The Dragonfly Process

Because the first question people ask me when they've seen the new Japanese outfit I made for Takuan (you remember Takuan) is "did you make these?  wait - how did you do that??"  I figured I'd make a blog entry about it, since I've spent all week working on these.

In place of the six lions down the lapels of his jin-baori, as with the yellow and gold Caerleon outfit linked above, I did six mon, the circular embroidered designs (patches, in this case) running down the front of the garment, which bear a form of his SCA device.

All of these images can be enlarged by clicking on them.

I started with a red silk fabric with gold-colored dragonflies already woven into it.  This circle was cut so that it had one fly already in it, to save myself a bit of work.  I ironed a scrap of lightweight interfacing onto the back, and satin-stitched around the design to make it look appliquéd on the way the others will be.

All six of them are done, here.

you can see I've also run a loose zigzag around the edge of the circle, to keep it from unraveling.  This is some seriously unravely fabric.

Sometimes my camera is really badass.

The rest of the flies - all twelve of them - had to be cut from the fabric and ironed onto an interfacing backing...

...  and then cut free of the surrounding fabric, leaving a small border of red around each fly to carry the satin-stitching yet to come...

...which is what's happening here.

I have to say, at this point, that this new sewing machine is CRAZY AWESOME.  It's fast, it's quiet, it's smooth - seriously, these things went together in about twenty minutes apiece, once all the prep was out of the way (interfacing, making the circles, etc.).  On my old machine they took an hour EACH.

Also, I didn't notice until I saw this picture that I'd forgotten to put on the special foot I'm supposed to use when I'm satin-stitching. Oops!

Finally!   Obviously the circle isn't really straight, but I can't trim it just yet.

First I had to clip all the loose threads.  Next was to iron a circle of heavier interfacing onto the back, since, as you can see, the fabric is kinda wibbly.

Before I did that, I should have gone over the front and clipped off all the little hairy fabric bits that stuck out of the satin-stitching, but I can still go back and do that when I straighten out the circles before I put them on the garment.


And what are these going onto?

Well, this, for one thing.  Or rather, something like it.

The set of patches featured here are actually the second set - the ones for this black and red outfit were the first.  the second set went a lot more smoothly, since the first set was the proverbial $4M ashtray (West Wing reference; r&d and experimentation are the hard part.  Now I know what I'm doing).

The black and red outfit was done in August of this year.  It was a bit of a surprise, so I hadn't posted about it yet.  But here you go.  It's basically the same thing as the Caerleon samurai outfit (linked at the beginning of this post), but with sleeves...and...obviously...a different color.  The helmet, armor, and weaponry were all made by Takuan himself.




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Another Friend Outfit, Another Blue Outfit

A  short men's houppelande with embattled/dagged sleeves, for Sir John to wear to a 14th century pas d'armes tournament:

The lion (and embattled chief) on the front are 16" across.  If you've ever appliquéd anything, you know that's quite a lot of appliqué!   And all the twists and turns, yikes!  It was HARD.  I love hard.  I've been sewing since I was 9..."hard" is FUN.  :)

The lion was traced from a blown-up computer printout, and then inked
with india ink from my calligraphy set:  it's permanent, dark, and waterproof.
Creating this thing, from start to finish, took me four hours. 

I dyed the tongue red using a mixture of acrylic paint and fabric medium.
Before cutting out the lion, I put a heavy adhesive interfacing backing on
it so that it would be stiff enough to prevent all the little claws and hairs
from curling and shifting as it was sewn down. 

figuring out placement

satin-stitching around the chief...before I remembered that
I needed to do this in black!  Whoops.

This was my solution, rather than removing ALL that blue thread.
Came out pretty dang spiffy, too.  

Back view, during the tournament.



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Another Sneak Preview

IT'S ALIVE!!!   A bit sniffly still, but alive.  And done with a HUGE project that I've been working on for nearly three weeks (give or take a few sick days).   I don't have "real" pics of it yet, because the person I made it for isn't going to be wearing it until this coming weekend; but in the meantime...

what's this? 

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Yay!!!

Last Saturday I and two other members of the local Clothiers' Guild entered a competition - "outfit a new person for $30 or less", at the Stargate-Loch Sollier co-baronial event.  There were three grand prizes: one for each barony, and an overall winner - and we WON one of the baronial titles!  Hooray!

Shortly before the contest was announced, a person very kindly donated a HUGE pile of stuff to the guild - fabric, trim, buttons, lacings, yarn, and all sorts of other stuff.

The guild decided to use the donated materials to put together an outfit for this A&S competition - and since most of the fabric pieces were too small to get a whole adult piece out of, we decided to put our $30 to use making a complete kid's outfit instead: an Italian Ren for a young girl.

Franchesca did the dress and chemise (there's a removable forepart in the front that matches the sleeves which isn't visible in this picture, because someone had closed the skirt after looking at it), I did the cape and the documentation, and Simona did the little doll, which itself is handmade (and a period doll design), and which is dressed to match the girl's outfit, out of the same fabric.  How neat is that?  :)

We got a really nifty prize basket too, full of fabric, yarn, a lucet loom, some enameled wooden pendants, ribbon in kingdom colors, a fantastic art analysis book, a vial of lavender flowers, a crocquil...and other stuff!  I can't even remember everything, hehe.

Go, us!  Hee.

The entire girl's outfit will be donated to our B&B this week, to use however they see fit (loaner clothing, gift to a new member, largesse to be given in court, whatever they decide).

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Another One For A Friend

Speaking of stuff I've done recently but neglected to blog about:

Here's an English/Norman surcote I did for another friend of mine, back in the September 2011.

This is Sir John of Severn, leader of the fighting company I mentioned in that post about the Japanese jin-baori.  Every member of the unit has at least one outfit done in company and kingdom colors, but in the style of their persona, be it English, Japanese, German, etc.

The whole thing is heavy linen, and unlined.  It's also quarter-charged (divided quarterly, as opposed to having a gold half and a black half).  I sewed the surcote and the appliqés (stars and lions);  another friend of his painted the company's motto around the bottom (Ut simus invicti:  "together we are invincible").

There's more coming, too, on this front, in future posts.
Stay tuned. :)





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And Now For Something Completely Different

As I mentioned in the recent month-in-review post, in February I got the opportunity to create part of a Japanese outfit for a friend of mine, for Gulf Wars.   His persona is that of a 14th-century (Ashikaga period) Samurai warrior.  He's also a member of a fighting company/household whose colors had to be taken into account, and a Centurion (an Ansteorran grant-level fighting order), the insignia for which also needed to be worked into the garment.  Whew!

The piece I made is called a jin-baori, which later evolved into the kataginu. It's a sort of loose, sleeveless vest, tied in the front and split at either the back or the sides, which Japanese men wore over their kimonos, with thier hakama (the big "Samurai pants").

In this picture, instead of the kimono underneath, he's wearing a padded armor shirt that he made himself.  (He also created the black leather armor with red lacings that's visible through the front of the jin-baori, and the helmet in the second picture!)  The hakama were made by another friend of his.

The black panels down the front are a wide lapel which is turned back to reveal, in this case, the black lining in the garment, which is appliqué'd with six white lion heads, which are the symbol of his fighting company.

Black and gold are also part of the company's colors - and also the colors of our kingdom.  The 10-pointed star on the back of the jin-baori is also the kingdom badge.

The red displayed eagle on the lower right of the back, with another black 10-pointed star in the center of it, is the badge of the Centurions.  Their usual livery includes a red cloak with a gold eagle and black star; it would have been a bit much to wear the full Japanese kit with the Romanesque Centurion cloak, so we incorporated the Centurion badge into the jin-baori, and reversed the color scheme.


This was SO much fun to work on.  I believe there are going to be one or two more of these coming up this year, for this same person.  I can't wait to work on it again. :)



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