SCA: 1490s Florentine

 After refitting my two Florentine-cum-Venetian dresses, I still had my old red velvet court dress to figure out. Here it is in 2013 when I first made it: 

It still fits! I still had the original pomegranate-print linen sleeves, too, thankfully.  They were too tight, however, and originally I thought I'd just add a gusset under the arm to widen them, but then I thought, hey, I'm a bona fide Crazy Person, right?  Let's do something crazy! 

So, I cut them apart and re-shaped them as pieced sleeves a la 1490s Florence, to make them a little more accurate for the style of the dress (see below).  See the embroidered pouch on the far left?  It's the same fabric, but in 2013 I embroidered over the printed design to spice it up a bit, and I decided to do the same thing to these sleeves.  

Here they are finished: 

And here's the whole dress, updated and complete (click to make bigger): 

The dress isn't period accurate, I'm afraid.  A big thing with the laurels around here is to be able to explain THAT you know something is wrong, and WHY you chose to let it remain wrong.  Technically, the red velvet gown should be a giornea, open at the sides or the front to reveal a gamurra dress underneath.   However, I simply don't have the funds right now to make a whole new gamurra to wear under this dress, so I left it closed and used the matching sleeves and front panel to simulate the look of a separate under-dress.  I'm not a huge believer in the "10 foot rule", but it passes the 10' rule, and it looks cool, even if someone who really knows their Italian stuff would know right off the bat that this isn't right.  It bugs me, but it's what I've got.  I guess for making something old wearable again, I didn't do a half bad job.    

So now I'm all set for Baronial in October! At least, as far as things to wear goes.  I've been designated site decorator for the event, so I have a lot of work ahead of me making loads of flags and pennants and signs and ribbons and who knows what all.  I'll be busy with that for the next month and a half.  Meanwhile, I might even figure out what to do with my hair for the event.  And before Baronial, the annual fall Bjornsborg event is coming up early in October, so there's that to prepare for, too!  October is going to be busy.  

 

SCA: 1520s Venetian - Brown Dress

So, I'm a Viking pretty much full-time, but we have an Italian-themed event coming up in October, so I thought I'd drag out my old Florentine wardrobe and see if it still fit.  

Reader, it did not.  I'm a bit larger than I was when I made these outfits - ten years ago!  The corset, first of all, rides up over my belly into my armpits, so it's not workable at all. Thankfully, the two dresses fit well enough if I lace them wide open (they used to close in the front), and can be laced tightly enough that they're supportive, so I don't need the corset. All of my old sleeves are also too tight.  I wanted to replace them with bag sleeves, but between that idea and the fronts being laced wide, I was getting pretty far away from the 1490s Florentine style that these dresses were originally supposed to be. 

Enter Palma Vecchio and his contemporaries.  I found the following paintings online, from 1510s-1520s Venice: 

Cariani, 1520

Unknown, 1520s

These Venetian dresses are laced wide (tied, actually), and shown with baggy oversleeves.  That's exactly what I wanted!  Now I know it's actually a thing.  (Mind you, I have no actual research to back this up, just a few paintings to go off of). 

The first thing I did was to dye my old brown dress.  It was badly faded after all this time, and needed the color refreshed.  Rather than overdye it with brown (I hate Rit's browns), I combined a wine color with an eggplant color, just like I did with the cotehardie I dyed two years ago, and it came out beautifully: 

Then I created some bag sleeves for it out of a blue linen, dyed to match (eh, they mostly match. They’re a little lighter, but then the original color was very pale).  I had to improvise the pattern:  all I had to go on was a pin from Pinterest with a broken link; I couldn't find any 1520s Venetian sleeve patterns anywhere else.  I copied the shape as best I could, and the sleeves came out just fine. 

 

my version

 

The only problem I had with dyeing this dress is that for some reason I originally attached the skirt with dark gray thread. It didn’t show much against the brown linen, but now that it’s red, it stuck out like a sore thumb.  So, I took the skirt off and put it back on with thread that matches.  Not a huge deal, but kind of a pain in the butt. 

So now I have a new dress to wear to the event. I have a black one to re-work as well, and a court gown to fix up. I’ll show you those soon. 

Dyeing Stuff: A Pink Cotehardie

I made this pinkhardie in 2016, and I loved it - except that it was pink.  It was a lovely pink, but I'm just not a pale-colors-person.  I usually keep my SCA wardrobe to blues and greens and earth tones;  in Mundania I wear black almost exclusively, except for a few very dark colors.  I needed this cotehardie to be something I was more comfortable in.

RIT dye to the rescue!  I hemmed and hawed forever over the color - red or purple? - when what I really wanted was a deep mulberry tone.  Why not mix them, I thought?  I do it with house paint, art paints, and nail polish - why not dye?  Turns out, RIT has a handy color mixing chart on their website - and the answer was red AND purple.  And brown.

1 = Wine only; 2-4 = varying degrees of Cocoa Brown;
5-7 = varying degrees of Eggplant;  8 = final mixture

I used a bottle of Wine, a bottle of Cocoa Brown, and then added 3/4 cup of Eggplant to cool off the maroon color and give it a hint of purple.  I tested the color on strips of paper towel just to be sure I had the color right before dropping the dress in.

This was all done in my stainless steel kitchen sink, by the way.  I keep meaning to try out my washing machine, but it's new and I'm not sure how well it'll work yet, so I keep opting for the safer, known route. The water in the sink gets hot enough to steam and burn people, so I assume it's hot enough for dyes, and I have yet to have a problem with colors coming out right.

I LOVE the finished color! (It's a good thing I love it, too, because my thumbs and a couple of bath towels are now also this color.  Oops).  The linen took the dye really well, without any splotches or voids or other weirdness.  The color is a little bit lighter than my test piece after going through the wash to remove the excess dye.  Still, it's rich, deep, and kind of delicious.  Now I have the dark mulberry cotehardie I've been wanting, and the whole process only took about 45 minutes.  I've got two other dresses that need to be re-dyed, and now I can't wait to get started on them.

A note: the buttonholes were done in polyester thread, so they didn't take the dye at all.  Yup, I have pink buttonholes.  At some later point, I can either pick them out and replace them with new thread, or try to stain them with ink, which I've done successfully before with black ink.  We'll see. 

What's Next?  

I'll be making new handles for my Hedeby bag soon, and at the moment I'm painting a wooden chest.  Updates soon! 

Blue Velvet Redux

new dress, for Candlemas 2016

In 2012, for my second Candlemas, I made a midnight blue velveteen gown that was more or less cotehardie-ish, with a shimmery leaf-green lining in the sleeves, embroidered with gold thread and tiny faux pearls. It had seen some wear, and was far too small for me, the last time I tried it on (six months ago), so I decided to adjust the sizing a bit, and to change the look of the whole dress.

In an awesome turn of events, when I tried the dress on a couple of weeks ago, before starting this project, it fit me perfectly!  Yay!  No re-sizing necessary!

Here's What Changed: 

1.      I removed all of the gold metallic embroidery and beading, steamed out the impressions left by the decoration and brushed up the fabric's nap with a soft brush to smooth it back out. 

2.      The original front lacing placket was removed and replaced with buttons. 

3.      I unstitched the neckline edges and flattened them out, then re-shaped the neckline at the bust. 

4.     The neckline was a wee bit deeper in the front than I wanted before, so I added a 1/2" edge binding in a linen the same color as the velveteen. 

5.      A twisted, blue, cotton, embroidery floss was couched in along the join between he body fabric and the edge binding. 

6.      I removed the green sleeve linings were removed and replaced with a blue washed-silk fabric from stash.

7.    Finally, I put smaller buttons onto the sleeves.  The size and design don't match the front buttons, but the metallic tones of both styles look great together, and I like having smaller buttons on the sleeves, anyway - less banging my arms on feast tables. 

The dress in 2012, made from a pair of
cotton velveteen curtains purchased at Ikea

Buttons and edge binding on new dress

One Last Thing

I tried out an embossing technique that I'd seen online - there are many tutorials on YouTube and on various blogs out there, this is one.  Basically, you wet the fabric with a spray bottle, place a rubber or foam stamp underneath it, and use a hot iron (without steam) to dry the fabric against the pattern of the stamp.  I thought it would be nifty to have a band across the lower hem, and one at the hips -  similar to the decorative bands in this image from Les Belle Heures du Duc du Berry.  At first, it looked fantastic: 

yay?

After a day or two, though, the embossed design simply disappeared from the fabric.  I tried it a few different ways (wetting the fabric on the inside, the outside, different iron settings, using starch, not using starch), but no matter what I did, the pressed pattern simply would not stay where i put it - after hanging for a couple of days, it just vanished. Oh, well.  It was a neat idea.  

Okay, Two Last Things

I thought I might "reupholster" my old red ear cauls for this outfit, as well, before I remembered that one had gotten badly crushed at war last year, and I'd thrown the pair out and resolved to make a new set when I needed one.  

Instead, since I felt like trying out something new, and didn't want to spend the time on making a new set of cauls, I decided to try my hand at making a bourrelet, or padded roll headpiece, instead - which, of course, ended up taking more time than a new set of cauls would have.  Whatever. :) 

Cotton/poly damask scraps from stash, over-embroidered along the fabric's design, with (plastic?) silver trim, plastic pearl beads, and a glass "ruby" and plastic pearl drop in the front.  There's a wire inside from an old Halloween witch's hat, and it's stuffed with the contents of an old bed pillow that had gone flat.  I love recycling old stuff!   

I may or may not end up doing some more embroidery on it.  The more I look at it, the less finished it actually looks.  Then again, 90% of it will be under a veil.  I'm not sure yet. 

I'll have pics of the finished outfit, with jewelry, veils, and other accessories, after Candlemas. 

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S'mo Viking

I've finally finished ALL of the items in the Great Big Viking Project! 

These are the things I've finished since LPT last month:

Here's the coat I've been working in fits and snorts for several months.  I made the gray shell in 2012 for the Battle of Ethandune event; I've just recently added the blue trim, and the burnt-orange lining. 

It's reversible!

Another Skjoldehamn-style hood, this one in Caerleon company colors. The lion appliqué down the center front was embroidered by Simona, on her fancy-schmancy embroidery machine.

A red dress that started out as another plain under dress like my black one, but which scope-crept itself into a lace-fronted loose gown, with seam and edge embroidery and hand-stitched eyelets.

My original apron dress (also from 2012), which was dyed to refresh the faded color, and then embroidered along the seams and straps.

Next on the blog: last-minute event stress (aka Wednesday). 

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Refashioning An Old Viking Tunic

Back in 2012 I made a [half-assed] Viking outfit for the Battle of Ethandune event in the barony of Bjornsborg.  I haven't worn it much since then - maybe twice in the past three years.  I wore the white tunic with everything, though; at some point I dyed it green for some reason (I really don't remember, and I never liked the way it came out).  It was getting pretty worn around the edges, the color was weird, and the neckline never sat correctly on me.

So, this month I began taking it apart.  I removed the damaged lower sleeves and replaced them with a darker green linen fabric from a remnant.  I created a neckline overlay for it out of the same fabric, to bring the neckline up farther on my neck, and also to change the look of the tunic:

Over the weekend, I dug out the last of my fabric dye stash - which just happened to be a dark blue-green, and threw this thing into the sink.

It's definitely not the dark, forest green I was hoping for; but I LOVE the way the color came out.  After washing the dye out of the dress, I ran it through the washer with a bit of hair conditioner to soften up the fabric - I do that about every fourth time I wash my garb, and it keeps the linen from getting scratchy. (My skin reacts to 99% of commercial fabric softeners, but hair conditioner works great!)

Once it was dry, I ran a simple chain stitch around the trim pieces in a leaf-green embroidery floss, just so the dress wouldn't be completely plain.

This'll be a great knocking-around-camp casual dress; it's loose enough that I can wear it as a second layer in cool weather; and it can be dressed up into just about anything with the right accessories and headgear.  Success!

Meanwhile...

I'm finishing up the last two summer commissions this week, which I'll show you as soon as they're done and delivered.  I'm still in the process of refashioning my other old Viking stuff, and I have some new pieces I'll be talking about soon, too.  Stay tuned! ☺



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Purple Purple Purple

Remember this dress?

No?  That's okay, it's a few years old. It's also a few pounds too small.  At least, the top was.  I've done something nifty with it this week, an SCA Refashion, if you will.  Or if you won't, whatever.  It's already done, so :P

In a handful of hours I'm headed down to the Barony of Bjornsborg for the second annual Tournament of the Smitten Heart.  The first one, last year, was a BLAST, and I'm really looking forward to it.  Those BB'ers really know how to throw an event!

I'll be wearing this purple dress...sort of.  I'll bring pictures back from the event with me. In the meantime, here's a sneak peek:

One thing I can show, you, though - I'll also be wearing this:

SQUEE!!!  My new raven tattoo, an early birthday present to myself from myself.  I'm getting it colored in next week.  (If anyone cares, it's my fourth one. I also have a goddess on my sternum, a snake on my left forearm, and a moon and Scorpio symbol on my opposite shoulder).


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