Beth's dress

hounds

2007-03-19T08:54:00.000-05:00

Last year, Julie and I had a fantastic time playing for a weekend with Her Majesty's Hounds at the Virginia Renaissance Faire.
This year, we auditioned for places on the cast (auditions! memorization! public singing! scary!). And as you might imagine, since I'm writing this, we got invited to join the cast for the 2007 season. Best of all, we get to be part of the Guild of St. Hubert, which is to say, the previously linked greyhound adoption group. We are, shall we say, excited. We're playing two of the royal houndmaster's sisters-in-law, actual historical characters.

The picture above is of my charge book, which is a little book of useful information each new member is compiling. I wanted to do a little bit of embroidery to dress it up a bit. It's nothing fancy, just cotton embroidery floss on pale green linen. The HMH is in chain stitch. The dog is filled with a sort of staggered split stitch. The border is a chain stitch that then has been threaded through with the green. The dog is definitely supposed to be a greyhound, but I'm thinking it ended up looking a bit like Lucy. Oops.

the dog is SO over hats

2007-03-15T07:52:00.000-05:00

New hat. Better than the old hat. Lighter at any rate, since I used buckram and wire instead of plastic canvas. This is a pleated-crown hat covered in grey wool leftover from the ropa. The crown really is pleated, although it's tough to tell that since I went ahead and used black silk thread to cover the pleats with a decorative herringbone stitch. The twisty thing around the brim is black velvet with a contrasting chain stitch. I'm into these "new" stitches. It's lined with black linen. I followed the general method for construction from the Tudor Tailor, but made up my own shape since I wanted a curvy brim.

The dog is, however, not particularly impressed. He thinks it could have at least shaded his eyes a bit better for the nap.

better!

2007-01-22T21:10:00.000-05:00

Many thanks for the comments and suggestions on fixing my gapping problem from Julie, Laren, Allessia, Lia, and of course Mom. I really appreciate all the input. It looks considerably better I think (despite the bad lighting). At first I wasn't sure I was happy, but in comparison with the before picture, it's not bad. I used a combination of suggestions by doubling the number of hooks in the top half, sewing down the shank of the hook, and moving some back as needed. I think next time I do this I'll definite bone the edges too. I believe that may be why the green dress has no gap, despite similar hook spacing (and considerably less care in sewing them on). Thanks ladies!

dress of continual improvement

2007-01-08T15:50:00.000-05:00

Still tinkering with the green dress. Here are the stripey sleeves. I like them a lot, but now I think I might have to edge the black guarding on the dress to match. We shall see.

And the Lady Kytson hat. It's very difficult to model this hat without feeling ridiculous. In all of the other pictures, I had some sort of "no seriously, I'm not really here" facial expression, so you get the goofy one.

wool doublet

2007-01-07T14:05:00.000-05:00

I'm a bit behind schedule with taking pictures of this outfit. It's been done since the fall. The brown wool is coat weight, and so the cuts are unfinished. The red wool behind is the same as in the skirt, and the stitching is actually 4-ply wool sock yarn left over from something else. It's worn over a smock and the effigy corset. In the closeup, you can see that it tends to gap, despite not actually taking any strain due to the underlayer. I'm thinking about adding a placket or possibly using lacing rings behind the hooks.

I also think I might add a brown wool guard to the bottom of the skirt. It's a very comfortable outfit, *provided* that it's cold out! Wool, wool, and more wool!

ask a stupid question....

2006-11-05T12:36:00.000-05:00

So a good rule of thumb is never to ask the dress engineer his opinion unless you're prepared to hear the answer. One would think his professional integrity was at stake or something. For example:

Me: Honey, how does this look?

Him: Hm. It looks fine.

Me: *narrowed eyes* Fine?

Him: No, no, what I mean is, it's nice. Really nice. Except, well....never mind. It's lovely.

Me: *deep sigh* So what does it need?

Him: Well, if you did this and that and the other thing altogether, it would be so much better, don't you see?

And then I go do another afternoon's worth of handsewing. Rinse and repeat. The trouble is, he's always right. He's got a better eye for things like balance in design.

This is possibly not the olive green wool kirtle I perhaps mentioned in the last post as THE PLAN. And I always stick to the plan. As evidenced as all the other times that I stuck to the plan.

Oh, and new rule. In addition to the "no machine stitching showing" rule, I now have "the insides have to be finished too." So we've got french seams and flat-felled seams and hand-stitched linings. And you know what? That rule's actually making me pretty happy.

i see london. and possibly france.

2006-10-28T17:35:00.000-05:00

New underpinnings! The Queen Elizabeth effigy corset, courtesy of the Tudor Tailor. (Have I mentioned how much I love that book? And that I'm within a size of the example patterns? Can I get a "huzzah"?) Executed in navy blue duck with pale blue edging. Boned with 3/8" electrical ties. Plus some super tacky flannel drawers. Ugly, but necessary to play dress-up outside in November. They should be quite cozy under the farthingale.

And the back view. I do love the "racer" style straps, as they are assuredly staying put on the shoulders. Very nice that.

And a close-up. The flannel britches are pretty low-slung by design, strictly for ye olde privy convenience. They've got elastic instead of ties for much the same reason. I'm pretty sure if I tried to mess with ties under my 10 pounds of skirts and whatnot, well....it would be bad. Very bad.

A pretty easy task, not counting how eternal it is to bind 34 eyelets by hand. I even finished the inside seams (gasp!) because I think this one is a keeper. Third time's the charm perhaps, but this is the most comfortable corset yet, and also the most inclined towards the ideal cone shape.

Next up: a warm wool kirtle in olive. Making a total three green dresses. No, I'm not in a rut.

stuff! we love stuff!

2006-10-25T07:46:00.000-05:00

My dear Auntie Tina, purveyor of wondrous jewels, mentioned that she feels the urge to shop and was wondering what sorts of stuff we like. Well now! We like all sorts of stuff, Auntie Tina! Here’s an enormous list of the things I keep my eyes open for when I’m in thrift shops or at garage sales.

P.S. Auntie Tina – do pop over and check out what Julie did with one of those fantastic ostrich feathers….so pretty!

P.P.S. New project underway - more posts soon!

Textiles
--Any sort of old garment for cheap that is made of 100% wool, silk, or linen in a solid color. We can reuse the fabric for accessories, trim, guards, hatbands…you name it! The color isn’t that important since we love to mess with overdyeing things (with humorous results much of the time… we are especially good at inadvertently turning things pink that are intended for our husband’s outfits…oopsie.)
--Anything cheap and leather in a natural color (or black). Leather is great for bindings and accessories like gloves or belts.
--Leather gloves in natural colors. We’re thinking about trying our hand at embroidering cuffs for on gloves.
--Anything that looks handwoven, most likely in a solid color. Things like handwoven placemats are wonderful to use as coverings for our baskets (to conceal things like water bottles and cameras!)

Jewelry
--Brooches/pendants – Generally rather geometric, symmetric designs are good. They didn’t have a whole lot of fancy gemstone cuts then, so I remove rhinestones and replace them with other things. They loved pearls, so most anything with a stylized design in pearls can work. Heavy metal pendants such as the one I used on the end of my yellow silk girdle are fantastic.
--Earrings – I usually wear some sort of drop pearl earring.
--Enamel – Anything with squarish enamel settings is perfect. I keep an eye out for buttons, although I’ve yet to find any. They called these “ouches” and stuck them on anything that held still long enough!

Odds and ends
--Small wooden bowls or platters. These are really nice for arranging a little period lunchtime snack.
--Pewter or wooden goblets.
--Feathers – We’re always keeping an eye out for natural-colored feathers for on hats.

shoes

2006-10-10T17:24:00.000-05:00

My "new" shoes admiring the beginnings of fall. I know, I know, they don't look like much. They look like someone took some rather dull scissors to a pair of really ugly shoes that're about an inch too long on me. They also look rather like that selfsame someone didn't bother to dig out some proper leather ties to model them. Whoopsie. Still, if by cutting up a pair of $1.50 shoes from a thrift store in a feeble attempt to look like latchet shoes will save me bunches of money on reproduction shoes...I'll do it. A website with handy do-it-yourself type instructions is located here.

I think I owned some just like this in junior high. Except possibly they were actually the right size. This style must be from back in the time when making your feet look small was the object, rather than making your feet look chunky and lug-soled. Ah, I do love me some chunky shoes. Nonethless, Behold the wondrous outdatedness.

Stay tuned for me cutting up a pair of $2.00 (big spender!) shoes for the dress engineer. He's gonna be thrilled no doubt.

2006-10-02T19:35:00.000-05:00

The Virginia Renaissance Faire was wonderful. Julie and I were lucky enough to join Her Majesty's Hounds for the day.

I wore my new kirtle and loose gown. Although I hadn't finished a number of things (such as fasteners and the sleeves), it did well enough. I don't think I'd want to wear it on a hot day.

I did also get to play the harp a bit with Musica Gallica, a harp and recorder duo. Happily, the harpist is my teacher Whitney, and she's a professional so my shortcomings went unnoticed. Or so I certainly hope. Julie did call me "renaissance harp armcandy." You can kind of tell by my expression in this picture that it's taking a lot of concentration. Or possibly I just look like that all the time? Don't answer that.

And of course, one picture of a dog doing what a dog does best. Check out Killian's pooping skills (on the right.) Yes, I'm one of those people. Those people who think pooping dogs are hilarious. And period! Now hand me ye olde plastic bag.

hats....my favorite part

2006-09-27T07:47:00.000-05:00

One French hood, no crescent. I think it's a lot fancier than I'd originally intended, but it's hard not to get carried away with the pearls. Guess I just inflated myself to "Lady" Bess.

As worn here over my hair fresh from the shower, it isn't quite what I have in mind, but I think if I frizzle and/or roll the front hair to make the Elizabethan heart-shaped frame for the face, it might be about right. It's pretty anyway.

warning, boring list ahead

2006-09-25T07:22:00.000-05:00

Now then, since Julie put up her to-do list, I thought maybe I ought to actually consider what needs doing by Friday. Really I’ve got a couple of options. I was thinking of wearing the green dress on day and the loose gown the other. Here’s what I’d need to do to make each happen.

If I want to wear the loose gown and French hood:
1. Finish the sleeve embellishment on the loose gown.
2. Line and edge the gown.
3. Cover the hood, sew on jewels, and make the veil.
4. Hem the kirtle.
5. Add my silly little “utility loops” to the kirtle. That or put a pocket in the surcoat.
6. Make a silk sash to hang the girdle pendant on.
7. Find something to hang my Madonna miniature on.

If I want to wear the new-and-improved (yet again) green dress ensemble.
1. Add loops to the armholes of the bodice for the sleeve points.
2. Replace the hat-feather and put a pin on there.
3. Starch the heck out of my poor little wilted partlet.
4. Maybe take up the hem on the grey underskirt as I was tripping on it last time. Maybe not though, since the terrain will be flat this time.

Clearly the green dress is a quicker option, but I didn’t spend all weekend sewing so I could wear an old dress. I think the green dress list could readily be done the night before if I get in a bind, so the plan is to finish whatever I can of the loose gown outfit by Friday. If it’s not wearable by then, I’ll switch gears.

Oh, and here’s the French hood picture that I was modeling mine after (William Brooke, 10th Lord of Cobham and his Family by an artist of the British School, 1567), taken with appreciation from http://www.tudor-portraits.com. I’m particularly fond of the one on the lady on the right with the little point in the middle, although I’m going to go a row of billiaments at the front too.

all that for this?

2006-09-25T06:54:00.000-05:00

So something like 15 hours of work after the last picture, we have this:

Wow. Couching is slow. Ok, ok, I know it's fast relative to any other kind of embellishment, but jeepers. I think I bit off more than I should have. However, the gown is down to embellishment on the sleeves and addition of lining and hem. I think I'm going to skip the fancy-pants dagged border on the sleeves for now and put a "temporary" velvet strip at the bottom instead to save time. And sanity.

Here's the other thing I did yesterday when I could no longer stand the couching. It's going to be a late-ish French hood sans crescent. It's wired with electrical wiring rather than millinery stuff because it was late and the husband had that on hand. Seems appropriate anyway, considering that the sleeves have electrical cable ties in them. It's the all-Home-Depot-all-the-time outfit. I'll dig up a picture of what I'm shooting for next time. Basically, I tried on this outfit with every it of headwear I had and it all looked silly. Erm, sillier than usual. Cheers.

linebacker

2006-09-23T16:44:00.000-05:00

So here's where I'm at halfway through the weekend. The dress engineer says I look "imposing" in this. I'm going to go ahead and assume he means well. There's no lining, no edging, no hem, no gussying up of the collar, and I've only put about half of the various velvet bits on here, but you get the idea. It's big. It's dark. It's....imposing, I guess?

Here's a close-up of how I'm couching satin cord and lots of cat hair onto the velvet strips. I don't apparently sew any straighter by hand than I do on the machine, but from a little further away than this the effect is kind of nice.

one week (but who's counting?)

2006-09-22T06:48:00.000-05:00

Indeed, one week to the faire in Salem. It's about time to get going on this project, no?

So first of all, just for Julie, some more pictures of ouches. All ouches, all the time.

These have been filled in with the sort of paint one uses to make fake stained glass windows. They're somewhat lumpy because the paint shrank a lot each time it dried, so I kept adding more. The one on the bottom right is not so lumpy. I found it stuck to the bottle (thank you cats). I'm thinking about trying to stick the rest to the bottle too, just to smooth them out. In principle, these would go on the little hood I'd like to make to go with the loose gown/ropa. That would of course, depend on me getting done with said gown.

More pictures for Julie - these are the enormous ostrich feathers courtesy of Auntie Tina. The ruler is 18" for scale, so they are, as I said, enormous. Do let me know if any of these will suit your mad hatter hat. I like them all, so don't be shy.

And finally, a really bad shot of the back of the gown. I'm working on applying the velvet strips. Yes, I'm machine stitching the long parts of these, but that will be covered with couched cord, so I think it's ok in this case. I'm discovering just how bad I am at stitching straight.

I do love this velvet. It's the thickest, plushest cotton velvet ever. There are assorted other velvet strips yet to be applied, but you get the idea. I have started the couching as well, but failed wretchedly at taking a picture of shiny black cord on shiny black velvet on dark grey wool. I'll try again on a sunnier day perhaps. Oh, and is not my sewing area a disaster? I can't even identify all the junk behind the gown on my desk. And chair. And other chair. Etc.

That's all so far...but with a one week deadline I daresay there will be more to come.

shiny object over here

2006-09-06T07:05:00.000-05:00

Er....it's possible that I haven't done any actual sewing for a week. I have, however, been shopping. These are approximately 7/8" (including the loop) costume jewelry bits that I'm thinking will be nice as ouches on either my Tudor gown or my late gable hood. I got them from this place. I haven't made up my mind about the settings as they look pretty plastic-y (go figure) to me. I was wondering about some sort of enamel instead. I might just have to check that out. I've got extra loops to glue on so I can sew these onto fabric.

Speaking of fabric, I have 9 yards of the velvet shown above on its way to me from Class Acts Fabric. Linda (the owner) is mighty nice and I've been eyeballing this fabric for several months. The plan is to make up a Tudor gown from the velvet after I get the loose gown together. Ahem. Yes. That's the plan. And we always stick to plans, no?

just when you thought the photography couldn't get worse...

2006-08-28T07:23:00.000-05:00

Oh but it can. First, here's the picture of the surgery I did on the kirtle neckline to give it an arch (so I can ultimately use this as the foundation for a Tudor outfit too). Here's the old version. I've also sewn up the straps, added a pretty wide (maybe about 15 inches) band of patterned fabric around the bottom edge on the back half of the kirtle, made a set of very plain, slightly curved sleeves, and added attachment points to connect said sleeves with the kirtle. But none of that is worth getting dressed up to take a picture of, so you just get the neckline. Incidentally, how the heck did the Tudor women get their chemise necklines to line up so nicely with an arched kirtle? Did they have a special chemise for each dress? 'Cause I seem to be approaching that.

I also started work on the loose gown to go over this kirtle. Many thanks to Julie for a link to a full-length picture of the original, here. I started with the sleeves, since those are the tricky bit. I studied PoF, I studied TT, and then, you know, I decided to do whatever I wanted. Here's the top half of the sleeve. I decided that this would be stiffened with two widths of the ever-handy electrical ties. A half-inch cable tie runs through the long curved channel and 4 quarter-inch ties run perpendicular (more or less) to it. Oh - and can you believe I took a picture of grey fabric on a grey cutting board? Yes. Brilliant.

I arranged for intersecting channels so that the plastic ties could form a sort of skeleton, and tinkered with which to put on top for the smoothest effect. Here's what the basic shape of the sleeve will be, except that the top will be gathered down into the armscythe. The original actually achieved this by some cleverly curved pieces. I'm lazy.

Here's the inside of the proto-sleeve. It'll have a lining to hide all the ugliness. Also, you can kind of see here where I zig-zagged for the dagged edge. I decided not to cut that until I'm ready to bind it.

progress despite cluelessnesss

2006-08-08T07:20:00.000-05:00

Apparently my bad camera karma continues. I believe I mentioned yesterday that I'd taken pictures of my kirtle-in-progress over the weekend. Well, last night I realized that I'd made the neckline square instead of arched, which would have been ok normally, but not so good for the planned Tudor costume. So I did some minor surgery on the bodice and gave it an arched neckline. I decided that it was worth lacing it up and snapping some replacement photos. Sadly, those photos were so similar that when I finally looked at what I'd saved, I realized that I'd managed to delete all the new ones, leaving only the old ones. Which I present below, since I'm not excited about dressing up again for the same pictures a third time! Just imagine that the neckline has an upward arch, as it now does. And, um, also imagine that the straps are sewn together and that it has a hem.

The kirtle is made primarily of a cotton fabric with a diamond/flower pattern woven in. I'm rather fond of this fabric, as I bought it with Julie on a day-long fabric expedition. I'm pretty sure it was meant to be made into something else at the time, but no matter.

The back of the skirt is made of a very heavy cheap grey cotton (the bodice is lined and interlined with the same stuff actually). The idea here is that the back of this will not be showing anyway, so why not be frugal. Very period that. I'll be adding a wide band of the patterned fabric to the back at the bottom in case the overgown pulls up, but I need to cut out the sleeves first to determine how much width I have left for that. This idea may be found in both Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion and also the new Tudor Tailor book.

The first outfit this kirtle is going to support will be a loose gown, based on a 1570's-80's black velvet gown out of Patterns of Fashion, like so:

I've wanted this gown for years. The original was worn over a loose kirtle, which was probably very handy if one was, say, breeding. As I'm not, I decided it could go over a fitted kirtle. Indeed, sometimes these were worn over full doublet-style gowns and whatnot, but that would be entirely too hot for Virginia!

This gown will be made of a lightweight dark grey wool flatlined with more of that ugly heavy grey cotton as in the kirtle above. The plan is to baste those two layers together, apply the decoration (bands of black velvet and satin cord), then stitch in a lining of fine grey linen. I hope it works!

more sparklies and the next plan

2006-08-07T08:49:00.000-05:00

Check out these additional goodies from Auntie Tina! The two baubles above are about two and a half inches long. The kite-shaped filigree cage is most likely going to swing on the end of a silk girdle for my next outfit. I think that'll be very cool. The round pin is going to go on my giant hat as soon as I replace the rhinestones with pearls and whatnot, along with one of the perfectly enormous ostrich plumes that Auntie sent as well. I didn't get a good picture of those (the dog wouldn't hold still!) but they are at least two feet long and amazingly full. Truly Lady Kytson worthy feathers! I need to tinker with the hatband to get those on there and then I'll post a new picture of the hat.

This item I love as well. Again, I'll replace the rhinestones with something else, but this item is a good five inches across and SO ornate. I am thinking it is going to be some sort of center item on the Spanish court gown that I'm planning. That's going to be a little ways down the road, as I have two other outfits I'm working on first, but I thought this was so cool that I wanted to show it now. There were other really cool jewelry items in the package as well, but I believe I'll save those pictures for when I'm ready to use them!

There was quite a bit of costuming this weekend, but as I forgot to load the pictures off the camera, that post will have to wait a bit. To summarize, I'm just about down with a kirtle that is going to multi-task as a fitted kirtle to go under a loose gown and also as the underlayer for a velvet Tudor gown. I don't have the velvet for the Tudor gown yet, so the middle-class loose gown is up first. For Julie and Anita - it's of the washed-out red and yellow diamond print we bought in Maryland. I'll have pictures tomorrow.

P.S. Thank you again Auntie Tina! You can't imagine how much fun I've had playing with the jewels. There's a surprise for you underway. It's going to take a little while, but I think you'll like it!

adornment

2006-08-01T16:34:00.000-05:00

This lovely pendant was in a box of antique jewelry and textiles my Auntie Tina sent as a lovely surprise. There were all sorts of lovely pearls as well that I'll be wearing next time I go out in period costume. This pendent though....oh how I love it. I've wanted a miniature of some sort to wear and this is gorgeous!

again with the lousy photography

2006-07-11T15:44:00.000-05:00

I should really get the dress engineer to photograph stuff for me. It's really hard to shoot a picture of one's own arm for instance. At any rate, here are the new sleeves (um, only sleeves) for my green-dress-of-continual-improvement. The sleeve is lying flat on the deck railing because of the aforementioned complete inability to take pictures of my own arm. However, aren't the hostas lovely?

The sleeves were done using Julie's basic sleeve pattern, which every time I discover is just a bit too small for me. It fits, but I'm not at all fond of snug sleeves. After I got it sewn together the first time, I decided that it would annoy me, so I took it apart and reinvented it as a sleeve with an opening down the front. So here's the front opening, and while it's maybe not what I would have originally envisioned, it's a lot more comfortable (and presumably cooler). Since I have only the tiniest scraps of green fabric left, this is going to have to do!

bad photos and badder hats

2006-07-10T07:33:00.000-05:00

This makes me think of Marilyn Manson for some reason. Oh right, because I look insane. But not really. Like nobody would *actually* be afraid of me, no matter how hard I try. I digress.

So the hat of extreme big-ness is done. It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought (go figure) to apply the velvet layer. It is....ok. It's not great, despite all the handstitching down of pleats and whatnot. It's still got a lot of impact, seeing as how it's a hat that's taller than my head, eh? And if that's not enough impact, I can always head-butt someone with it...now THAT would be quite an impact. I can't wait to see Auntie Tina's jewel on there, but the vaguaries of the mail being what they are, I decided to post some pictures now anyway.

Taking pictures of one's head by oneself is pretty hard. Particularly for those of us who can't figure out how to work the timer on the camera, ahem, hint hint dress engineer. Oh. He says to read the manual. Here, I don't look quite so psycho in this one:

And here it is from the side. One thing I'm not sure I like is how far down the brim ends up curving in front and back. It looks very cool that way from the front, not so sure from the side. So I'll just sidle about the faire, turning madly this way and that in an attempt to always be looking at people face-on. Nuts, right? Yeah, well I'm the lady in the ginormous hat, I'm allowed to be nuts.

hat part 2

2006-06-26T07:37:00.000-05:00

I think the hat is getting even larger and more ridiculous. Since the last post, I have sewn up all the seams properly, then added a pink linen lining, like so:

It isn't perfect, but I think it'll do. I figured linen would feel nice against my head, and the pink is the result of an unfortunate dye job. It was supposed to be a nice rust color for a jerkin for Aaron. He nixed this color. Shame.

I went ahead and used some quilt batting to pad the structure a little bit. I was hoping to tone down the faceting on the crown of the hat. This would be where the "getting even larger and more ridiculous" comes in, but I think it's necessary. No pictures of that, sorry. I added heavy-gauge wire to the brim in case I want to tinker with the shape of the curve after I'm done. I've also begun to cover the hat with some very nice black cotton velvet. Here's my attempt at arranging pleats at the top.

You can see here the little pancake stack of batting that I've used to make the top (hopefully) domed. And may I just say that this is a ridiculous shape to try to cover. I've been tinkering with pleats at top and bottom. This hat is pretty much stuck in the "almost done but I'm not quite happy with it" phase. Hopefully I can sort it out!

my hat is bigger than your hat

2006-06-21T07:19:00.000-05:00

Meet Lady Kytson:

Or at any rate, meet her hat. It’s quite a hat. Indeed, if you compare her to various other portraits, her face is much lower in the painting than average to accommodate that gloriously silly hat. After Julie started messing around with hat-making (and complaining about the largeness and silliness of the hats), I decided it was time to work on the hat I’ve been coveting. Also, I think I’ll have to start cultivating that “I smell something foul, perhaps it’s a peasant” facial expression. To use on my husband.

Step 1: Analyze the hat. The height of Lady Kytson’s hat is roughly 150% that of her face, tapers up to a bulbous sort of shape, and has an exceedingly arched brim. I’m not sure what the fabric might be, as it’s a black-on-black portrait, but I’m going on the assumption that the very nice cotton velvet that supposed to be arriving in my mailbox tomorrow would be a good choice. She’s got some sort of enormous bendy feather on the side, which I’ll have to look for. She’s also got a bunch of brooches? buttons? jewels? who knows? stuck all around the base of the crown. That too, I’ll have to consider. I may do a simple band, since my character isn’t supposed to be quite as hoity-toity as all that.

Step 2: Make a paper mockup on a small scale to see how the curves will come together. Decide that it’s the proper size for the dog. Chase the dog around with a paper hat and a camera. Always an important step in any sewing endeavor, right?

Step 3: Lay out a pattern. Definitely don’t bother to research the pattern, just start tinkering. Surely high school geometry is good for something. I am using plastic canvas because that’s readily available locally, whereas buckram is not. Also, while I do know how to make tacky Kleenex box covers, I do not know how to work with buckram. No doubt as I sweat under this enormous plastic hat, I’ll regret this decision, but there’s nothing new about that. Here’s what I ended up with for a pattern after a couple of tries:

Step 4: Stick a few stitches on each side to make sure that this hat is going to go together approximately right. And by approximately right, I mean that it should make the husband choke with laughter. Apparently, it was approximately right. I made the husband compare the portrait and me a number of times to see if the proportions were in the ballpark. After all his squinting and measuring with his fingers and all, he was unable to conclude that the hat was too big. If anything, he said, it might be a smidge small. Hard to believe I know. So then, here is the aptly-named “mock up.” You may commence mocking. On a side note, I can still walk through doorways, so that’s good.

Step 5: Take it apart and start sewing it together properly. No pictures of that yet, but it’s going along swimmingly. Plastic canvas is really fun to sew on. Oh, also, additional mocking at this point would be fair. As if that weren’t self-evident.

better

2006-06-13T12:09:00.000-05:00

The dress engineer has a very particular code of ethics on certain things. Specifically, he's very reluctant to offer false praise on my handiwork. So when he didn't have much to say about my first foray into wool embroidery, I figured I needed to do better. A bit of reading up in a basic embroidery book yielded the idea of using my previous work as the underlayer for a bit of padded satin stitch. It seems to have worked out ok. For one thing, the color density came improved a lot. Once I made the flowers heavier, I thought the chain stitch stems looked a bit spindly, so I tried backstitching through them. Those might still get changed if I can learn how to do something more interesting. Still, an improvement, no? Or in the dress engineer's unsolicited opinion, "hey, that looks sort of pretty now." High praise indeed.

tinkering with wool

2006-06-09T07:16:00.000-05:00

So I've done a little bit of tinkering with wool embroidery. I'll be the first to say that I know not a darn thing about embroidery beyond backstitch and cross-stitch, but apparently I'm catching on to chain-stitching too. This is wool floss on black linen, started at the VA renaissance faire. It was supposed to turn into a needle case, but seems to be much too big, so it'll be the ubiquitous sweetbag instead. I'm trying to randomly teach myself some stitching with it. Like satin stitch, and um....more chain stitch maybe. I'm not sure what I'm doing, but I think this'll look nicer than a plain black pouch. Either that or it'll look like something I did in kindergarten. Either way is ok really.

The design I'd scribbled out is this, which is what happened when I squinted my eyes at the inside of a blackworked dress? collar? partlet? worn by Mary Tudor. I changed the 8 petals to 5 because....I just felt like it. Also, the Tudor rose and all that.

out and about

2006-05-31T07:57:00.000-05:00

The Virginia Faire this year was hot, hot, HOT, so we were sans sleeves for the most part. Julie did get brave and tie hers on for sake of the picture. We’ve agreed that we will probably never match so nicely again!

Here are the four of us at the end of the day wielding our wondrous parasols, which really helped with the heat. The verdict’s still out on whether these are really period, but this research suggests yes, and I’ll support any research that’ll make me less hot! The guys have their new peasanty garb, and I’ve got a black and green pinned-on partlet based on one of the designs in The Tudor Tailor, which I really like incidentally.

We got to talk with Norm the Pikeman, who has the most amazing store of knowledge on military history. We enjoyed chatting with him, and he also had the guys learn some pike moves. I think in this one maybe they’re poking a bad guy, but not a bad guy on a horse, but I couldn’t say for sure, having placed myself very far from the guys with the poke-y sticks.

I still have a handful of things that I’d like to do for this outfit before I put it away for the next faire. Namely:

1. Finish the sleeves. They’re presently ribbon-bedecked, so I need to replace that with matching linen guards. I think while I’m at it, I might try to make them a little bigger; I see no reason that I can’t expand them with a little gusset disguised as a stripe so they’ll fit over a puffier chemise than the peasanty one that the original sleeve was designed for. Also, I’m going to go ahead and line them. I wasn’t going to, but really, I’m not going to wear these unless it’s something other than 90F so...why not?

2. A hat. I rather covet one of those tall bulbous ones, but I’ll be looking into that shortly. I’ve never made a structured hat before, so we shall see! I did admire some arch-brim ones that were being made by a woman at the faire, but it seems like almost everyone on the court who wears a stiff hat wears one of those, and I’d like something a bit different.

3. Some sort of embellishment for the guards. I am thinking about just couching down some white or grey cording of some sort. I’ll need to figure out a design.

4. A pouch. I made one the night before of black and green linen which is perfectly serviceable, but I also started an embroidered design on black linen with wool while at the faire, which I think would be nice done up in much the same way. It’s not very well executed, but I’m new to embroidery (other than backstitching!) and was making it up while sitting on hay. I’ll post some pictures if it doesn’t turn out completely terrible.

compromises

2006-05-25T07:34:00.000-05:00

Since there is pretty limited time remaining to make this outfit wearable, I decided to make some compromises. It’s going to be really hot this weekend, so I decided not to worry about fixing the sleeves. They need to have all of the ribbon trim replaced with linen guards, and I’m not very happy with the fit on them anyway. So then, they’re off the list. That’s ok, though, since I replaced that handwork with something else! I decided to edge my existing partlet with black (and not-so-incidentally, monofilament to stand up better). I finished it last night, but all I have is this partway done picture. There is now also black edging (and monofilament) down the front edge as well, which makes a nice contrast and also causes the front to curve out nicely.

I had originally thought that I’d just thread the monofilament through the existing ruffle to give it more body, but that proved to be nearly impossible, which is when I decided to whipstitch black embroidery floss over it. It turned my basically flat box pleats into something closer to a ruff. I say “closer” because if I’d wanted a figure 8 ruff, I should have used a 5-1 pleating ratio instead of 3-1…there’s not enough fabric to force it into figure 8’s without distortion. The other thing that I did to get the ruffles to behave was to run a line of linen thread through the ruffle about halfway down, sort of like doing cartridge pleating after the fact. Without it, the stiff top edge could contort into a bunch of different configurations, but with it, there’s really only one choice.

I did a little playing with a really classy brooch I got from Goodwill. Here it is before in all of its rhinestone-bedecked glory:

And here it is after I pried out the rhinestones and glued in adventurine beads and glass pearls. Sorry the picture quality on the tacky before is so much better.

While I had all the layers on to mark the hems, I had the dress engineer snap a shot showing the amount of “boo-tay” generated by the padded pleats in the underskirt. I’m wearing a farthingale, a simple gathered petticoat, the stiffer gored grey petticoat, and the knife-pleated dress. I just can’t warm to the whole bumroll concept, as I’m sure I’d end up with it badly positioned, but I think this looks pretty full.

So indeed, it looks like the hems really will be done at the last minute. How….shocking…. The dress engineer graciously crawled around on the floor with scissors. His opportunities for poking me were pretty limited by the farthingale (yay armor), so it was a much faster operation than usual. I just need to add hems to the petticoat and dress and then I think I’ll be all set! I wish I had a tall hat to go over the caul, but there’s just not time. I also have assorted plans to couch and/or bead the guards on the dress, but that was never in the plan for this time around.

strike a pose

2006-05-22T07:18:00.000-05:00

There was a fair bit of sewing this weekend, but I wasn’t in the mood to model it myself, so I thought it only fair that these guys should earn their kibbles. That’s right, I’m one of *those* people. Those people who dress up their pets.

Here’s Lucy, looking sweet yet flirtatious in a single shoulder roll, stuffed with linen scraps for a nice firmness. Cutting and sewing all those little loops was somewhat of a nuisance, but I couldn’t resign myself to the spiral I was thinking of doing. It was messy, and I couldn’t remember if I’ve seen a portrait. I’ve only got one sewn on the dress as yet.

Yep, plainly born to model. Look at that eyeliner. All natural that. We were out on a hike one day and had a stranger comment on her eyes. I told her it was a real pain getting the dog to hold still for the eyeliner. Boy did she ever give me a dirty look. Sheesh people, no, I don’t put makeup on my dog. Only dirty socks on occasion.

And next up we have the debonair Dexter Dog modeling a ….hey wait. Is that poor dog wearing a snood? Oh man. His union rep is going to have something to say about this. Ahem. So here’s the finished caul at any rate. I’ll probably wear it at somewhat less rakish of an angle.

Here’s the closeup of the beading prior to making it into a little caul and using it to offend my dog’s sensibilities. This was really a fun way of doing a cheater net. I just used backstitching through the beads, so everything was done in two perpendicular passes. No going back and sewing on beads afterwards.

And well, yeah, here’s my hand modeling the 4th take on putting a waistband on the petticoat. I didn’t really think putting the petticoat on the cat was going to go over so well. I think this time it actually worked. It’s possible that I got a wee bit smarter and did some pinning this time. I also padded the pleats on the backside with two layers of felt for additional butt-tastic-ness.

By my count, that just leaves me with one shoulder roll to attach, a bottom guard to add, two hems to do, a partlet to make, and possibly some sleeve trim to replace. By Friday. Eh. No problems.

girdle

2006-05-18T11:47:00.000-05:00

There’s been a brief hiatus in sewing, mostly due to the arrival of my order from Fire Mountain Gems. (Ooh, bright shiny object over here!)

The big ivory-colored ones are aragonite, the small peach ones are adventurine, the fake pearls are…fake pearls, and the green ones are some random rock that simulates jade, jade being too expensive for me. It’s strung on the heaviest gauge tigertail that I could get and held together with several crimp beads, which I pretty much squashed into oblivion, not having a proper crimping tool. No matter. Originally, there were supposed to be tiny garnet beads on there, but they were so small that they were stripping the wire, so I substituted the pearls.

guards

2006-05-16T19:49:00.000-05:00

Ok, so Blogger decided to cooperate with the picture-posting for a moment, so here's a post from a couple of days ago.

Projects grow, no? This one sure is, although mostly it’s a matter of redoing more and more things. I was thinking last night (don’t laugh, it happens on occasion). I was wondering whether it’s really true that every time I take a shortcut in sewing it ends up taking me three times as long as if I did it right in the first place. Maybe it’s just that I only remember those cases. Here's a before and after of the guards (the before is on the left in grosgrain, the after is on the right in linen.)

Anyway, I'm done with the guard makeover, excepting the one that'll go on the bottom once I measure the hem. If you recall, I had decided that the shiny cheap grosgrain ribbon was blinding me and hurting my head (the part of my head which contains my vanity mostly). Ahem. So I sucked it up and made some nice linen guards. While I was at it, I changed the widths a wee bit to make it more visually pleasing. Or more visually pleasing to the dress engineer at any rate, and if he’s happy, I’m happy. One kind of nice thing about making my own guards was that I could taper the guards down the sides of the skirt, which I think looks nicer than the way it was before. I have all kinds of future ideas for couching something on the guards and perhaps beading the forepart and etc etc etc , but there’s no way that could happen by the deadline, so it’ll have to wait. Particularly since I've gone back to my normal "no machine stitching showing" rule. If I'm going to take the time to do this, I may as well do it right.

So yes, I’m committed to either replacing the ribbon on the sleeves or else making a new set. Right now, I’m leaning towards the latter. I think it would probably be less work. Also, since I’m about out of green fabric, that’ll be a nice excuse to use something breathable. We shall see. I might leave that for last, since sleeves at Virginia faires last approximately 10 minutes or until the pictures are taken or the contest is judged or whatever.

the best laid plans...

2006-05-15T11:39:00.000-05:00

What I planned to do this weekend:

1. Complete farthingale.
2. Make quick petticoat.
3. Take up dress shoulder straps to remove ugly wrinkles in bodice (and distribute weight better).
4. Remove skirt from bodice and reattach properly.
5. Add length to bottom of skirt.
6. Hum smugly to myself about productivity and plan fun accessory-making binge.

What I actually did this weekend:

1. Completed farthingale.

2. Made petticoat. Tried on petticoat. Discovered pleating at waist left unsettling u-shaped wrinkle under waist. Ripped off waistband. Repleated. Re-tried-on. Re-muttered-ugly-words. Ripped off waistband again. Left on chair to be dealt with later.

3. Took up dress shoulder straps. Realized I had no circulation in arms, due to armscythe now being too short (duh). Cut armscythes deeper. Decided to edge with ribbon. Decided ribbon was ugly. Set aside to deal with later.

4. Removed skirt from bodice. Cheerily reattached to bodice properly. Tried on over farthingale and (incomplete) petticoat. Discovered that center now dips alarmingly low at hem. Muttered additional dire threats at mirror. Removed skirt. Reattached to bodice, paying attention this time. Tried on again. Discovered ugly sag at waist (no clue how that happened). Additional mumbling under breath. (Hi Mom! I was mumbling about sunshine and rainbows....) Fixed the sag, and decided to go ahead and remove a trapezoid from the front center on each side so forepart would show more. That actually was probably a good idea.

5. Decided that before I could add length, must fix newly hacked front edges. Hesitated between 1/2 yard of black cotton flannel and 3 yards of black linen. Decided on flannel for ease of non-fraying-ness. Added to front edges and bottom.

6. Looked at black fabric bands next to black ribbons on skirt and decided that the ribbons looked terrible. Decided to replace ribbons with fabric bands. Looked upward, realized that there are more of them on the bodice. Looked across room and discovered more ribbons on newly-completed sleeves. Then looked at my flannel and realized I didn't have enough anyway, so would have to rip that off and use linen after all. Decided to have a bit of a lie-down.

What I learned this weekend:

1. It's not such a great idea to revamp an existing dress. It's at least as much work as making a new one.

2. All of the contrasting guards on the dress really ought to match. It seems obvious in retrospect, but I seriously thought that just a couple made of a completely different material in the same color would be perfectly fine. They're not.

3. Even though I want a flat front on the petticoat (to serve as a visible forepart), it's still necessary to put some pleats in the front half of the skirt. Maybe not in the very center, but definitely to either side of center. Otherwise, you get the dreaded u-wrinkle.

4. Farthingales are fantastic for shooing cats and dogs out of one's way.

Pictures I took this weekend: Only this one. Everything is in a state of partly done.

Seems like somebody needs to take a farthingale to this dog. Shoo! (Oh, and that's my petticoat material, by the way. See the cool little diamond pattern? No? All you see is a big orange mutt? Oh well.)

farthingale'ed!!!

2006-05-13T13:18:00.000-05:00

Heh. I like my farthingale. It's quite narrow actually, but this is based on the 22" fabric from Alcega, so I'm guessing this is about right.

It took about two and a half yards of pale yellow cotton fabric, about 50 feet of 5/8" outer diameter hard plastic tubing, a similar amount of ribbon for the casings, and about 12 inches 1/2" OD plastic tubing. I used the smaller tubing to join the ends of the larger tubing used for the hoops. That's pretty much how I connect non-critical tubing in the lab, too.

I had a couple of problems with construction, basically because I'm a moron. First of all, I cut it out a little bit short. I just randomly guessed how much to add to the length to account for the conical shape, and apparently I was wrong. It wasn't a big deal, as I just added a few inches to the top of the skirt. I also bought ribbon that was too small, so the green ribbon is actually two pieces franken-stitched together (ugly). The yellow ribbon I found in my drawer (handy that). The drawstring waist is because I was tired of fiddling with the waistband trying to get the skirt to hang just so. The drawstring is a heckuva lot easier, and is allowing additional tinkering while I work on the next layer.

Ooh la la.

stripey sleeves

2006-05-10T16:12:00.000-05:00

So why did I even bother to make an ordered, prioritized list anyway? I knew I wouldn't follow it! I decided to do the sleeves first, since that way I know they'll definitely get done. I'm using Julie's basic curved sleeve pattern (thank you!!), since it worked so well last time and since drafting sleeves ain't exactly a real strength of mine. I decided I wanted stripey sleeves, and they're going together fine except for the fact that once I had the stripes all applied, I realized that I did them exactly backwards of what I wanted. Ah well. I am, incidentally, utterly throwing out my "no machine stitching showing" rule for this little quickie project. I decided I couldn't handle wasting hand-stitching on the all-synthetic-all-the-time dress. For this dress, the new rule is "machine stitching is ok unless it looks really really terrible." I'll go back to the normal standard for the next dress, which with any luck will be silk. Much easier to justify the labor then.

ok, so enough with the boy clothes already

2006-05-08T20:13:00.000-05:00

That's right. It's three for me, one for him. Which means I now get three new dresses. Ok, so maybe it won't really work that way, but there's one thing that I really would like to do before meeting up with Julie. She'll be debuting her green Venetian dress, and I will have nothing new to wear. (I can feel your sympathy.) None of the dress ideas I've got in mind would be doable in 2 weeks, or at least, none of them would be a good idea to try to do in 2 weeks, so here's the plan. I have this generic green dress that was my first attempt at "something period." It's got a ton of problems and probably isn't worth the trouble, but here's the thing: I like it. So then, here's the problem child:

And here's the plan to make it a little more of a reasonable approximation of a middle class dress, prioritized so if I don't actually get it all done, the dress will hopefully be in wearable condition.

1. Tweak the bodice to make it wearable over my existing corset. The number one problem I have with the dress is that the silhouette is wrong. I've tried it on over the corset, and the girth is about right, but the shoulder straps are way too long, meaning that there are unsightly puckers under the arms and also that the corset shows at the top. I think that this can be 90% fixed by simply shortening the straps a couple of inches.

2. Make a farthingale. That'll make the skirts bigger and my legs cooler I hope. (This'll necessitate all kinds of lengthening of the skirts of course, but such is life.)

3. Remove the skirt at the waist and reattach properly. Possibly also remove the front panel from each, but it'll depend on how it hangs over the farthingale. The addition of the farthingale might be sufficient to spread the front of the skirt. If not, snip snip.

4. Add length to the skirt. I am pretty darn sure I don't have enough fabric leftover to do this properly (i.e. by hiding it under the ribbon) so I think it's getting a wide black guard at the bottom.

5. Make a new underskirt/forepart. No clue what that will be yet. Might even go shopping for that (it's only a yard, right?)

6. Make sleeves. I DO have enough green fabric left to eke out some sleeves, provided they aren't enormous.

7. Make a partlet, and wear it with my linen chemise. Could probably get away with the Flemish partlet, and probably will do that.

8. Make a caul to wear with the hat. This isn't so much optional since my hair is shorter now. However, it's at the bottom of the list because if I had time, a little blackwork design on it would be fun. Looking at this list, I probably don't have time.

9. And last but not least, if I had all the time in the world, I'd replace the ribbons on the dress with guards made of actual fabric. That would take a while and just be silly, so yeah...just mentioning it.

10. Oh well...ok so one other thing. A new girdle would be great. But I don't see it happening.

Ok that list is ridiculous. Here's what I'm really probably going to do: take up the bodice so it fits over a corset, make some sleeves and make a caul to cover my short hair. That'd make it wearable.

spoon!

2006-05-08T11:23:00.000-05:00

Ok, so this spoon isn't exactly what I had in mind. Maybe I'll find a better one before faire, but it was the best thing in my drawer. I sewed it on nice and tight so we won't have any "domestic disputes" or anything. This is the felted hat that I'd considered making a while back. It actually worked out better than I expected. The yarn is some that I spun myself, meaning that it was virtually useless for any actual knitting, due to over-twist, under-twist, thick-and-thin, you name it. Also, the wool was so coarse that I wasn't ever going to wear it anyway. I simply knitted a baggy hat that came down all the way to my chin, then washed it and washed it and washed it. Some people say that felting requires a lot of careful watching and stuff. Those people probably have their hats turn out all the time. How boring.

Ok, so here's the finished outfit. I trust it'll look a bit nicer with some accessories. I've also since over-dyed the jerkin to a darker grey since the pastel-ness of it all was getting to me. Oh....and as always, I haven't got any decent cord on hand, so it's tied together with yarn. That'll get tidied up as well before we go out and about. I gotta say that this is definitely not my favorite outfit ever, but it should be cool and comfortable to wear.

Okay, if squeamish, go ahead and avert your eyes, because here is the up-close codpiece shot. This is not so much to torture you as to show you how all these clothes tie together. I still find the idea of tying ones pants to ones top baffling. Guess they hadn't invented what Aaron refers to as "belt loop technology."

Oh, and just to give Julie's Adam some dancey pants company. He's such a sport.

I think he's dancing with joy at the idea of me no longer making him try on green hose.

the codpiece

2006-05-07T08:10:00.000-05:00

Haldo! And here we are with another installment in the never-ending thrills of "Making the Most Boring Outfit On the Planet" starring, my husband's butt. Happily, no pictures of his backside today. No pictures of him at all, as it happens. Today's feature is about the making of the codpiece. I'm going to have to say that this has been the part I've been dreading the most, primarily because I had zero idea how to make one and also because this is the one piece that I really didn't want to screw up due to the pointing-and-laughing potential. I mean by others. I'm allowed to point and laugh. And after Julie's not-so-little misadventure resulting in the walrus (point and laugh! point and laugh!), I was especially apprehensive.

Here's a brief description of how this came out. I'm posting this because I think it's moderately period, mostly because it's based on a period pattern.

I started with the first codpiece depicted in Patterns of Fashion, belonging to one Cosimo I de'Medici (drawing on page 53, pattern on page 54). This one is possibly more modest than those shown in the Flemish paintings, but suits my modern sensibilities. I did a little mockup with a straight enlargement of the pattern, to which the husband cried "make it larger!" Well ok then. The second mock-up I made a bit larger and with a bit wider pouch. I also added more length to the bit above the pouch, since Cosimo's doublet came down to somewhat of a point in front whereas Aaron's will be quite short. I wanted a little more fabric there to work with. (I ended up shortening it by an inch or so, incidentally).

Possibly because I'm not too bright, it took me a bit of effort to visualize how these two pieces would go together to make this 3d object. So although I suspect most people would find this obvious, here it is, stepwise. Mind, I'm not entirely sure this was what I was supposed to do, but it seemed to work.

1. I sewed the two pieces together around the curved part and up the center front. After clipping the curves, I turned it right side out. This made an amusing little puppet. Sort of like a walrus.

2. I then made sort of a pleat across the bottom and basted it into place. This is equivalent to the underfold that Janet Arnold depicts on page 54. I also ran a line of stitches about halfway down from the end of the curve to enforce this fold, making sure to leave an opening for stuffing. This isn't how I was supposed to do it, but it made the whole thing much easier to work with.

3. Once this was done, I flipped it around and sort of gently flattened the pouch into shape, like so:

4. Then, working by hand, I stitched it down into the outline I wanted. Mind you, I have no idea why the outline I wanted was so asymetric, but, ahem, that must have been what I wanted.

5. After this, it was a simple matter of stuffing it lightly with leftover scraps of linen, whipstitching the opening closed on the back, adding a backing piece (the original had a lining that showed through some slashes, but since this was plainer, I thought the backing would simpler), then making some bias tape to bind it with. The bias tape I have no real justification for except that I thought it would give the edges a bit more form. Possibly I should have just stitched the front and back together and flipped them, but I kind of like the effect:

So there we go. One codpiece. Pretty modest too. Not yet attached to the peasanty short-shorts, but hopefully I can get that done today.

Ok, you can start pointing and laughing now.

jolly green pants

2006-04-19T06:57:00.000-05:00

Haldo! I finally remembered to take a picture of Aaron's spiffy green hose. I'm using "spiffy" in a pretty loose kind of way here. Loose, unlike the hose. They're better than the mockup. Not perfect, but better.

Why is the dog in every picture I take?

I did one thing that I sort of regret. I decided that I was afraid that the seams might give since they're fairly fitted and movement might result in a rip. I thought that I'd reinforce them by using a stretch stitch on the sewing machine, then trimming the seam really close to it. Sort of like serging, but without the cool machine. Anyway, I'm pretty sure this will make them sturdy, but it also means that the seams don't lie flat. I decided that since this was the base layer and would be mostly covered by the peasanty short shorts, I wouldn't worry about it.

The yellowish overshorts are underway as well, but naturally, I forgot to take a picture in progress. I just did a normal seam on them and pressed the allowances open. It's much nicer looking, and since they're somewhat looser, I think it'll be ok. I'll take a picture once I get the hem done. Oh and Julie, I chopped off too much from the top too, resulting in what would be ye olde plumber's butt if it weren't for the lovely green underpants. So I think I'll be unfolding the hem at the top and using a narrow waistband to make it work. The non-bias waistband is pretty helpful for keeping them up anyway, although I'm not sure it's period. I figure it'll be a good place to put the eyelets. To tie the pants to the jerkin. Aaron's still somewhat bemused about tying his pants to his jacket. Heh.

why knits were invented

2006-04-06T20:46:00.000-05:00

So.....we have a mockup of the Aaron's hose. These will be the bottom layer, underneath the peasanty short-shorts. And huzzah for peasanty short-shorts, I say! Nice argyles, no? And everybody loves tight pants in shiny cotton-poly blend prints. So very nice!

These were based on a very handy-dandy diagram located at the Devil's Nightmare Regiment (a landsknecht group - look under resources, then clothing, then patterns, then Mina's patterns). It's gets you pretty darn close for a first try!

Here's a bit of a close-up showing how much fabric I ended up piecing in (and chopping out for that matter). Fitting hose is no laughing matter. Ok, possibly it is. Possibly there was a lot of laughing. And possibly, somebody's behind got called "Franken-butt." It's remarkably challenging trying to fit things like legs and behinds reasonably closely without things ripping when the victim (um, I mean model) does crazy things like, oh, say... sit in a chair. Or walk. Or, heaven forbid, squat.

pic - closeup

So then, in principle, all I'd have to do here is dye up an appropriate amount of linen, wash it 18 times to prevent future shrinkage (oh my!), and zip up the real things. Yeah. I'm so sure it'll go that way.

Dexter, meanwhile, is happy to serve as a coat-rack of sorts. Or rather, a pants-rack.

hats and knitting

2006-03-22T08:18:00.000-05:00

So I've been ruminating on hats a bit. I'm really quite fond of the silly little bowler-esque hat that spoon guy is wearing (previous post). And that particular hat seems to wander through a number of period paintings. Mostly, I'd like to know what it's made of. I'm guessing wool? Perhaps felted wool? Hat-making, you see, is one of those slightly intimidating parts of the costuming process. I have a thought though, which is that I could knit this thing. I went through a phase a couple of years ago wherein I would knit giant shapeless things and then felt them into smaller, also rather shapeless things (like handbags mostly), then block them into shape and foist them onto people since goodness knows I don't actually use anything I make. The key point is that if you knit them huge enough, necessitating that you felt them a lot (thereby filling your washing machine with scary little drowned mouse looking bits of wool and your house with the stench of wet sheep), the stitch definition just about disappears, particularly if the yarn has a bit of a halo, as in one with a touch of mohair. As in, Lambs Pride. Which reminds me, Anita, do you have any black wool? (Shopping at Anita's house is the very best way to acquire yarn.)

Speaking of knitting...I wonder whether their stockings (netherstocks?) are knitted or linen or wool or what. I could do any of those, provided I have enough time. And the knitting could wander about with me, unlike the rest of the costuming stuff. Maybe I should also be looking for natural wool in a gauge larger than sock yarn.

Ok that was astoundingly boring, but I'll leave it anyway. So that later I may have the pleasure of looking back and saying "I thought I would do what???"

peer pressure

2006-03-20T08:29:00.000-05:00

Hello. Long time no post. That would be because of the whole "long time no sew" thing. Which would probably in turn relate to the perennial "long time no faire to go to" issue of winter. However, the illustrious Julie has been poking at me (read: e-mailing me interesting pictures of attire) to get moving for this year's faire season. She's switched gears from the planned fancy-pants menswear to a theoretically shorter project. She's doing a Flemish working man to compliment her peasanty goodness. As I have a bit of peasanty goodness myself, as well as a known susceptibility to peer pressure when applied by Julie, I'll be following suit. There's a deadline of course. Conveniently left a bit nebulous at the moment, but sometime in May we're going to hit the Virginia faire in Spotsylvania. We don't really accomplish anything without a deadline.

So then, true to form, Julie put together an informative post wherein she describes how she and Adam carefully chose from different varieties of pants, doublets, hats, etc. It's really nice; take a look.

I looked at every picture from the time period that I could find that featured peasants being their lusty little selves. Did everyone just wander about with some guy's hand casually draped over their bodice? Or casually on their bum? Or something? Seems like it would be hard to get ones marketing/cooking/other peasanty tasks done that way. On a side note, the dress engineer seems to like that feature of this costume. Someone better tell him that this is not so much included with the clothing. Um, sorry, I digress.

And I was where? Oh yes, the patented "research" that goes into every costume...reading Julie's blog, daydreaming over paintings, and writing none of it down. To sum up, for the pants she found that one can have either hose, big baggy pants, or sort of medium baggy pants. The medium baggy pants are the most acceptable from the modern perspective, so she and Adam cleverly chose those. I'm not so big on the remaining options: the huge baggy pants because they would be hot and not so body-conscious, and the hose because they would be a wee bit too body-conscious. However, I think that this guy (from Pieter Bruegel's "Peasant Dance") is a good option:

He's got hose on, yes. But he also has what I shall dub "peasanty short shorts." I shall also call Aaron "Rather Dashing" the entire time he wears this costume and say "Haldo!" a lot, but that's quite another matter. Are these not the cutest short shorts ever? I love the soccer shorts over upper-stocks with cuffed nether-stocks look (yes, "soccer shorts" is the period term, why do you ask?). I have not so much seen this style worn out and about, although in all fairness I may have just overlooked it.

So yes, I pretty much picked out this outfit, THEN showed it to Aaron, who liked it (I'm getting better at this game). He only vetoed the hat, which is fine. Myself, I think he's going to get a spoon on his hat, like the other guy in the picture.

I already have the fabrics for this I think. I had a lucky streak at the local (terrible) fabric stores. First I found several yards of lightweight cream-colored wool in a plain weave for 40% off. I have a whole rainbow of fiber-reactive dyes in my kitchen from dyeing wool roving for spinning, so I should be able to make the wool pretty much any color I want (famous last words no doubt). I subsequently found half a bolt of medium-weight white linen marked down to $5 a yard, which was kind of weird. I suspect that was an accident on Joann's part, but who am I to argue? That I'll need to get some dye for, but I think it'll work out. I believe I'm going to more or less to the color scheme in the picture. I was originally going to do one of the almost-red colors that were so prevalent, but I really like the ugly green and yellow combo. I might change the doublet to something a little brighter. We shall see.

cuff # 1

2005-10-20T07:15:00.000-05:00

The design proceeds apace:

Laren very rightly pointed out (thank you!) that I should have tested the silk floss for colorfastness before beginning. Oops. Anyway, I took my hideous test swatch, doused it in soap, and scrubbed it under hot water for a good bit. This got rid of the pink transfer pencil but didn't seem to cause any bleeding of the black. I got lucky I guess. Hopefully I won't do anything worse than that in laundering it, so I think I'm ok to go on.

As Laren also pointed out, this isn't a good choice of design for non-counted work. I agree completely, but I really wanted to work Julie's design. I tried counting threads and it didn't take very long to give me a headache, so I think that's out. I made a few changes to the design, mostly because I couldn't really get the fine detail to work out. Too many stitches in the same area just kind of made a mess. This is just boring ole backstitching (because double-running drives me mad). The Soie d'Alger is sort of slubby and annoying, but for backstitching I think I can deal. I'll just go ahead and pretend that this is the reason my other stitches looked so poopy. Julie, don't buy this stuff. Buy the one Laren recommended.

It goes reasonably fast. It would go faster if not for my newly renewed obsession with knitting socks. Something about the leaves turning makes me want socks. Which has nothing to do with period costuming of course, but should make the Niter happy. Yes, Niter, I'm knitting. And your birthday present is finally done.

artigranites and flaming pinapples

2005-10-17T07:49:00.000-05:00

So a long long time ago, in a state far far away, Julie designed for me several very exciting, somewhat mutant-looking blackwork edgings, like so:

These were supposed to go with my Venetian outfit, and I believe at the time, I selected the middle one. I thought I was going to do counted blackwork on my camicia. Yeah. Har. Har. So that didn't happen. However, this time around, for Aaron's shirt I'd like blackworked cuffs and collar, and I'm not counting. Thank goodness. Counting on linen that fine is an exercise in minding one's temper. This time I'm actually doing the one on the left, which was originally my least favorite of the bunch, but it somehow seems to fit Aaron's style. He likes the slanty-twisty columns too. He was smart enough to have no opinions on which of these designs (and various others that I was trying out) he preferred until I had already decided. And then he wisely chose that one. Such a smart guy.

Anyway, this time I'm actually using silk embroidery floss, which is a first for me. I got it from Hedgehog Handworks. It's their Soie d'Alger, which according to their website is a 7-strand divisible silk, even though I thought I counted 8 strands. It was chosen from the options pretty much at random because it had pretty colors. Although how important that is when I'm only using black, I couldn't say. Many thanks to Laren for her advice on the marking pencil and use of the hoop. Both seem to be working out really well, although having read her post this morning, I'm starting to have "is-this-pink-stuff-going-to-come-out?" anxiety. I'll find out soon enough I guess! (What, you say that I could try washing the horribly crooked samples I did yesterday? Come now, that's not sporting!)

Julie - I know you were wanting to know what I thought of the silk floss and I have to say that I'm not sure yet! It's not really what I expected somehow, although I'm not sure what I expected. Something silkier I guess! It's actually a bit rougher than plain ole synthetic DMC floss, and is not so shiny. It took me quite a while to figure out a stitch and corresponding number of threads that would go down smoothly. Part of that was me and my lack of skills of course. I wanted to try some new stitches: chain stitch, stem stitch, satin stitch...something, anything!!! In the end, I did get to where I could do chain stitch reasonably, but I think I'll save it for something more freeform in design. This one just looks best in Holbein (well, backstitch really, as I'm a cheater, but the back will be hidden anyway). And may I say that I'm just plain disappointed not to be doing it in some new-to-me stitch? I think the next thing up may just have to be some little accessory type object for me simply so I can play with stitches. I'm looking around for historical designs that are less counted-looking so I can play with that.

So I know, all weekend fooling around with thread, and all I have done is one motif, and no picture. I'll work on it this evening and see if I can't snap a shot. Blame it on Niter for having a birthday this week; I was trying to finish her present. Yes, Niter, if you're reading this, that does mean I'm working on a present for you. Present present present!!

three for me, one for him

2005-10-10T07:40:00.001-05:00

So I did some thinking over the weekend, and I think I really am going to follow the "three for me, one for him" rule that Julie instituted. Actually, I think it was going to be "two for me, one for him" originally. And considering that, I suppose we could go for the 4-1 ratio next, which is tempting.....but no. No. Certainly not. We're going to be good and next make updated outfits for our loyal husbands, who have to put up with all of this costuming stuff strewn about our homes. Right Julie? Um....Julie?

Ok then, so the plan for the guys is for them to have sort of generic late period doublet/slops/capes ensembles with pinking and embellishment and fun stuff like that. With any luck, these will be sufficiently middle-of-the-road to be wearable alongside our existing Venetians and various planned English and Spanish stuff. Which we are definitely not doing until the husbands get their new duds. Definitely not. Right Julie? For Aaron, the faithful dress engineer, I'm planning on using as a basis on of the outfits from Patterns of Fashion. It's the first doublet and slops in the drawings section, one of the Medici kids. I can't for the life of me remember his name at the moment. At any rate, I'd like to scale that up and then see what sort of waist and shoulder treatments I'd like. That sort of thing. For the cape, I persuaded him to look at various styles in PoF, and he prefers something circular and about hip-length. He particularly likes the dark red velvet one with yellow satin appliques. I happen to have some dark red cotton velvet (or maybe velveteen, I don't actually know the difference, sadly), so he might be getting it in that. I think I'm going to hold off on deciding, though, until I can find some appropriate fabric for the rest of the get-up. I am having some difficulty deciding on a color scheme, so it'll probably just be whatever I find. Adam's "thunderhosen" will be in a severe black and cream combo, so I want to make sure I pick something quite different. Aaron's pretty partial to color anyway.

It may take me a bit of hunting to find fabrics that I like, so in the meantime, the first step is going to be a new blackworked shirt. He likes his old shirt, but it's on such a heavy linen that it's rather warm and drags down some. Also, while I do like the blackwork on his first one,

I also don't like his old doublet due to a lousy fabric choice; I'm kind of bummed about that, since I do like the couching and the thread-wrapped buttons. I digress. Hopefully this evening, I can swing by and pick up some linen to start on the shirt. And also perhaps whatever supplies I need to transfer designs....many advance thanks to Laren, who is being so kind as to tell us how she does it! I've always either counted or free-handed before, so I'm looking forward to trying this.

venetians take 2

2005-10-06T07:07:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in the last post, we decided to spend one day at the Maryland Renaissance Faire (in Flemish garb) and one day at the Pennsylvania Faire (in the Venetian outfits we'd worn once before to the Virginia Faire. We were a little iffy on driving to PA, since it took two hours, but by doing it in our period underwear, we were able to survive the "little red oven," as we fondly called Julie's car. We both loved the PA event. We both recalled it as having paved walkways and had the idea that this would really detract. However, the lovely scenery, presence of water fountains, and (now here's an idea) abundant shady seating more than made up for the pavement. For that matter, it was pretty nice not getting so much dust in everything. We were also impressed with the quality of the shows and the street acting (my favorite part). The team does a great job and are really friendly! The jousters are just plain nuts. There was actual falling-off-of-the-horse and bloody-nose-streaming-on-face. Not to mention blowing-up-of-stuff and really-hot-fire. The fight was to the death. And nobody stopped that for the kiddies. It was kind of appalling, which I thought was great!

As you can see, we pretty much wore the same thing as last time, except that since I still haven't gotten around to making a replacement partlet, I just wore the Flemish one from the day before. I actually really liked it. I think the shape is good, and I'm considering doing the same shape in a finer fabric for this costume. Perhaps with some embroidery. I think it made a pretty substantial difference in how I felt wearing the outfit.

We didn't have a photographer along with us on Sunday, so we tended to find a pretty spot, then take a picture of each of us. We did, however, do a decent job of not taking pictures with trash cans sprouting from our shoulders this time!

I really liked Julie's hair and veil combo this time. We won't mention that there was sewing going on in the car on the way. No, definitely not. We don't do things at the last moment, right?

Here's Julie with her new basket. We were really pleased with our new baskets. So pleased that we traipsed out to the car to dump our old baskets.

And of course, the obligatory "laughing like an idiot" picture. I think I'm laughing because Julie narrowly missed taking a picture of me with my tongue stuck out.

So then, we shall have to see what is next up. I think it might be time to make the dress engineer his new outfit if I'm going to keep to the "three for me, one for him" rule.

peasanty pleasantries

2005-10-04T11:32:00.000-05:00

Aren't Julie and I cute? Here we are at the MD Faire last Saturday. We're pretty pleased about the whole "getting our dresses done on time" bit, although to be fair, we were up until 2 the night before sewing up sleeves and hems and so forth. Much to the dress engineer's disappointment, we seemed to be enjoying it. I actually put together a pair of black linen sleeves using Julie's pattern, after midnight, and without sewing them together backwards! I was pretty amazed. Here are some shots of us with sleeves, squinting in the sun. Julie's hat is very cool, no?

As Julie mentioned in her post, although some of the faire folks recognized our Flemish-ness, several non-costume types pegged us as Amish. This was kind of funny, but actually, considering the back view, I can rather see it:

Here's another shot showing our headgear from the side.

And one last shot of us laughing about something. Probably the pinching gesture I seem to be making.

We definitely enjoyed wearing these for the day. They were very comfortable. I'll post later on day two of our adventure: Venetians in Pennsylvania.

peasantry, here we come

2005-09-30T07:19:00.000-05:00

Huzzah! The overdress is complete. The pictures below should be taken with a grain of salt, as I hadn't yet finished the hem. It's only whacked off to give you the idea, so it's looking a lot the tider now. Nonetheless, here it is all hanging down:

And here it is "flashing" the dress engineer:

I really like my fabric. I can't remember whether I discussed this fabric before or not, so I'll ramble here a bit. It's this astoundingly coarse, loosely woven linen. I got it at Hancock's a year or two ago. It was about $2 a yard if I recall correctly. It was some vile color, and to be honest, I can't even remember what that is at that point because I've abused it with so many color treatments. Last year, I took it and bleached it half to death because I wanted white linen for a shirt. A few months later, I took the remainder and tried to dye it brown for a cloak. I suck with dyeing things, so I ended up with a nasty purple-brown. This was way too ugly to use, even by my standards. When I decided I wanted it for this dress, I bleached it out again, then tried dyeing it peach. This was, of course, awful as well...blindingly peachity-peach-peach. I bleached it out yet again. Then I split it in half and dyed half with not-enough dark green RIT and half with much less peach dye and a big splash of dark green. I then laundered the stuff several times. The result was these faded out dirt colors. I am sure if I were doing something fancier, I'd be devastated, but I love it for the peasant-wear. In fact, all the repeated abuse of the fabric has caused it to look just plain worn, which makes me pretty happy as well.

My overdress is, sadly, not reversible like Julie's, so it's pretty much all-booger-green, all the time. Since I had limited fabric, I dyed more than half green so I would definitely have enough for a bodice. As it turned out, I self-lined the bodice, so obviously there would have been enough to line it in the contrast. However, I think the pale orange color is pretty terrible with my coloring, so I'd probably have always worn it this way anyway.

I decided to drape it only part of the way back. I haven't seen a painting like this, but I really preferred the effect. I got tricksy and went ahead and stuck a coat hook-and-eye into place on each side so that I can "bustle" the dress quickly and easily. I also put a hook-and-eye closure on the partlet. I have trouble getting pins to work right.

The only things left to do are to add a ruff to the newly-exceedingly-heavily-starched partlet and to put together a little pouch, since I forgot to go back and add a pocket. Those things are cut out and awaiting some hand-stitching on the car-ride.

quickie update

2005-09-29T11:30:00.000-05:00

The eyelets are completely done. Here's how they look. SO much better. I'm happy.

Here is the back view. The partlet seems to be crooked. I'll have to fix that.

And of course, here's the front. I think it looks kinda dumpy, but the overdress will help with that "I'm a shiny brown sausage look."

In other news, our grey and burgundy very tall socks came in, so we'll be all sorts of stylish. Conveniently, the grey are in a man's foot size and the burgundy in a woman's. I couldn't tell you why this is, since they're both supposed to be the same product. I thought they were going to be more of the one-size-fits-whoever tube sock style, I'd be mighty irked if they had been reversed. Happily, though, it worked out.

The overdress bodice is together, although I'm having reservations. The fabric is much stretchier than I would have imagined possible, so I'm concerned that the weight of the skirt will drag it down. I will pin the skirt on and check that out before stitching into place. The two layers of the skirt are together, and the pleats are hand-stitched together. I just have to tack it onto the bodice, but I might have to pull the bodice apart first and add a layer of interlining. I'd hate to do that though. This outfit already will have 7 layers of linen between me and the air, not counting the partlet.

2 more evenings...

2005-09-28T07:14:00.000-05:00

So we have pretty satisfactory progress last night, all things considered. I'm down to the last four eyelets. They aren't the prettiest eyelets ever, but they were quick:

I have a partlet. It's directly "borrowed" from Jen Thompson's v-necked partlet, hooray for creative people sharing their work! Her pattern is here. Happily, we must be pretty close in size, as the pattern sized up exactly. Sadly, I suspect I'm a good bit shorter. Oh yes, and speaking of making fun of myself, did you know that if one sews the right side of the partlet outside to the wrong side of the partlet inside, one gets something that isn't right no matter how many times one turns it inside out? Yay seam-ripping. Yay hand-stitching. Yay fudge factor. Anyway, this is the world's worst picture of the partlet, taken this morning in the mirror, over my work t-shirt, but it gives you the idea at any rate. I haven't made up my mind about whether I want a ruff on it or not, so I'm stalling on that.

I had rather a lot of fun playing with the kerchief. Heather's outstanding directions for doing this are here, and she's completely accurate about the whole stabbing oneself int he head bit. The only thing I really had to do to get this to work was to make the whole thing a little bigger. I have a big head apparently. Boy, using the patterns of others certainly gives one a fine opportunity to compare unfavorably, no? I digress. I stuck some wire in the brim of this so I could tinker with shaping it. I didn't really tinker much in these pictures. I also think that I'm going to cheat and sew a comb into the back end of the brim to try to keep this parked on my head. I wore it around and was having some problems with slippage, probably because I don't have much of a pile of hair to anchor to.

Oh yes, and a quick word on the coolness of starch. I have had a jug of old-fashioned liquid starch in my laundry room for years. It's leftover from a science demo with my sister's 3rd grade class. (No, children, the slime is not going to blow up.) Never in a million years would it have occurred to me to starch anything, but boy does that stuff work. It's kind of fun ironing it dry and watching it get stiffer and stiffer. The only trouble was that it actually made the kerchief too stiff to drape nicely, so I ended up having to wash it out. Nonetheless, I think I'm in love. Don't tell my mum. She doesn't know I'm aware of where the iron is located.

Other than that, I've cut out the pieces for my overdress bodice and have stitched up the various vertical seams. I tried this on this morning (over my t-shirt again, so I'll spare you that lovely sight), and I don't see much problem. The jury is still out on whether I want to bone the edges, but I think I may just leave little openings at the bottom so that I can slip some in if I decide I want it. Yep. So that's tonight's project. Cheers.

8 down, 20 to go

2005-09-27T08:48:00.000-05:00

The horrible lacing rings are history. Or almost, anyway. I'm busy replacing them with hand-bound eyelets. Although "bound" is probably not really accurate, since I'm not bothering with the whole button-hole stitch thing on these, just whipping the edges. This will give me something to further rue later, no doubt. I decided that given a choice between a horrible kirtle and a nice overdress and no overdress but a nicely fitted kirtle, I'd take the latter. Mostly because I know I'll get back to making an overgown, but there's no way I'll get back to adding eyelets. I may, however, pause with the eyelets after I get one side completely done to check function, then save the rest for the car ride to MD, as per Julie's suggestion.

Other than that, I'm busy hemming up a nice square of linen to make one of Heather Heroldt's clever headwraps. And may I say that it's super-mega-cool? I know there's no picture, just trust me. For a minimally shaped piece of linen, the effect is amazingly cool.

I've also drafted up the overdress bodice pattern, but I've decided I'm not allowed to cut that out until I have a functional headwrap and partlet. Considering that I have three evenings left, part of which are occupied already, I figure I'd better prioritize.

So alas, no pictures today, but hopefully I can get some pictures of one side of an eyeletted bodice and a funky headwrap for tomorrow.

and you want pictures too...

2005-09-26T08:46:00.000-05:00

There was much sewing this weekend, but there wasn't a heck of a lot of picture taking. The dress engineer did take this lovely picture, though. Does it not admirably demonstrate how very helpful the help is in my house? The one with the orange fur would be Dexter; the one with orange hair would be me. The Dex's dedication to putting his head on my fabric is a force to be reckoned with. I was cutting away, all the way up to the point of bumping him with the scissor tips as I cut the straps on a direct line towards his nose and he still didn't move. It required main force to remove his head from my new bodice. That's dedication. Or perhaps it's that the ugly pink fabric is leftover from his dog bed. It could be that too.

Oh. You didn't want a picture of my messy sewing room? Ok, here's the kirtle in all of its ugly brown drabness (ugly brown drabness was what I wanted my dear Niter, so you don't have to loyally comfort me this time!).

I am mostly pleased with it. I could pick it to bits for your benefit, but I won't bother because (1) it'll be covered anyway and (2) I still think it gives a decent effect.

Ok, I lied. Here are the major flaws:

1. The lacing rings suck. Suck suck suck. Some year, I'm going to learn that the quick fix doesn't work. Until that time, I'll blissfully sew in the lacing rings, humming to myself about all the time I'm saving. Then I'll lace it up and be cheesed off when I realize that I then have edges with nothing motivating them to lie flat. Nothing at all.

2. You can see my boning. This makes me a little cranky, since there are four layers in the bodice. I thought that would do it. Obviously not. This one I'm not going to fix though. It'll be mostly covered, and I'll just attempt to remember next time.

3. I should have gored the skirts. I didn't have much fabric, and I could have made better use of it. It's not like it's a narrow skirt by modern standards, but it's a little less flowy than I'm used to for not-modern stuff. I think this contributes to the side slits wanting to pull open a bit, even after I did some dress engineer-inspired alterations there.

4. You can't see it here, but the shoulders on the shift are off the shoulders by an inch or two. Obviously, I can't measure. That and I was a little paranoid about fitting into the shift, so I padded the measurements a bit. It's comfortable though. Oh yeah, which reminds me, I made the shift according to the Elizabethan Shift Pattern Generator, which is uber-handy.

On the plus side, I like the lack of separate corset, the poop-brown color, the feel of linen, the cute little v-neck in the back, that all visible stitching is by hand, and the fact that it only took me a day and a half to do this. I'm also pretty partial to the side lacing, since I can do it myself. Quickly. Without swearing.

not much of an update

2005-09-22T08:41:00.000-05:00

So I didn't really get much done last night on the dress. Basically, I drafted a pattern by plunking my corded bodice down on some paper, tracing, and then drawing some random lines on it. I did remember to take a little out of the waist, since my corded bodice is loose down there. Down with poochiness!!

I've actually made up my mind, though, and I'm going to do the gathered skirt on a side-lacing bodice. For much the reasons that Julie cited, i.e. ease of making that work. Also, I was thinking that I could do a pretty narrow panel in the front and much more pleating in the back for posterior pouf. We like posterior pouf. It distracts from front poochiness.

I did find a straw hat at ye olde wallyworld last night though, while picking up dog chow. It's not exactly spectacular, but it was a dollar. If I don't get around to a good head-covering it'll work. Even if I do get around to a good headcovering, it might still be nice to shade my eyes.

the gauntlet

2005-09-21T08:18:00.000-05:00

The illustrious Julie and I have jointly admitted to ourselves that our next costume deadline is...oops....October 1. We were allegedly going to do marvelous things in time for the MD Faire, but we were apparently kidding ourselves. So what will we do, you ask? What any reasonable person would do; we'll skip making our husbands new clothes and make ourselves a new dress instead. That's reasonable. Our objective is pretty simple: one Flemish kirtle apiece. And a shift for me. This way we can match our uppity handmaiden Niter and have all the comfort that our Venetian outfits do not for one day at least!

So last night, in accordance with this new plan, I pulled out the fabric intended for the Flemish outfit.

I then tried on the corded bodice that I'd made with the idea that it would be the foundation for this outfit. I agonized for a while over how to deal with the curves in it. Then I got the bright idea of trying on a couple of older dresses (with straight seams) over it just to see what would happen. What happens is that the dress bridges a bit the underbust curve and doesn't look that bad...BUT...I don't like the way anything looks over the corded bodice. There are a couple of factors. First, the straps are very wide for comfort, and the sides are cut up reasonably high under the arms to keep everything in place. This is a bit of a problem because the bodice tends to stick out from under other dresses. In other words, I made it with as much coverage as a dress bodice. Didn't think that through, obviously. In order to cover the corded bodice, my dress bodice will need to be ridiculously restrictive under the arms. Darn it. Then too, the cording in the bodice adds to my girth. It looks kinda poochy since the corded bodice doesn't really compress anything below the bust anyway. I just don't like it. This is pretty irksome.

I think in light of this, I may be trying to bone the kirtle and use it for support. Julie managed to wear her side-back-lacing Venetian dress without the corset by putting in some boning, so I'm hoping it may work for me. I'm thinking that I want side-lacing on this kirtle, for no particular reason except that I kind of think it looks cool, although I might go with back-lacing for the much more logical reason that then I only need half as many eyelets. Opinion?

corded bodice 2.0

2005-06-27T07:37:00.000-05:00

Here's my "curvy" bodice. It does, as the dress engineer pointed out, look more like a girl than the others. It's worn over my Italian camicia, which is way too full and is adding a bunch of fluff at the top that's not really there. So bear in mind that over a more modest chemise it'll be a little more discreet. As in, a little less like I should be serving beer to men singing in German.

The pattern for this is basically my Venetian bodice, minus the cut-out, minus the butt-point, minus some of the length, and plus a curved front. It provides zero compression in the midriff, which was kind of what I had in mind, although having a curvy belly wasn't so much what I had in mind. Oh well. Mostly, it provides under-bust compression. The curved front I got by first creating a mock-up that met in the middle all the way up and wasn't uncomfortably tight in the bosom (but didn't support beans), then cutting out the under-bust curve repeatedly until it actually provided some support. The curve is more pronounced than anything in the Alcega book for certain sure. I wasn't going for historical accuracy here, just a combination of comfort, ease of putting on, and the desired shape. I'm thinking this will work for the Flemish working woman, a German dress, and perhaps some of the earlier period stuff I'm thinking about. I don't know if any of these folks wore such a thing, but I'm just not going out the door without some sort of undergarment.

The materials: The side that's showing now is some sort of cheap cotton twill. The other side is cream-colored duck. It's reversible, depending on mood I suppose. That was an accident...I didn't have enough of either fabric. It's corded with two strands of hemp per approximately 1/4 inch channel. I ended the cording about 2 inches below each armscythe for comfort. Most of the cording angles to the front. There are a few vertical channels in the back, and there's a channel following the curve in the front so the eyelets don't rip out. That channel got added after the slanty bits were corded and sewn in place. Oh, and I only got about an inch of shrinkage for the whole circumferrence when I corded it.

the flemish dress begins

2005-06-24T14:30:00.000-05:00

Having had a pretty much sewing-free week following our weekend of playing at being Venetian courtesans, I think I'm ready for the next thing. Julie and I have decided that sewing in tandem is entertaining, so we've agreed on a Flemish peasant-y kind of thing for next. She's documenting this in a new diary....I'm just continuing on in this one. The final page of each outfit will be listed in the links to the right. I'm just not remotely a web programmer, so this'll have to suffice.

So the next thing, then, is something relatively cool and comfortable, with not-so-excessive skirts and not-so-stiff bodices. Drea Leed and Jen Thompson have done beautiful write-ups on their research on the Flemish working-woman, and I'll be leaning heavily on their interpretations.

I've been tinkering around a bit with a corded bodice to get that "can't be wearing a stiff corset while I'm weeding these vegetables now can I?" curvy lower class sort of look. I couldn't tell you whether the class of woman I'm trying to be would have worn one, but I'm darn well going to have a support system of some sort. Being as I don't do anything original if not necessary (hey, I'm a scientist...I go look at the literature ...always ), I first tried the basic shape of Jen Thompson's bodice. Well, except for being back-lacing and from a different pattern. But basically, rather straight. Hers ended up being curvy and supportive-looking. Mine ended up being kind of awful. To get enough support, I was lacing it tightly enough to make "pancake boobies." And since the lines on it were pretty straight, as much flesh went down as up, resulting in "pancake boobies near my waist" which was not a pretty thing. Loosening it up a bit alleviated that problem, but left me feeling as though things might...um....plummet or something. It also left weird bulges here and there. I mean, I know I'm bulgy, but not in this way. These shots are the loosened up version, since the tight version was so very very bad. Whereas this version is merely "very bad."

I'm obviously not going to wear something that makes me feel so ugly (the horned hairdo of the Venetian outfit notwithstanding), so I've been looking around at other ideas. Melissa of Sempstress did a trial of a front-closing corset with a slight curve in front, here. It's mighty pretty. I don't know what she boned it with, but something reasonably stiff, given the resulting line. I was thinking that if I used cording instead to soften the curve a bit and also made the under-bosom cut in a little more pronounced, I could perhaps approach the buxom silhouettes of the portraits. Or that of the St. Pauli girl. Which would be no bad thing. But I digress. I don't have pictures of the new version yet as I'm working on binding and eyelets, but the dress engineer's response was "hey, you actually look like a girl in that one" so I'll take that as positive. I'll try to take some pictures of the bodice and pattern this weekend to post.

Let me explain…no, there is too much. Let me sum up.

2005-06-20T07:16:00.000-05:00

There isn't a whole lot of point in my iterating our weekend point-by-point, as Julie has done so in a much better way than I ever could in her last two entries. I knew that there was an advantage to being lazy. Likewise, she's posted way more pictures than I ever took on her blog, so I'd suggest traipsing on over there instead.

What? You're still here? Oh ok then, here's my favorite picture of the bunch, taken by the dress engineer:

Why am I kneeling in an herb garden you ask? What has this to do with Venice, you ask? I dunno. But I think it's pretty. The herb garden that is. And my dress actually. And my head isn't exploding in this one for some reason.

I was going to send Julie this picture for her blog, but since she has approximately a trillion more pictures than I do, I'm posting it here. Isn't her hair beautiful?

Here we are sitting on the transformer (oh, um.....renaissancey box thing I mean) in my front yard. I think I should permanently park some dresses on top of it, as it looks much better that way. Most of these pictures were marred by one or the other of us making an awful face at either the sun, the gnats, or Julie's fantastically out-of-tune guitar, which is nonetheless really cute. In this picture, we actually managed to pretend that everything was lovely. Or else Julie wasn't actually playing. It could be that.

I don't actually have any pictures from the fair itself because I completely forgot to take the camera out. There are many on Julie's blog, so go look. Right then. My comments on the day:

1. The Virginia faire people are the nicest ever. Ever. I noticed this last year too. They are so darn welcoming and friendly. And they like to play. And they like you to play. And they don't mind if you crash their shade.

2. Alpacas are cute. Greyhounds are cuter. And they have way more fur than my dog....are you listening, Mr. We-can't-have-a-greyhound-'cause-it-might-get-cold?

3. Why is there a trash can growing out of my shoulder in every picture Julie took? Did I just migrate to the trash cans?

4. My dress grew a couple of inches. It's bizarre. In my living room three weeks ago, the length was perfect. Now it's too long. I think maybe my felted pleats settled some. Sounds like a good reason for some chopines, eh?

That's about it. I had a wonderful time with my good buddies, ate some delicious fudge, talked to lots of nice folks. Stood around being excessively warm in the dress and making squinty faces at cameras. Looking forward to doing it again in October!

Ok, I lied. One last shot, doing my best shoulders back, flag-fan erect, doofy-grin pose. And as much as I hate this hairdo, I think it was the right look for the day.

stupid partlet

2005-06-15T07:44:00.000-05:00

Ok, so the partlet is officially done. It is also officially going in a storage bin, not to be seen again for a very long time. If ever. It's not that it didn't come out nicely, 'cause it did. Which it should have, given all the effort. I finished the trim this morning, snapped a few photos, pinned it in place, and voila.....it looks stupid with the dress. It's a combination of factors really....the clashing color, the clashing motif, the fact that the mesh size is too large given the narrower shoulders that I did (not enough repeats visible). It just generally looks bad. Kind of made me a bit sad this morning, but oh well. I'll keep it just in case in the future I ever make a dress that would work with it. Like maybe a solid-colored dress. Or one with period shoulder straps. Or Anita's red velvet even. If it happens to be the right size and shape for her dress, which we'll just have to see.

At any rate, since I'd taken the pictures this morning, here you go. This is a close-up of the edging. I've also put in a piece of the original stuff I was using for cording and a piece of the braided trim I made with it. I used the loopy braiding technique used for junior high friendship bracelets to do this while camping this weekend, which is just bizarre, since it appears that Julie was using the same technique to make attachment loops for her sleeves this weekend. Sometimes it's vaguely alarming how much we think alike.

And here we have the poor pathetic partlet spread out on my not-at-all-vacuumed carpet. I took any number of shots, all without getting at least the cat's head in the picture. He was pretty fascinated by it.

Actually, he either was trying to tell me how awful it was, or he really wanted his head scratched. Here's the sequence of photos as he rolls his tubby little self all over my nice new partlet. And manages to immobilize me in the process.

Either way, the cat won. The partlet lost. And good riddance.

So that about wraps it up for this outfit, and a whole three days early to boot. Yes, I know that I could try to put together another partlet. But I'm partlet-ed out, thanks. I'll wear it with a bare bosom and lie to myself that I'm going to make a replacement for October. Probably no more posts until this weekend, when the lovely Julie, Anita, and I will be testing these out for the first time. Cheers!

that didn't work so well

2005-06-06T11:28:00.000-05:00

"I'll just whip out a partlet this weekend and be done, done DONE!" - famous last words.

Aside from getting side-tracked by redoing the veil (which I like a lot better now, thank you very much), the partlet is turning out to be a pain in the patoot. I thought that one of those gold net kind of partlets would be very nice indeed. And really, how hard could it be? So I made a little mock-up out of a hideous jungle print, got the dress engineer to trace the neckline of the dress on it, and cut it out. I laid this down on some backing fabric - leftover cotton veil stuff to be exact - cut an inch around, pinned it to a box, and started adding cord. The box idea came from Alyxx, and it's quite ingenious, at least when executed properly. Which I didn't do. There were at least two ways in which I didn't execute this correctly. It looked pretty nice on the box:

Then came time to shift the piece around, which was when I discovered that (1) I had drawn the fabric and cords to different tensions, so when released it became a puckered mess and (2) I hadn't finished the edges before I tacked it on there, so ravelling had eaten up my extra (which wasn't enough to begin with anyway), as well as eating into the section that was supposed to show. Lots of hours tacking all those little points down the drain. Bah.

I'm trying again, with several changes. I switched to a more tightly woven (although synthetic) fabric that I hope won't shift as much on the bias. I got a much bigger box. I didn't cut the partlet out. At the moment, I'm tacking down the diamond pattern with it on the box, then I'll trace and all. The fabric will have to unravel about 8 inches from each side at present, so let's hope that doesn't happen. Oh, and I'm also tying the knots from the front, not the back. This was the view from the back.....owie, ow, ow every few minutes when I'd forget about the pins.

saga of the veil

2005-06-05T14:22:00.000-05:00

So I've been pretty so-so on the veil thing all along. A couple of posts ago, I showed an edging that I'd put on the veil. I decided that I didn't like it, so I ripped that off and did a kind of rolled hem on it with a whole lot of machine stitching to hold it in place. I also re-attached the combs more neatly at the top, bound the top edge with a satin ribbon, and tacked a bit of leftover lace on top just to kind of clean up the edge a bit:

This was kind of pretty actually, but I kept wanting to hum the bridal theme. And I really hate weddings, so it was no good. I woke up this morning thinking to myself, "Self, why don't you dye it if you hate the white veil so much?" "But Self," I replied, "I haven't got any dyes." "Silly Self," I said, "why not use something from around the house?"

Ok, enough of the weird conversation wtih myself. Suffice it to say, I cut a scrap of leftover fabric and got cracking. I tried jasmine tea first. It looks yellow in my cup so I figured it might work. It didn't. Maybe it would have at a stronger concentration, but I decided I didn't really like the color in the pot either. Then I remembered that people like to use onion peels. I'd like to pretend that I did a lot of research and all, but really, I just rummaged in the fridge and trash can (ew...I know) for some onion skins, popped them in a pot, and tried it out, like so:

It seemed to work on my swatch, so I strained out the peels and dumped in my poor veil, fabric, edging, satin, combs, lace, and all.

I threw in some vinegar for good measure, which in retrospect might have been exactly the wrong pH for a plant-based fabric, but whatever. I mixed it a bit and went back to sewing. Some random time later (more than 20 minutes, less than an hour), I remembered it and rinsed it out. And surprisingly, it worked out to more or less exactly the color I wanted. It's kind of a muted yellow-orange-gold (the dress engineer called it "onion-colored"....sigh). It's a whole lot less bridal white at any rate. Here's my attempt to reproduce the color on the computer....take it with a grain of salt, as it didn't photograph very well.

What surpised me was that everything took the color. I figured that the polyester thread, cotton fabric, mystery ribbon, and cotton lace would all absorb differently, making a big mess and a good excuse to get rid of the veil, but they're pretty uniform. What surprised me even more was the couple of spots I'd used a bit of anti-fray stuff. I figured the glue bits wouldn't absorb color. Instead, they turned orange. Bizarre chemistry stuff no doubt. I'll have to do something about that.

Anyway, a comprehensive guide to dyeing with onion skins this is not, but if I can do it so randomly and have it work, it's obviously pretty darn easy.

inch inch inch

2005-06-02T07:10:00.000-05:00

Shockingly, I actually got something done on my Venetian dress, or rather, the accessories for it. Anita can attest that I actually finished the stupid pouch thing. It's quite ordinary, but it'll serve.

Happily, Anita was there to assure me that, no, I shouldn't add more embellishment. She was possibly hoping that I'd actually pull out some knitting and join her if I quit messing with the purse. That's pretty funny, huh? Anyway, I then proceeded to go home and kick the flag fan's butt. Oh yes. I've been putting off this little project because (1) I hate to paint and (2) I knew I'd have to dig out the drill. Actually though, this was a really fun little evening thing. Lots of glue, lots of mess, both still all over the kitchen table. The body of the flag itself is just matte photo paper, since I never found a fabric I liked. Sandwiched between the outer paper layers are two pieces of stiffer paper (unused Christmas cards actually), and glued between these two layers are the wire supports, which splay out into curlicues in the hopes that they'll stay put. I set a 10-pound weight on top of the paper layers for a bit to flatten and dry (and the dress engineer said I'd never use those weights....silly man!). I then basted some lace around the edge and stitched a ribbon over the edges on both sides. It ended up being quite sturdy, although I actually bent my poor needle trying to go through the layers. Kinda pretty, isn't it?

Oh and Julie, I learned something obvious about drilling. Putting biggish holes in smallish beads is kind of exciting. I had them clamped in a vise and periodically one would just crack in half. I found that if you used a series of drill bits gradually increasing in size it resulted in a lot less casualties. Just a thought, since your wood bits don't look like they came in a pack of 100 like mine. That or get your dad to do it, eh? He undoubtedly already knows this....I discovered it by dint of much swearing.

hairspray

2005-06-01T07:28:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I didn't actually work on the flag fan last night as I sort of implied I would. However, I did finish off my veil and play with my hair. I don't have a whole lot of hair, so I bought myself some. Now, I know this isn't the most elaborate or authentic hairdo in the world, but I thought a tack-on bun would be a handy start, so I got one here. It's in a color that more or less matches my hair when relatively recently dyed, which it's currently not. I'll rectify that before the deadline. Anyway, this was cheap and easy, and I'd planned to cover it with a veil anyway.

One of the Venetian oddities was a horned hairdo. Bella has a really wonderful description of this phenomena at her website, located here (towards the bottom of the page). For whatever reason, the Venetian women thought it would be really attractive to roll and twist the front of their hair into sort of a v-shape that got worse and worse until it was horns. Oh my. Anyway, my personal opinion of the look aside, this is a unique look for Venice, so I thought I'd try to recreate it. I'm sure they didn't have hairspray to work with, but I'm equally sure I can't do this without hairspray. I don't even dry my hair on the way to work normally, so hair isn't really my area of expertise. Anyway, to do this style, I divided my hair across the top ear-to-ear, then pulled the back into a ponytail to anchor the fake bun. The front I then doused with hairspray and teased to within an inch of its life. Once it was 5 times the normal volume, I just kind of made a roll of it while encouraging more of the hair to go outward towards where I wanted the "horns." Then I tried to smooth over the front a little. It's got a couple of bobby pins in there for good measure. This stayed up all evening, which kind of surprised me. I think for wearing it outside, it'll get a whole lot more bobby pins and a lacquer-like coating of hairspray on the surface.

Here's the show from the side to kind of show you how the bun works out. The veil's just attached with a comb. It may get attached with a couple more combs actually.

There are exceedingly cool pictures of Venetian women wearing huge enveloping black veils that practically hit the ground and wrap around the front. I like those a lot, but realistically, there's no way I'll tolerate that in the heat, so my veil is white, made of really loosely woven cotton, and only comes down to my derriere. Actually, it was supposed to be a bit longer than that. We won't really discuss what happened. Tip: when you even something up, it's better to cut off of the long side, not the short side. Duh. The edging on it is by machine. I know it's against my "no machine stitching showing" rule, but it's a really long edge, right? I zig-zagged over some leftover metallic embroidery floss. It's subtle-ish, but kind of gleams now and again in the light.

And for the entertainment of those who know me, here's what my hair looked like when I tried to take it down. Helloooooo 80's. Why couldn't I figure out how to do this in the 80's, I ask you? Maybe I'd have been in with the cool kids. Just needs some mall bangs.

so little progress

2005-05-31T07:55:00.000-05:00

So yep. I'm pretty bad at keeping up with a project. Been kind of busy. Anyway, I've got three or maybe four things left to do for this outfit: veil, pouch, flag fan, and perhaps a partlet. The pouch is almost done. Not that it's anything special, but I've still got a little bit of stitching to do on it, then I'll take a picture. Likewise, the veil is almost done. It's edged, I've bought the combs, I haven't attached them. So no picture either.

I'm using the lazy approach for the flag fan. I found a pretty picture of a Venetian brocade on La Couturiere Parisienne, which is incidentally a really cool site for looking at art. Here's the original:

It's mighty pretty. So I tinkered around with it and made up a color and that sort of thing to yield this:

I printed this out last night on matte photo paper and am planning to do basically the strategy so kindly outlined at The Renaissance Tailor. I'd thought of using fabric, but haven't found any remnants around that I liked. I thought about painting, but, yeah.....that won't be happening.

Not so much progress really, but I'm awfully close to being done with the whole thing. The deadline's June 18, so I don't think I've got a problem, no matter how lazy I am and no matter how many times I plan to go camping between now and then. It's summer after all.

baubles

2005-05-18T16:23:00.000-05:00

I finally figured out what I wanted in the center front of the girdle. Here we go:

I liked my little doo-dad so much that I made a necklace and earrings to match.

Yeah, that's pretty much all that I have to say about the jewelry. A jeweler I am not, but I can string beads. Oh, and that the godawful necklace I made a month ago is being taken apart. It looked stupid.

So I guess now all I need is a veil, some hair for pity's sake, a partlet (yuck), and some kind of pouch-ish thing since I don't have pockets. Or servants.

a walk in the woods

2005-05-17T13:56:00.000-05:00

Whine, complain. Nope, I don't have a picture of the stomacher under the lacings. But here's something for the moment I guess...we got goofy and took the dress outside this weekend. Happily, the trees are out now, so the neighbors don't have to be baffled...

Here's a back view of the dress to give you a sense of how the hem turned out. It sweeps the ground just a bit as I walk. Thumbs up to the dress engineer for his valiant pinning.

Still need some accessories, obviously. And some hair, eh?

underwares

2005-05-17T08:20:00.000-05:00

Haiku to Julie's camicia

it is so lovely
graceful gathers on the cuffs
redwork abounds here

Haiku to my camicia

eyelets on my wrists
no substitute for blackwork
oops, guess i cheated

Okay, I'll quit with the horrible poetry. So anyway, I didn't end up doing Julie's lovely custom-designed blackwork (scroll down past her humorous attempts to wriggle into a dress) on the camicia. I'm just not that sold on this chemise, and I can't see doing all that work on something I'm not too keen on....I'll save it for something else. In a vague attempt to pretty the camicia up a bit, I slapped some lace on there.

And because you haven't seen enough of me in my underwear yet, here's a second picture in which I've put on the corded petticoat as well. I'm kind of pleased with how this worked out. The stomacher/placket/dickey/whatever is attached to the corset with 9 sets of hook-and-eyes so that it can't wander off, but I can still use the corset for other ensembles. However, I left the bottom loose so that I can put my petticoat over the corset tabs, but under the stomacher/placket/dickey/whatever. Tricksy, no?

Oh and one other little change to the dress. I was having a hard time with lacing through the ribbon. I still think that Jen Thompson's concept is solid, it's just that when I switched to a larger diameter cord, I can no longer get it through the ribbon without a wrestling match. I could have ripped the ribbon out and tried again, but I thought that would be kind of difficult, since the first time I did it I didn't have the outer layer of fabric to worry about. I just left the ribbon in place and sewed in lacing rings (28 of the stupid things to be exact). This doesn't lace up quite as smoothly as the ribbon did, but it's a whole lot easier to deal with.

oh never mind, not so bummer after all

2005-05-10T15:10:00.000-05:00

One of the bits I'd been trying to sort out was what to put under the front lacings. Some folks have worn the camicia over the corset, but that requires an extra layer under the corset. Yuck. Also, I don't really like my camicia all that well, so I was planning to have it show as little as possible. Some people have managed to wear their dress sans corset. I tried it. It was ugly, and I managed to saw through a couple of the ribbon lacing points trying to make it work. Tip: If you must use Christmas ribbon to test lace, be intelligent and don't pick the stiff, sharp, sawlike stuff. Duh. Anyway, I'd pretty much settled on option three: some kind of stomacher-like thing. There are several examples of the Venetian ladies having done so. My favorite is "Lady with Heron" which I've pretty much taken to mean that I can stitch whatever I want on it. I mean, I was going to do that anyway, but it's nice to pretend I wasn't just going to do whatever I wanted, right? Here's the design I'm planning to have under the lacings in front, which is pretty much completely random. I'm going to make this into a sort of trapezoidal piece that will be basted onto the corset to hold it steady.

And here's a little closer view. It's not anything spectacular, just backstitching with DMC floss.

Anyway, since Anita asked, here's the so-boring picture of me binding the hem. I had planned to do this out of lining fabric, but I was standing in Wal-mart when an evil imp suggested that quilt binding would be oh-so-much less effort. For a similar not-too-exciting outcome.

well, bummer

2005-05-10T08:50:00.000-05:00

I had some pictures to post today. Unfortunately, I sent them to myself using some feature in the software which apparently scrambled them. So no pictures until I can try that again this evening.

In other incredibly dull news, I'm working on binding the hem of the dress. The hemming was dull. Marking the hem was moderately entertaining, since I employed the dress engineer and a new-to-me technique. Wish I could remember where I saw the idea, but at any rate, I put the dress on, then had the husband pin the skirt directly to the carpet. It worked really well. I was amazed actually. I've usually got the sagging, dragging hem with the too-short bit in the back. This one's actually right. The husband enjoyed this process too, mostly because of this:

*ring ring*
Aaron: Hang on, I'll get that.....oh hi there....no, no, this is a good time. I'm just pinning your daughter to the floor at the moment
Me(hissing): Don't...no...I'm going to kill you...ack I'm stuck to the floor. Come back here.
Aaron: .....no, it's no problem....she'd love to talk to you....uh huh......uh huh....yep she's like that.
Aaron: It's your mother.
Mom: Oh hello dear. Sounds like you're having fun!
Me: Stammer, mumble.

girdle

2005-05-06T08:39:00.000-05:00

I made a girdle last night for the dress. You can see in the close-up that I tacked it directly onto the dress. Otherwise, what with the point in the back and all, it was mighty hard to convince the thing to behave. Oh, and this is on a hanger, not on me, so the dress is lookin' a little limp.

It's two sizes of fake pearls and amber-colored glass beads that match the beads I used on the sleeves. It's strung on a fine wire. I've had all of this stuff for a while, so this is a "free" girdle. The pearls actually date back to when I got married (5 years ago, egads). I had this notion that I was going to make some sort of pearly monstrosity for on my head. It's a good thing I didn't, eh? Now I have a gazillion pearl beads in assorted sizes.

Anyway, here's a shot of the back. This is over my blue jeans instead of all the assorted foundation garments and I'm just holding the front together, so there are some weird wrinkles, but pay no mind. Julie - the little puff directly above the point - that's what I was talking about with my outer fabric bridging. In this picture you can see it doing that. I'm beginning to think about the wisdom of placing a couple of judicious stitches in there to teach it some manners.

The front lacks about 4 more beads and a hook to close it, so no picture of that just yet. I was tired and Frodo and Sam had gotten safely across toward Mordor, so it seemed like a good time to quit. At any rate, this is going to be waist-length only, no pendant chain. I think it would be lost in the fabric anyway with this dress. I'll get a shot of the front when I lace this mess up so the dress engineer can mark my hem.

help, i'm a giant couch

2005-05-05T09:17:00.000-05:00

By popular demand (ok, by demand of Julie and Niter), here are a couple of shots of the giant-couch-of-doom dress in progress. A number of things still need to happen to it. Namely, it needs a hem, the sleeves are held on only by a single pin apiece at the moment, and yes, that's my plain old unadorned corset there. I'm thinking about what to do about that at the moment. So then, here are the front and back shots of the dress:

I think my favorite shot is the back. It kind of looks like those woodcuts, huh? I mean the bigness of the posterior and all. And let's all take a moment (Anita) to rejoice at the relative levelness of the motifs in the skirt. Yay math. I think the most obvious thing from these pictures is that the camicia needs work. I thought that I made the sleeves long enough to pull through the gaps in the sleeves, but obviously not. I think my sleeve lengths got skewed when I actually laced a bodice over them, since the body of the thing is so wide. Everything got kind of pulled up. Also, I don't like the neckline. It gaps and pooches and generally looks pretty poor. I'll have to look into it. The dress engineer was asking whether the camicia (ok, he said shirt) was supposed to show on the sides in the back and I had no idea. Anyone?

Other than that though, I'm not terribly displeased. You can see in the front shot how my fingers are disappearing into the piles upon piles of fabric on my hips, mostly due to the obnoxiously yellow felt underneath. The dress is half armor, half padding! And all couch.

Here's a shot of the front of the waist. Sorry about the Christmas ribbon again. It's hard to see what's going on (due to the insane amounts of busy-ness no doubt), but basically there's a 12 inch slit going down the front from the point. There's nothing holding it together at the moment, just lots of pleats. Julie, can you kind of see how the center two pleats are perpendicular to the floor? They're not trying to force the front slit open at all and it just sort of gets lost in the folds......just a thought for yours.

Here's the dress engineer's favorite shot.....the "butt boning." I think maybe I'm having less trouble here because I am simply not trying to pleat nearly as much fabric in there. You can see the pleats get a bit wonky in the middle, but I think it looks ok when I'm walking around. Also, the aforementioned butt boning doesn't quite go down into the point. There's about an inch of unboned bodice at the point. I don't remember why I did that, but I think that's helping prevent all those various stresses at that point too, since the fabric obviously gives more than boning does. Oh, and may I just say that this dress does nothing for butt-reduction. It's freakin' huge. Anyway.

And finally, just because I hammed for the camera and I think it's kind of funny:

pleating like mad

2005-05-03T07:23:00.000-05:00

I spent yesterday evening pleating up my skirt. I have long since decided not to line this skirt, mostly because it will be hot enough already and partly because I don't have enough fabric on hand to do so and I'm cheap. However, I thought that a little bit of padding in the pleats would be nice. To that end, I cut 3-inch strips of hideous yellow felt and zig-zagged them onto the top edge of my tube skirt. I then folded it over and ran three parallel rows of stitches through to pleat it. 3 inch strips seemed to be a nice compromise between providing a little extra lift to the skirt and having a shelf around my butt. Here's the view from the inside:

And here's the outside:

I forgot to take a picture of how nicely I matched the pattern on the skirt seams for Anita. Anita, you'll just have to take my word for it. Aaron approved. He's as particular about that stuff as you, so I think you'll like it.

my geometry teacher would be appalled

2005-05-01T23:36:00.000-05:00

I'm working on a skirt for the eternal venetian dress. In the quest for fairly level motifs on this exceedingly patterned dress (ooh, look at the walking couch), I did a teensy bit of math. Let us all hope it's better than the math that gave me a waistband that was way too big, eh?

I'm sure that my 9th grade geometry teacher, my committee, and my local dress engineer would all be perfectly horrified at the simplifying assumptions. Yes, I'm aware that these don't scale perfectly. Yes, I'm aware that the cosine of a small angle isn't quite 1. Yes, I'm aware that one needs to take that into account. I did. Sort of. Roughly. And yes, yes, I know, the dress isn't composed of triangles. Assume the horse is a sphere already. It's close enough. I'm not doing calculus to get the curves just so. Especially considering how badly I pleat things.

Here are a couple of comments for the Julie-types, who might be giving this thing some thought.

1. I didn't get as much width as I thought, having to cut a swath off each side to get everything match up. Whoever makes the motifs not quite overlap at the edges of the fabric is a marketing genius. And I despise them for it.

2. I've been thinking about the front closure thing. Due to the gigantic dips front and back, the total waistline is 40". That really ought to go over in one direction or the other. I tried getting into the bodice with the bottom tied together. No way, no how. It's mysterious. It's sort of like that couch that is stuck in the stairway in the Dirk Gently book.

3. Since I'm resigned to having to do something to let me get into the dress, I decided to do so boldly. I'm putting a seam straight up the middle. I think it's better to have that than to end up trying to cut and face a slit in the middle of the panel. Also, it's forcing me to be honest about my ability to sew straight (and *gasp* use pins) a lot earlier in the process. The seam doesn't look half bad, and I'm planning to close it up with a multitude of hook and eye closures. Hope this works.

camicia progress....almost

2005-04-29T11:43:00.000-05:00

I worked on the camicia last night. It's basically a T-tunic with a squarish neckhole. It's hemmed and all, just lacks cuffs and something at the neckline. I made up cuffs last night, had them all interfaced and sewn together and turned and pressed and pinned and all. Then I decided I didn't like them that heavy, so I'll be redoing without the interfacing. I usually like stiffer cuffs, but they just seemed out of proportion with the lightweightness of the rest of it. Oh well.

I figured I should check out how the camicia worked with the bodice before committing to sleeve attachment point placements, y'know?

minor modifications

2005-04-28T07:32:00.000-05:00

Spent the past couple of evenings doing a little tinkering with the bodice. Nothing too exciting to look at, but I redid the armscythe so that I can wear it without anything cutting in. Much more comfortable and mobile.

And for the dress engineer.....
I will not ignore your careful seam allowances.
I will not ignore your careful seam allowances.
I will not ignore your careful seam allowances.

I've also decided not to put contrasting edging on the V in the front of the bodice. I don't like my lining fabric well enough, I'm out of ribbon, and I think I might like it better this way anyhow. That being decided, I topstitched beside the edge-most boning strips on the front. That should help keep everything in place. I do wish my handsewing were prettier though.

No pictures. It looks essentially the same. Next up: sleeve attachment points.

necklace

2005-04-25T16:28:00.000-05:00

So I had some bead clusters left over from the sleeves (once again, I apparently can't count) and got a little silly with them (being forced to watch Empire Strikes Back yet again will do that to a person). This is the result:

It would tie on with a bit of ribbon, and it's a bit longer than a choker, although it's sort of stiff and curved. I don't know whether I want to wear this or not. On one hand, it's frilly and girly and matches my dress and all. On the other hand, I was just planning to wear a simple string of pearls, which I'm sure is more period.

Any thoughts?

sleeves part 2

2005-04-25T10:58:00.000-05:00

Lousy weather this weekend, but good for sewing. I did lots of fiddly hand-sewing this weekend, but the sleeves are done except for figuring out how to attach them to the bodice. I think I'm leaning towards tying them on (as opposed to hook and eye or buttons or something), but I'm procrastinating doing the eyelets until I make up my mind for sure. Here's the sleeve lying flat on my cutting board. It's kind of sad-looking all uninflated like this, but you can see the slits along the back that will hopefully be filled with camicia puffs. I say hopefully since I haven't actually tried it.

I had all sorts of ribbon angst this weekend. I didn't have enough to bind everything as I planned....more math dumbness I suppose. However, by taking the binding off of the bottom of the sleeve, shortening the sleeve by an inch, and doing some franken-sleeve piecing of the binding, it worked out. It makes the panes slightly less puffy, but at least everything matches. The dress engineer, while disappointed that he didn't get poke me with marking pens or anything, did manage to venture some opinions about placement of beads and whatnot.

Anyway, here's my trying on my sleeve over a random shirt. I found out that it's hard to take pictures of your own arm, but the photographer was asleep. I'll have to take some more attractive pictures later.

sleeves part 1

2005-04-19T07:06:00.000-05:00

I've been working a bit on sleeves for the Venetian gown. We were out of town this weekend, so sewing was pretty much limited to what could be done by hand in the car. I want a fairly fitted sleeve with a paned top. The pictures below show the first couple of steps in the process. The sleeves are going to have three layers. The inner is the lining fabric from the bodice, which will show some as the panes move. The outer is the dress fabric. The middle is a layer of duck (mustard-colored in the pictures below) that is only extending down as far as the panes to give them a little stiffness. I left it out of the bottom half of the sleeves because it's going to be hot enough already. I experimented a bit with how to make panes without the fabric fraying all to bits and found that I got the best results by stitching the three layers together with a narrow machine zigzag before cutting. I have many yards of a thin grosgrain in a matching color that I'm going to use to bind the edges, but I found that trying to do that without the machine stitching underneath just caused everything to tear itself to pieces.

Before we left for the weekend, I got the sleeves themselves cut out and sewn onto the lining layers. While travelling, I cut the edges and attached the ribbon binding. I hadn't had time to do the zigzag on the pane cuts, and my one attempt to do this by hand convinced me that this would be an excellent way to shred my sleeves, so that's where I quit for the weekend.

I also did a little tinkering with beads. I'm going to put pearl clusters at the top and bottom of each slit on the sleeves, partly for decoration and partly because I think that the sewing is going to get a bit ugly right there. Here are some examples. I have enough of these for the sleeves.

bodiced!!

2005-04-12T07:21:00.000-05:00

Thanks Strongbad.

So here we have the front view of the bodice. Note that I'm still wearing my stylish grad school t-shirt. That's b/c yesterday's pictures were taken yesterday morning and today's pictures were taken yesterday evening...um, night. So I do laundry, really I do.

A couple of comments about these pictures:

(1) No, I won't be lacing this with Christmas ribbon, but it was handy (and slightly more durable than yesterday's yarn.

(2) I'm going to be redoing the armholes. The dress engineer (he prefers un-dress engineer) marked them correctly, then I proceeded to ignore the seam allowances last night while sewing them together, resulting in armholes that bind a bit. Not too bad, but could use a bit of an adjustment.

(3) This is probably obvious to anyone with a brain, but I'm going to need to wear my petticoat under the corset, not over as I planned. Otherwise, getting the low point, petticoat, and um, mysterious corset-cover stomacher thingie to come together correctly will be a challenge. I hadn't considered that.

(4) I need to do some topstitching to get the edges to sit correctly, but that'll get taken care of with the trim.

(5) The straps aren't as far out as I think a Venetian dress would be, but this was a deliberate design thing. I play the harp, and so this dress has to work with that. Straps all the way out on the point of my shoulders would make that unpleasant if not impossible.

(6) It kind of looks like the shoulder straps are pooching a little, but I think that's from putting my arms behind my back. I'll have to check, but I think it's ok actually. It looks normal from the side with the arms in a more natural position.

Right then, moving on, here's the back with my critical comments.

(1) Again, a bit of wrinkling where the straps start. I'll have to tug on that to simulate skirt weight and see if it helps. If not, I may just be living with it.

(2) Boning goes all the way down the point in the back. I think the stiffness helps.

So that's the bodice! Up next is redoing the armholes for comfort, then probably embellishing. I'm thinking about little orange bands around the opening, perhaps with clusters of pearls or pearls and amber beads.

sneak peek

2005-04-11T16:28:00.000-05:00

I haven't got so much in the way of patience, so although it's not done yet, here's a bit of a look at how the bodice is coming along. This was my project for yesterday, and while I didn't quite complete it, I'm pretty happy! The first thing I did was to fit a toile over my newly improved corset. I decided that since I'm using such a heavily patterned fabric, I'd try to see if I could cut the entire bodice in one piece. I took the pattern I'd drafted for my last dress, added points front and back, removed the side seams, and slashed the v-shaped opening up the middle. I cut this out of muslin and then got my husband to help with some revisions on it. He's really good at this for some reason. I think it's the engineering bent. He'll look critically at the fit for a couple of minutes, then say that I should take up the straps a bit or narrow the shoulders or whatever. Yesterday I introduced him to the notion of drawing directly on the toile. This was exceedingly popular, especially since in adjusting the arm-scythe, I happened to get accidentally poked with the pen a number of times. Urgh. Anyway, he did really nice job, so I cut out my lining and interlining, then got him to look at them again. After a thumbs-up from the dress engineer, I added a bit of boning. You can see the boning pattern for the back here:

and the front here:

Following Julie's example, I ran pieces of boning up over the shoulders again. I think she got this idea from Sempstress. It worked for the corset; hopefully it will work here as well. The boning is pretty light in the dress, but I've given up hope that I'll be able to wear this sans corset anyway....with that ladder lacing in the front, I think it would be pretty unattractive.

The ladder lacing is held in place with a double row of ribbons after Jen Thompson's example. It worked really well once I actually went to her description and did it correctly, duh. I put the ribbon strips directly over my boning and stitched right through them. My sewing machine wasn't delighted with this, but it did do a fine job of securing everything into place. Helpful hint #1: don't use a plastic yarn needle to lace the dress; they don't respond well to shear stress. I really like the ladder lacing, although I'll have to figure out what I want to lace the dress with exactly. Helpful hint #2: single-ply worsted isn't a good choice, even for a test fit...single-ply = pulls apart...duh again. Here's a close-up of my lacing strips. Note that there are extra points sewn across. Right...ready, fire, aim.

No pictures of the outside just yet. I've got the lining and outside sewn together, but need to sew up the armholes before modeling it. More commentary on that tomorrow.

overdue pictures

2005-04-11T07:08:00.000-05:00

So I finally hauled out the camera this weekend and took pictures of those things that I claimed to have done. So then, here we have the updated corset, shown over my very stylish grad school t-shirt (it was free). It is maybe not too possible to tell here, but there's a line of boning on the neck-ward side of the shoulder strap and two tucks on the shoulder-ward side. This distributes the load of whatever skirts I stick on the tabs at the bottom up onto my shoulders and makes the whole experience a lot more comfortable. I wore this for much of yesterday while sewing and was able to (1) breathe, (2) move around and kneel to cut fabric, and (3) avoid ripping it off in frustration. I think these are good signs.

The next picture is of the corded petticoat. As I mentioned some time ago (when I was claiming to have done this, right?), it's not gored because (1) I thought it would make it poofier and (2) I'm lazy like that. It's squashed a little flat here from the lovely and graceful (and cranky) Miss Mo's determined efforts over the week to make it into her new bed, but you get the idea. Note to self: research whether cat hair is period. It's definitely not beautiful, but I think it'll work.

And for those who would like to laugh at my non-existent ability to sew straight, here's what the petticoat looks like inside. I zigzagged three rows of cording directly onto the skirt for maximum ugliness. So lovely, but my rule about machine stitching doesn't apply to what won't show, so I don't mind too much.

photo impaired

2005-04-06T15:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I can't remember to take pictures to save my life. It never seems worth the bother of lacing stuff up just to take a picture, and whenever I'm working on something it doesn't seem worth stopping to take a picture. Especially since I'm always convinced that it'll be better shortly anyway.

Despite the abject lack of evidence, the outfit proceeds apace. The corded petticoat is complete. I ended up using a total of (if I did the math correctly) 60 yards of cording. That just seems ridiculous. It's ok, it could just be that I did the math wrong. I certainly did it wrong when attaching the waistband the first time. It was 5 inches too big. 5 inches. Not going to be getting that engineering degree any time soon I can see. Ahem. I'll post a picture soon. Really.

Corset 1.2 is also complete. I'm sort of excited about this. It now has straps. Big sturdy straps. Big sturdy straps with boning even. Actually, big sturdy straps with boning and little pleats on the outer edges that relate to period in no way that I've been able to find. But no matter. They stay up, and that's the thing, or rather, that's the minor thing. The major thing is that now when I put on skirts over the tabs, the weight seems to be distributed to my shoulders rather than my hips, which was the whole point of adding these straps. To test this, I put on my old dress (with the too-long non-load-bearing straps) along with a couple of extra underskirts. I wore this around for a while as I worked on other things. I didn't have the urge to rip it off. This is good.

julie is amazing

2005-03-31T11:55:00.000-05:00

Really she is. She's come up with a blackwork design for me. The last time I did this, I ended up with a free-handed, made up as I went, not-having-much-to-do-with-the-renaissance sort of pattern. It looked something like this:

Julie raised the bar. She raised it to something requiring counting. She even raised it to something requiring counting in half stitches. It's the flaming onion!

I love it. Julie did a nice job of documenting her myriad inspirations for this, so instead of trying to do the same, I direct you to her site.

Three cheers for Julie.

shades of scarlett...

2005-03-24T16:00:00.000-05:00

I am most of the way through a corded petticoat. I say most of the way because I think I may add another 20 yards of cording or so. I still haven't taken any pictures. I decided to ignore evidence suggesting that the petticoat should be gored and just corded the heck out of my standard big-butt-enhancing super-gathered tube type skirt. I thought it would be a fun experiment, and I'm happy. Since the cording doesn't hold out the skirt in the same way that something stiffer would, I didn't get the southern bell look, just the cone I was aiming for. The petticoat falls in big swooping curves, but when I tried an existing dress over it, the dress just bridges those. It's nice and swishy and it holds my skirts out far enough that it's pretty drafty underneath. It makes my old dress way too short, which is pretty funny-looking.

A bit more on construction of the skirt... I used some kind of 5/16 cording from the drapery-making section whose intended purpose eludes me. This got pre-washed, pre-dried, and then pre-untangled. Tip: throwing 30 yards of cord into the laundry without skeining it is stupid. I folded several rows into the hem at the bottom. Then I just used a wide zigzag stitch to attach the cord directly to the skirt in a big spiral. I figured that while the zigzag is ugly, it's not that much worse than a bunch of bias tape, which was my original plan. Since I neglected to ever purchase said bias tape, this worked out. I actually ended up going back and getting more, which I ran right alongside the first spiral. This added a lot of stiffness, so I'm going to do one more pass. And then I'll try to remember to get a picture.

corsets bite.....

2005-03-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

into your squishy bits that is. And also, they bite in the more colloquial sense. Mine is annoying the squish out of me. There's a fundamental thing about my corset that I don't like, which is that while it's comfortable over the shift, it's bloody uncomfortable once a dress gets put on over it. I think that this is because the dress drags down on the tabs at the bottom and sticks all the weight of the skirts onto the hips, which gets painful in a hurry. I think too, that part of the problem is that my old dress has shoulder straps that are too long, so they don't take enough of the weight. Or any, perhaps. However, I have this theory that if I add straps to the corset, then no matter how badly designed the next dress might be, it won't matter. So here's the thing....modern supportive garments work with the magic of elastic. Wide-set straps with no stretch to them exist solely to fall off of one's shoulders. This is what I discovered after painstakingly handsewing on straps, wriggling around trying to lace stuff in the mirror, adjusting the straps, wriggling around again, adjusting....etc etc etc.

Clearly I can't use elastic, nor criss-crossing straps a la the last bridesmaid dress I, um, altered, to, um, make myself not have to go berserk in the church. So my plan is to cut them on the bias in the hope of getting a little stretchiness and to make then enormously wide and curved under the arms. In other words, to turn the bloody thing into a standard renfest wench bodice. If I don't get distracted by something, perhaps I'll work on that tonight.

art school

2005-03-10T12:18:00.000-05:00

I didn't go to art school. It shows. Nonetheless, here's my concept sketch for the Venetian dress. It's pretty generic late-1600's stuff. We have the pointy front, the ladder lacing, the two-part sleeves, the full camisia, the fancy fabric, and the plain guards. I am sure I can find a way to make this more generic, but I haven't quite figured out how yet. Actually, this picture bears a striking resemblence to the princess drawings I would do as a kid except that those were mostly pink. I'm sure my 10-year-old self would be delighted to know that someday I'd have the ability to clothe myself as that princess.

It's colored almost entirely in orange. That's because I only have 8 pencils, and also because as mentioned, I didn't go to art school. Also, I'm not this skinny, but it's my picture and so I get to decide.

Despite some unsolicited commentary (ahem), the dress is not covered in tiny flames. If anybody observes that once I have horns on my head this will be quite appropriate, they will be in trouble. Big trouble. Big orange trouble.

orange

2005-03-08T10:08:00.000-05:00

Behold the Tribble in all of his terrible orange majesty.

The mighty Tribble is known far and wide for his vast powers of orange-ness. And also his useless-ness, stubborn-ness, tubby-ness, and other unflattering things ending in -ness. He has deigned to lounge on my fabric. Undoubtedly he thinks that having fabric to match him is really only his due. We'll assume that he has made himself at home on this nice new fabric to provide a color standard and not just to seed it with his fur, although the Tribble is in fact fond of multi-tasking.

You are perhaps at this point assuming that this is a gratuitous cat picture. But no, I provide it for a purpose. If I wanted gratuitous, I'd have included the rest of the menagerie. Or at least picked a picture where he wasn't looking so cranky. Despite my sincere desire to call my fabric something vaguely glamorous and evocative, such as perhaps bronze, amber, cinnabar,or titian, it seems that I will be wearing orange. Thanks Tribble.

sir mix-a-lot

2005-03-07T16:16:00.000-05:00

I present to you….. Corset 1.1. Corset 1.0 never even got a picture taken of it. The tabs were shorter and the discomfort of wearing it was….regrettable. I improved on it by cutting the tabs higher and rebinding it. It’s two layers of canvas duck. Most of the boning is electrical cable ties that have been cut to length and had the pointy bits cut off. The wider channels are a double layer of polyboning. The binding is cheap ribbon. It’s all terribly unperiod, but vaguely conical.

Coming soon for your viewing pleasure….Corset 1.2. I’m planning on adding straps. I think it makes more sense. For one thing, it’ll be guaranteed not to slither its evil way down at some inopportune moment, which is, I confess, a very real fear of mine. Since actual period garments all have straps, I’ve no idea where I got the idea not to include them in the first place. No matter. Stay tuned.

Oh and Julie….start writing all those fabulous compliments to encourage me, eh?

fabric fit for a .... um...whatever

2005-03-07T14:57:00.000-05:00

So here's a picture of my fabric that Anita was kind enough to take the other day. It's sort of a neat color. I say it's orangey-brown. Anita says it's bronze. Plainly Anita has more taste. The pattern is about a handspan wide.

I'm really partial to this fabric. I found it on the flat-fold remnants table at Joann's a week or two ago. It's synthetic of course, but I like the color enough that this is ok with me. It's heavy enough to give some body to the dress.

Et tu, Elisabetta?

2005-03-04T18:07:00.000-05:00

Oh but yes. Plainly, the world needs another dress diary. I have not the gift of gab, but a certain wenchy sort of the Anita variety has been dangling her newest blog before me like a, um, blog in front of a blogless person. Okay, that simile was lame. Which statement, incidentally, is pretty close to what the title of this blog was going to be. I digress.

At any rate, I'm somehow part of a plan to create a trio of Venetian beauties of the not-so-virtuous persuasion for the Maryland Renaissance Faire this year. Yes. That. The Dangerous Beauty bug. Infectious little bugger.

However, since the aforementioned wenchy Anita and the not so wenchy since she doesn't steal fabric Julie are kindly documenting their dress-making progress, I figure it's the least I can do.