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: 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: December 2010

December 12:  Solstice

Yay for actually finishing a thing on time!  No time for sleeves, but the dress itself is finished.  Now its just a matter of adding another layer, getting some accessories, and sewing on some bling. 



I love how this turned out.  The silk is so light, but with the lining I was able to make the pleats look really sharp.  I got a ton of compliments on it.  I was scared to death to let anything stain it, but I managed with no messes at all, and just a bit of grime on part of the hem from all of my walking around.

Here's the back:



Ånd here's my new farthingale!  I held up beautifully all day, though the tape on the topmost cord undid itself by the end of the evening.  I just need to sew the ends together properly.  90" is probably the perfect size for me -- it gave just the right amount of poof and didn't inhibit my movement at all.  Win!



Drew didn't look so bad himself, either.  He made extra pieces for his court outfit (the hat, red hitoe and purple hakima) in about two days.  He considered himself the best dressed Japanese persona there, and I have to agree. 



He was almost kinda sad that everyone noticed the hat (that took 20 minutes to make and starch) more than his enormous pants (which took the better part of two days).

January 8:  How Cool is This?

by "Master A.W", Portrait of a lady, c. 1536. 
(I thought I'd found it on Wikipedia, but turns out it was from Kimiko Small's website)

I'm a total sucker for black and pink.

But not right now, with my latest project nearing completion.  Focus!

December 16:  Project Update

I spent a long weekend with my family out in New Hampshire for my little niece's baptism, and it was a great mini vacation.  I was hoping to hit the ground running to complete my Solstice project, but after waking up at 4:30 am EST to catch my flights back, I was pretty much useless for the day.

I made a new farthingale, though admittedly I wasn't really intending it to be as such.  I just got three free yards of dupioni silk and decided to make a 10-gore petticoat as something of a practice piece for my A&S kirtle.  The gore technique is fabulous -- by just cutting 10 trapezoids out of every bit of the fabric, I ended up with a beautiful full skirt with a fantastic drape.  Since I went along the width, it was super long, so I decided to gather it up into 5 2" channels for an Arnold-style farthingale, and I boned it with some upholstery cord from Home Fabrics.  It has some issues but I'm pretty pleased with it.  It's a smaller circumfrence than my first farthingale -- 90 inches around the bottom instead of 120, which I think will be an improvement.  I might go even smaller in the future but I want to see how this one goes first.

I'm also making a new kirtle, out of a white stash silk.  Looking through the little scraps of gold silk I had left to try to extend my hem, I decided it was a worthless cause and I made some quick cash selling the gold kirtle to my friend Anna (who is now the lucky recipient of TWO kirtles that I made but can't wear, *grumble*).  But I took my time over Thanksgiving break making the bodice for this next one, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.  I had a successful mockup with two layers of canvas with just a bit of hemp cord to reinforce the lacings, so I'm playing with this concept for a bit -- it seems to fit better with the sillhouette of the 1530s-40s (especially with all of the layers expected of a court outfit), but I have to see how it wears on my body for more than a few minutes at a time.  I plan to cut and pleat the skirt hopefully today (Pics to come up then, hopefully) and do some fun sleeves. 

It's time to consider the jeweled bits on the neckline.  I was trying to find some gemstone-type cabs at Hobby Lobby or Joanns, and came up empty-handed.  The closest I could find were some acrylic flat-backed gems, but they were only in packs of multiple colors and sizes and it didn't seem to be enough of the right size or color for what I want (which is admittedly pretty nebulous).  Currently I have some pretty metal jewelry links that will hopefully get painted to a nice gold color (I found some Testors spray paint that should hopefully turn out well) and some pearls, but it seems a tad plain -- I need something colorful and maybe a bit glittery.  Stuff from Firemountain seems to come so close, yet miss the mark:  Something like this could be nice, but 6 mm seems really small.  Alternately, this could work, but I'd have to glue it on, which might backfire on me.  This would be awesome, but way too expensive to actually get enough to glam up an entire neckline.  Maybe I should check the thrift shops once more.

The kirtle is my only solid goal for Solstice, and while I can probably wear it with my black velvet overgown I don't know if I will (it has some issues).  I thought I could manage a brand new overgown too, but that will have to wait until 12th Night.