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: March 31, 2011

March 31

Best.  Fantasy dress.  Ever.


Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth in 1888


Her costume on display after intense conservation work.

Beading a dress with thousands of actual beetle's wings is just a step beyond.  The Victorians didn't mess around.

If I had any occasion to wear fantasy stuff, I'd be all over this.

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: January 2011

January 27:  Garb etc.

I got together with my good friend Michele (who decided to play in the SCA again after an extended break) with the intention of starting on my green linen kirtle, but decided (yet again) that I need a new corset.  It really happened when I decided that I really would try to draft a bodice pattern properly by using the sempstress body block draft and thinking that I could finally make pretty underwear that actually fits.  Now I'm sitting on a pile of red duck canvas and some magenta silk that I found ages ago and suddenly camp garb doesn't seem so important anymore.  I can't believe I keep doing that.

Anyway, here's what mine ended up looking like.  It took the better part of an afternoon, but it seems to work pretty well.



And here's my first attempt at a corset pattern that kinda resembles the effigy bodies.  Due to the brightness, you can kinda just barely make out the places I've marked out for tabs -- each one is 2.5 inches wide, and extends past the waist line for about 3 inches.



I started thinking that the back piece looked really weird, so I tried again with a little different placement of the side back seam:



I'm not sure what difference it would make between the two -- theoretically it could, since the angle of the boning would be different as it approaches the side back.  #2 will likely be a bodice pattern regardless.

In other news, I'm making decent progress on my handsewn 15th century kirtle, and I'll be posting pics hopefully soon.

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.

LJ Archives: November 2011

November 2:  Halloween!

Other than Tabby's totally awesome steampunk party Friday night, we were pretty mellow for Halloween weekend.  My Agatha heterodyne costume made another appearance, sans spats and plus sensible shoes.  I also whip stitched the front corset ends together which made it fit much nicer.  Drew made some new stuff from scratch (he made his shirt from a 1909 pattern, I'm so proud!) and reused his yellow vest thing.  I've got to get that guy in some pants that hit his waist, but otherwise, he looked great.  At the party, there was a friend dressed as a Book 1 Agatha, and I regret not getting pics together. 



We also got each other Nerf Maverics for early halloween gifts, and then proceeded to ambush one another with foam projectile goodness for most of the week.  We didn't have the time or resources to steampunkify them in time, but we surely will by next year.

LJ Archives: October 2011

Quoth Ellisif, "We didn't win, but we looked fabulous."

I'll say.



Ellisif did all of the work on her cotehardie, but I did the fitting (before she lost 20 lbs too, so it's a bit loose).  I designed and did a significant portion of work on Vidar's overtunic -- Hastings did the trim on the bottom hem which was a huge help as my list of things to do was pretty outrageous.  It's actually something of a mockup -- it's a proof-of-concept for future Varangian stuff.  The tunic and trim came from a sari.  I did as much as I could with Ellisif's hair, which is to say, not much, but I did little buns and pinned the veil to them with fancy straight pins, which kept it on her head perfectly for the whole day.

I finished my gold kirtle, but I didn't think to take pictures until after I'd been wilting outside all day.  Next time, honest.