SCA: Footwear Update

In February I purchased a pair of Hedeby-style leather shoes online, and have altered them just a bit since I got them. 

This is what they look like now: 

They were okay the way they arrived from the shop, although they were a bit too tight to get into - I had to undo some of the stitching in order to open them up enough to allow for my weirdly high instep.  

I also wove new laces for them to replace the plain leather ties they came with; and this week I dyed them a dark brown color and re-waterproofed them.  They were...orange...before...

 

after replacing the ties and altering the 
fit a bit, but before dyeing

ORANGE!  The new color is MUCH better.  

These shoes came with hard rubber soles on them, and I put nice thick gel insoles on the inside, so they walk really well outdoors, even on gravel roads.  Hooray for comfy feet! Like my old shoes (may they rest in peace - they lasted me nearly five years!), these are a unisex historical style, so I can wear them with whatever I want. 

a selection of Viking-age shoes at the Haithabu Museum

Above is a group of shoes displayed at the Haithabu (Hedeby) Museum in Germany.  The second-from-left on the top row is the same style as my new ones.  Note that the original shoes do NOT have a tablet-woven lace, hehe.  I know, it's not historically accurate, but I wanted them to be a little prettier. 

:P 

 

SCA: Candlemas 2024: Green 1490s Italian - the Accessories

A week ago I posted about the 1490s Florentine outfit I made for Candlemas in February - today’s post is about all the accessories that went into the outfit: 

Hair/Headgear

I’ll talk about my hair first, since it was a lot of fun - I used fake hair for the first time ever for this outfit! It was given to me by a friend several months ago, and I finally fixed it up and wore some of it for this outfit. It was really neat - it’s been two years since I cut all my hair off in order to grow out my gray (and I’m growing it back as fast as I can!) - and it felt soooo good to at least have the feel and weight of long hair again. I miss my hair! 

Anyway, I clipped two long silvery-gray extensions into my hair, then braided it all into a single braid down my back. The front of my hair was parted in the middle and smoothed down over my ears, and I curled the bits that were too short to be included in the braid. I wrapped the braid in gold ribbon, wider at the top and end to hide the elastic bands which contained the braid, with thin gold ribbon spiraled around the length of the braid. 

My inspiration for the hairstyle and headgear were from several paintings, like these: 

La Bella Principessa, Leonardo DaVinci

fragment from a painting of Lodovica
Tuornabuoni, Domenico Ghirlandaio

La Belle Feronniere, DaVinci

I created a reta - a netted skullcap like you see in the first two paintings - using a base of cotton needlepoint mesh canvas.   Once I had the shape figured out, I sewed/knotted the mesh pieces together, and then spray-painted the piece gold, which stiffened the mesh so that it held its shape better. Then I sewed gold metallic braided trim over the seam to hide it, and around the edges, and then attached a long gold ribbon to the corners to tie under my chin. 

Over the top of it all is a feronniere - mine is a long thin black velvet ribbon, onto which I threaded three gold beads spaced out along the front. 

The whole look goes something like this: 

The hair needs work - I like the false hairpiece, but my own hair in the front/side is very flyaway and frizzy looking.  Gotta figure out what to do about that.  

Jewelry

The necklace that I made to wear with this outfit is one of those kits where you press an acrylic cabochon (over a picture or flower petals or what-have-you) into the [pewter] setting - I’ve used these kits for Regency jewelry in the past. For this pendant, I painted the back of the cab with blueish iridescent nail polish, and the effect is sort of labradorite-ish, and I love the way it looks, and the way the color looks with the green and aqua/gold colors in the outfit.  

The pendant is hung on am 16" gold chain; and worn with a second much longer chain which is tucked into the neckline of my gamurra. 

I opted not to wear earrings with this outfit, since my hair covers my ears anyway. 

Purse

I wanted a new purse/pouch to go with this outfit, since my other SCA pouches are all blue and red. I used scraps of the sleeve fabric, cut into orange-wedge-shaped pieces, and lined the bag with some spare blue cotton sheeting I had lying around.  I couched a thin gold cord along each seam line on the outside, added a little fabric-covered button to the bottom to hide the joint between all the seams, and laced the top with a gold satin ribbon.  

Tada! I did a practice run on the whole costume today - doing my hair and getting completely dressed took me about forty minutes! SHEESH. I need a lady’s maid.  Everything is finally finished, though, and now I just have to sit back and wait until the event.  In three weeks.  I guess I'll go crochet something, hehe.  

SCA: "New" Viking Shoes FTW + Bonus Project

 So my Viking shoes, which I love*, had seen better days.  After two years of running around dusty events, the leather was dirty and stained and dry, and the laces were too thick, too short, and never stayed tied.  (I actually cut them off short because they kept coming undone, and then literally the day after I did that, I saw someone with the same shoes, with the laces tied up around her ankles, and I thought, why didn't I think of doing that before I chopped them off??  Argh).  

I kept thinking I'd eventually get to the leather store to get new laces for them, but then it dawned on me that I could just WEAVE some on my inkle loom!  Et voila: 

On the left is the old shoe.  On the right is the new teal inkle-woven lace.  I took the opportunity to clean and condition the leather as well, and I replaced the navy stitching with teal thread to match the laces.  

No socks, aaaa! 

It was a quick and easy fix, and now my shoes are both more functional and prettier.  I can't wait to wear them next month when events start happening again! 

Bonus Project: 

I also made a new belt for myself: 

I recently ordered some "Rainbow Lace" #10 cotton crochet thread from Hobbii - I used it for both the belt and the shoe laces and shoe stitching.  It's soft and smooth and lovely to work with, and it comes in a zillion awesome colors.  

These two projects were the 4th and 5th inkle weaving projects I've done; and this belt is the first time I've done a multi-colored weaving project.  It took for EVER to warp up the loom with all the stripes, but I really love the way it came out. It's long enough to wrap around me twice. 

~ fin ~

*If you're wondering, they're the Vlaardingen shoes from Bohemond, and they're available in brown and black, both with white stitching. 

Regency: Pink D’Orsay Flats

 So, I needed shoes to go with all this Regency stuff - and no, since you asked, I don’t have anywhere to wear any of this, I just wanted it.  But I needed shoes. I didn’t want to wear plain flats, and I can’t  afford to just go out and buy something appropriate. 

What I did have, though, is a pair of dusty-pink microfiber D’Orsay flats that I bought at WalMart several years ago that I wasn’t wearing anymore.  They were seriously dirty and scuffed: the first thing I did was to clean them up with rubbing alcohol and brush the nap smooth, then glue the tips of the toes back to the sole of the shoe where they had started to come apart. 

My inspiration for the next steps was this excerpt from the self-portrait of Adele Romany, painted in 1799. 

After cleaning, I used hot glue to place four small ribbon loops onto each shoe: one at the front toe, one at the back heel, and two on the sides. I threaded my ribbon through the loops and tied it around my feet.  One of the reasons I never wore these shoes was that they would fall off when I walked - now they stayed on AND they would work with my Regency wardrobe.  The modern microfiber bugs me a little, but I’m not too worried about it; I can always imagine they’re velvet. 

My dog Daisy and my cat Darcy were both interested in the shoes as I was walking around taking pictures: 

Mr. Madylyne

On the last day of an event, I like to dress as a dude. Packing up and breaking camp in a dress is a pain in the ass, and MAN, I hate stepping on my skirts while I'm trying to do work.  So.  Pants it is.  But not jeans - I still want to be in garb on the last day. 

Also, I really just dig men's Viking clothing.  I had a pretty decent tunic which was very festive but not period, some winingas that didn't stay up, and no pants at all (I was wearing baggy yoga pants).  The whole outfit had to be re-done from the ground up.

And so, from the top down,  this is the new tunic.  It's simple, beige and blue, with no trim, embroidery, or other ornamentation.  It's a plain, geometrically cut t-tunic, like the old one.  I have a pair of metal bracelets I can wear with this, a beaded necklace, and a small, round, silver brooch I can close the neckline with.  

I totally cheated on the pants.  I've tried the Thorsberg trouser pattern before, but I can't seem to make it work for me - the seat always rips out when I wear them.  The billowy Rus pants design calls for more fabric than I had to work with.  What I opted to do instead was to make a pair of "long sleeved braies":  basically, I used my Medieval underwear pattern, which I know fits well, and extended the legs to full length.  Here's sort of what the pattern looks like:

It worked really well.  I now have a pair of pants that is comfy, moves with me, and the waistband stays in place...And which I can't show you, because they look truly horrible and ridiculous on, without a shirt, and the shirt covers up all but the lower legs.  You can kind of see them in the next pic:  

Here's a pair of wool winingas that I ordered from Etsy, and the Vlaardingen shoes I ordered from Bohemond a few months ago.  I tried this with linen winingas that I made, but I just couldn't keep them up - they fell completely off every step I took.  The wool clings to the fabric of my pants much better, and hugs the curves of my legs, so they stay in place just fine.  (It's hard to get them on evenly, though - you can see how loose some of the wraps are. I'll get better).   I got the raven hooks from the same Etsy shop, and I lurrrve them.

So that's me as a guy!  I swear I didn't match the tunic trim to the pants on purpose, I was just working with the leftover fabric that I had.  Those winingas take forever to put on - I imagine I'll get better at it the more I use them.  I don't have any of the usual accoutrements that I see on guys - knives, drinking horns, little leather pouches, nice leather belt.  The belt I have right now is one I wove on my inkle loom out of thin, black yarn.  Eventually I'll come up with a nice kit;  for now I'm just rocking the clothes.  

And here, because I got a new kitten, is your Cat Tax for the day.  Everyone, meet Darcy: 

New Pretties

While I was incredibly responsible with most of my gumbint stimulus check, I did buy myself a present or two.  They came in this week:

First, my new shoes:  the Valaardingen Viking shoe from Bohemond, in brown leather.  They're based off 9th-10th century examples from Holland and Poland, worn by both men and women.  They're SUPER comfy, and the leather is so soft.

I'm wearing them around the house for the next few days to break them in and get used to wearing them - I put gel insoles in them so I wouldn't be walking flat on the ground, which hurts no matter what shoe I wear.  They look GREAT with my quarantine uniform of boxers and a ripped up tshirt. My roommate laughed at me.

While I love my new shoes, I'm absolutely head over heels about these new brooches.  They're from Raymond's Quiet Press - the "Vendel circle" brooches, based on a very early Viking piece. They're 3"x2", and aren't nearly as heavy as they look, thank goodness.

There was nothing wrong with my round brooches, and I still love them.  I'll probably use them to close my coat and/or cloak from now on.  It's just that I've had my eye on this pair of brooches for a couple of years now, and I was finally ready to bite the bullet and order a pair.  I adore these things.  I can't wait to wear them.

A Pair of Fixer-Uppers

This is a pair of leather shoes I've had in the bottom of a closet for nearly a year, not being worn.  I purchased them at Gulf Wars two years ago (on clearance for $20, no less!  The whole line was marked down because the factory apparently got the sizing wrong:  these are supposedly a men's size 9;  I wear a women's 8.5 and they fit me perfectly).  Last Gulf Wars I took a rather spectacular fall, and in the process some of the stitching along the bottom burst.  

I tried to find a leather worker who could fix them for me, but the ones I know have been extremely busy, and so the shoes sat in my closet.  Finally, sick of wearing my uncomfortable backup pair, I figured, the holes are already in the leather - how hard could it be to do it myself?

:(

upholstery needle FTW

As it turns out, it wasn't remotely difficult. I didn't have any cord made for stitching leather, so I used a heavy upholstery thread, four strands together for strength.

It only took about ten minutes; but when I was done, I decided to really spiff these shoes up:

I traced my feet (feet turkeys!) and made a pair of insole pads out of some craft felt I had in my stash, to help with the comfort of walking, since I killed my last pair of gel insoles.

I ran a doubled length of brown, twisted embroidery floss over all of the decorative edge-stitching that was already on the shoes, on either side of it.  

I cleaned, polished, and oiled the leather as well, to condition and soften it, and to fix up the places where the dye had worn away from the leather from wear.  

The things you see in the above picture inside the heels are pieces of a plastic Ikea placemat (I got a pack of four in the as-is section for 50c a few months ago, and have been using them for all sorts of little things like this).  After reconditioning the leather, I wanted to make sure they'd cure into the correct shape again, so I stuffed the toes with paper towels and slipped these plastic pieces into the heels to keep them upright. 

All done!  The whole process took about an hour and a half. 

. 

Random & Sundry

*covet*

Sheer natural linen batiste at my local JoAnn's...for only $24.99/yard.  Sigh.

A pair of half-sleeves I whipped up last week to wear with a dress I ended up not getting time to change into.  Blue/teal/gold with a teal lining. Good sleeve practice. And practically free, since the brocade came from a shower curtain. Heh.

Wow.  I can't decide what blows me over the most about this painting: the gorgeous dress, the beautiful green sleeves underneath it (surprise!) or that blue and gold tablecloth.  I covet that tablecloth.

Isabella of Castile, artist unknown

I love sketching clothing ideas and working out pattern logistics on paper.  My BFF gave me this nifty little grid-lined notebook that I carry with me everywhere for when I feel like drawing.

I have this navy silk...hm...

I really should get some underwear and cold-weather layers together before I start any new dresses.  Hoods, cloaks, buskins, shoes, braies...and I need a long-sleeved chemise, too.  Drat.












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