artigranites and flaming pinapples

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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...

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

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...

 

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

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

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?