I survived hand binding!

I think the fifth sewing circle of hell is hand-binding corset tabs into eternity.

I'm pretty ashamed of the inconsistent job I did on this binding, but I grit my teeth and did it and now it's done and other than a very small amount of adjustment I'm just going to have to live with it.

I do have to give my friend Karena some mad props for saving my sanity on this.  While I was at fighter practice bitching about sewing down this stupidly frustrating binding, she offered to take it on in exchange for some consultation and drafting work on her own Elizabethan outfit.  In my weakness (I think I said something about oh please take it away just make the pain stop) I took her up on it.  She ended up getting waylaid by her own sewing deadline for a wedding, so i ended up doing most of it anyway, but it was enough that i could rediscover my motivation and push through it.  THANK YOU!  It still needs 9 sets of eyelets around the waist, a bit of boning adjustment, and binding around the armscye.  I'm waiting on that until last because I might need to make adjustments to the armscye for comfort, and I've found the best way to figure that out is to wear it for reals once or twice.

If you've been following this you might have seen that my original pattern was for a one-piece corset with lacing only up the front in similitude of the effigy bodies, but the boning made it shrink to the point where it was *really* overly busty in the front.  The back was split and eyelets added (criss-cross style instead of spiral, because I know from experience the limitations of my dresser/husband) and the effect was perfect once I gave the girls a little more room.

I also looked closely at the gold silk bits that made up the original binding, and I *think* I'll have enough for two 1" rings of guards around the bottom of the matching petticoat.  I'll be reacquainting myself with my rotary cutter shortly to find out for sure.

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.