With Kingdom A&S in May, I have the makings of three solid entries:
-My embroidered coif (done for over a year, suckas)
-this dress (maybe 30% done, and most of the hard stuff is passed)
-tablet weaving on this dress (it'll be like nothing anyone has ever seen, srsly) which I'm now pretty solidly in the research phase for

I have a few ideas for the other two, I just have to get motivated and do it.

LJ Archives: August 2010

August 27:  Varangian/Byzantine sources

For Filing Purposes.

Basilios II, 11th century:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Basilios_II.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/BasilII.jpg

The Madrid Skylitzes:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Madrid_Skylitzes

August 26:  Handsewing

So here's what I mean by "sewing from the outside".

It's a construction method that, according to Ostergard, was common on medieval clothing finds in Greenland (specifically Herjolfsnes).  Greenland finds were pretty well representative of the rest of Europe, and are the only extant garments close to what I'm trying to make, so I'm trying to utilize their methods where I can.

I'm using small swatches of the actual material I plan to use for my project -- one layer each of blue wool and white linen, sewn with two strands of Gutermann silk thread (I used black for convenience as I had it lying around, but Joann's also has it in a matching blue).



I have two ends, and I press down the seam allowance on the left side (in this sample I'd pressed both sides, but it was only really necessary on the left side).


I whipstitch the two ends together, being careful to catch all of the layers while not making the stitches too obvious.  This is the aspect I probably need to work on the most.  The stitches go much closer to disappearing if I do it right.  Also, I find it nearly impossible to pick up the linen lining of the folded side as I work unless I make huge obvious stitches.  I don't worry about it to much, as the next step should take care of it nicely.



To stabilize the raw ends, I fell the wool layers around the linen and tack it down.  This is a departure from the Herjolfsnes finds which only fell one side--it's a true felled seam, but seems to work better on unlined garments.  It is, however, similar to European artwork that depicts lined garments (such as this guy).



This is how it looks from the front.  I could probably improve the tension so that the stitching isn't so visible, but there is evidence of such shadowing in the artwork of the period:



It is especially prominent around the neckline of Mary Magdalene's red kirtle in Hans Van der Weyden's Seven Sacraments.

August 21:  Adventures in Solo Fitting

Fitting by myself wasn't as hard as it could have been since I just draped the basic bodice over my duct tape dummy, but after that it was just a consistent pattern of futzing, cutting, sewing, trying on, futzing, etc.

It's a mockup, but it's made with cheap (re: Ugly as sin) wool lined with linen, to replicate what the actual kirtle will be made from.  Because I hate doing eyelets, I just tacked on some grommet tape so I could see what it would do laced up.  Drew and I agreed that the overall effect was very punk.



As a first mockup, this wasn't too bad, and was even fairly supportive,  The thing that annoyed me the most was a huge gap at the top of the neckline that was determined to be the Thing That I Could Not Fix. 



After several rounds of futzing, I brought it in slightly at the side seams, and brought the shoulder straps upwards.  It might not be super obvious in these pics, but it became much more supportive, so much so that  could "fill out" the top portion much better than before, which minimized the gap slightly, but not enough for my liking.  Note that the armscyes have gotten much smaller, due to my own stupidity.  That was a fun ten minutes trying to take it off.

There is some horizontal wrinkling under the bust, but I'm not too worried about it.  The skirt will weigh it down a bit, and even if it doesn't, there is plenty of evidence in the artwork that such wrinkling is fairly common.

I cut out the armscyes some more before trying to take up the shoulders again, but the gap in the top of the lacing still wouldn't budge.


I thought maybe I needed to broaden out the neckline farther out on my shoulders, and then it occurred to me that the arm holes were still pretty far past my armscye, and it was probably contributing to the gap in the front (evidenced by the long diagonal wrinkles from the shoulder to the bust).  So I clipped it some more, and also adjusted the shoulder straps -- in my futzings the shoulder seam had started creeping more toward the front, so I clipped the back shoulder strap instead of just taking in both the front and back.  It still felt kinda loose so I also took it in about 1/2 inch in the side seams as well.



I almost think I went a little too far with this -- This is the first it started feeling tight, though not tight in a constrictive, corseted type of way.  And while it felt very supportive, I thought it was doing weird smooshy things to the bust, as opposed to the nice rounded look I was getting previously.



The gap finally shrank, though it's not gone completely.  I think with expanding the armscyes a little more, especially as a result of setting in a sleeve, it should end up disappearing.

LJ Archives: July 2010

July 22:  Ho. Lee. Hell

Miniature Portrait of Charles I executed in silk and metal thread:  Gobelin, tent, and couching stitches.  c. 1651

I'm speechless.

July 28:  New Project:  Late 15th/Early 16th Century Kirtle

So it came to pass that I was looking at stuff like this:

 

and this:


And I thought the short-sleeved kirtles bore a striking similarity to the working class outfits the Tudors did in the 1520s.  I'd been wanting a slightly earlier (14th-mid 15th century) cotehardie for a while (I even have all the fabrics and everything), but I was never convinced that I could make it look good on my body.  Suddenly, the late 15th century waisted kirtles are looking better and better, with a similar aesthetic but with the added bonus of being able to easily transition into later styles with basically an apron and a partlet.  Plus, it'll make great camp garb, which I seem to always need.

And I have enough time, I could probably do it for the provincial A&S championship at Toys for Tots.  I've been really excited about the potential for handsewing the whole thing with a sort of whipped felled seam (from PoF 4) which could potentially go pretty quickly.

Wish me luck!