Ye Olde Bag

Ever write a text, email, blog post - and then realize later that you never hit the 'send' button?  Yeah.  I thought I posted this in November, my bad.

SO.

Ever see those nifty cross-body satchels people carry in period art?  Like this:

Even elephants carry purses. 

Well, a friend of mine had a sheet of painted burlap fabric, done in little rectangular scenes of chivalry, love, and warfare; she thought they'd be great on bag flaps.  And I just happened to have purchased a *ton* of cotton Ikea curtains from a dance studio that was closing down a few months ago.  And so this happened:

Hee.  These designs are so cute.

Each one is approximately 10x14" when closed, with the top flap covering the front of the bag completely when flat.

For the most part I just satin-stitched over the edge of each picture to applique it onto the bag flaps; one or two of them are stitched a bit differently because of the way they'd been cut from the whole cloth.

By the way?  Screw sewing burlap ever again.  That was gross.

The body of the bags are just flat - no boxing or other shaping to give them extra volume.  If they were pillows, they'd be knife-edge pillows, but idk what the equivalent term in bag making would be.

I kept thinking, while making these, how tribbles are basically born pregnant, and just multiply when you're not looking.

I also kept thinking, "Holy crap, am I done yet??"
EIGHT. BAGS.

I assembly-lined this project, though, which made it go a bit faster and more precisely.  I cut everything out, then prepped the burlap piece edges, then made the straps, then all the fronts, then did all the final assembly.  It took about eighteen hours to do the entire set.

They were all distributed amongst the household/company at BAM in November.  And I'd like extra credit for not making a special prank-bag for our Fearless Leader.  He's so fun to mess with, but I kept it reasonably professional.  ;)

~ FIN ~

Heraldic Flags For Camp

This is a catch-up post from BAM - from November.  I promise, I'm trying to be better about posting follow-ups and finished project pictures. :)

So, we at Caerleon have been trying to figure out some camp-fencing ideas.  Nobody wants to keep people out, but you don't really want people just randomly walking through your campsite at events, either, you know?  Rather than going to the expense and trouble of building an actual fence, and having to pack, tote, assemble, and disassemble it at every event; or putting together a sheet wall, which IS useful if you're camped by a roadside, for controlling dust and traffic noise,  but walls you off from the rest of the world pretty effectively, I put a ropeline together to stake out around the camp.

First, I took a couple of white, cotton curtains, cut them into 12x14" blocks and painted the heraldic devices of some of our members onto them:

I used the same fabric-painting method I use for my other linen and cotton projects: a 3:1 mixture of acrylic craft paint and craft or fabric glue, with a few drops of water mixed in to make the paint flow and soak into the fabric better.  

I sewed each one to a blank backing of the same fabric, and left a rod pocket at the top of each one, like a curtain panel.  I also made up a bunch of plain flags in other colors.  All of them were then strung onto a plain hemp rope, which was strung from 36" wire plant stakes (spray painted gold) around our campsite at BAM: 

Yay, most of us! :D 

It was a pretty decent trial-run of the idea, and people liked the way it looked. It's definitely not a completed project, though: 

1. 36" stakes are WAY too short, considering that nearly a foot of each stake is pushed into the ground, leaving not much to work with.  The ropeline ended up so low that it was almost more of a trip-hazard than anything.  The wire stakes were a stopgap measure, though - all of them will be replaced with taller, sturdier, wooden stakes before we go to Gulf Wars this year. 
2. I only managed to get about a third of our devices painted onto flags by the time BAM rolled around.  By Gulf Wars I intend to have ALL of our devices going, as well as some bearing the actual Caerleon company device, to space in between each personal device. 

I'll be talking more about Gulf Wars preparations in the next couple of months.  I have a LOT of plans for the company campsite, some of them are even already in progress.  

Just have to get through Candlemas first.  :) 

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I Came, I Saw, I Made My Own (II)

I have a bit of a Thing about pomegranates. I always have, and when I joined the SCA, I made the pomegranate my symbol.  It's on my heraldry, many of my personal items that I've made, like boxes and bags, and in a lot of my jewelry, too, in every way I can get it.

So when I saw this on Pinterest, I HAD TO HAVE IT:

22 carat, hollow beads with a pomegranate pendant
Persia, 500BC

It's far earlier than SCA-period; but it's still GORGEOUS.  And people have always loved antiques and ancient things, so, I'm going with it. ;) 

While I do a lot of beading and wire work, I have zero experience with casting jewelry - and no materials which which to do so.  But I've been meaning lately to learn to work with modeling clay, and I figured beads MUST be easy, and probably a decent starter project.  They were a wee bit more challenging that I thought, mostly having to do with getting the holes right, but they came out pretty well: 

I formed them around some sort of knitting tool (it was in a starter kit I was given once, but I never learned to knit, and I have no clue what it's supposed to be).  It sure made a great bead mandrel, though. It might be just as useful for knitting, but for now it's the first tool in my clay kit, hehe. 

About a third of the beads I made came apart when I tried to push a needle through them the first time.  I ended up making a second round of beads, and a bunch extra - and it's a good thing, too, because while stringing them up I realized that the first round was really not nearly as many as I needed!

After all were done and baked, I spray-painted them gold, and strung them on a length of embroidery floss.  I ended up spacing them out with green glass beads, because my clay beads weren't as pointed as the ones in the inspiration pic, and it looked weird having them all butted up against one another.

YAY!  I LOVE the way this came out! 

Here's the necklace on my dress dummy (Violet, who is in serious need of re-adustment, but we'll get to that in another post), along with a red...secret project...that I'll start discussing some time next week.

Stay tuned!


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Caerleon Over-sleeves

By request, the Caerleon over-sleeves I showed you the other day, with the Swiss kirtle:

Black linen shell, with a gold linen lining.  No interlining.  

Gold linen buttons. 

The Caerleon company motto is painted on the inside of the sleeve cuff, so that when I have the cuffs turned up, they face away from me (see top picture).  The motto is Ut simus invicti:  "together we are undefeated." 

There's an Ansteorran star painted inside the top of the sleeve, so that I can turn the top down over where I have the sleeves pinned onto my dress to show the star, if I want.  

The motto, star, and the three white lion heads (which are the device of the company, though properly they're shown vertically on a black field), were all painted in plain old craft store acrylic craft paints, mixed with a little fabric glue and water, to help the paint soak into the fabric and resist cracking.  

I mix the paint with a tiny bit of water, and some fabric glue or Tacky glue (at a ratio of about 3:1 paint:glue, with just a few drops of water).  The water helps the paint-blue mixture flow on a brush; the glue basically turns acrylic paint into fabric paint, allowing it to soak into the material rather than forming a crust on top which could flake off, and it also makes the dried paint flexible to help prevent cracking.  (Eventually, yes, the paint will crack and flake; but this mixture lasts a long, long time.  I have a banner I made many years ago for another group I belonged to, which hung in a tree by my campsite for about four years in a row, and it never showed any damage from the elements).  

Previously...

The sleeves above are my first set of sleeves.  There's an introductory period to membership in my company, and certain conditions that you have to meet to be fully inducted and to earn the right to wear the lions.  Before that, you can wear the motto and colors only.  So my firs set of Caerleon sleeves were simpler: 

Gold linen with black borders at the top and bottom of the sleeves, and the motto painted in the same way, with the paint-glue-water mixture. 

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Gold Swiss/German Linen Kirtle

Bryn Gwlad's Candlemas event is a sight to behold.  It's just about my favorite event of the year.  It's primarily an indoor event, chock full of classes, A&S, music, and dancing.  The hall always looks amazing, the feast is lit by candlelight only, and heralds announce each course as a coordinated fleet of servers delivers food to the people who aren't up participating in the ball taking place at the front of the hall before the high tables...to live music.  *happy sigh*

It's also usually a themed event.  This year the theme is Landsknecht, on the road to war (Gulf Wars, in March).  Landsknecht dress, or at least German-styled clothing in general, is encouraged (but not mandatory).  Though I've sworn for five years that I'll never "go German," here is my first one, to wear during the day at the event.

It's based on the following two works by Diebold Schilling the Elder (Swiss, 1445-1485), and a couple of recreations I've seen online that I really love:

unknown, Schilling

Barbara Erlach and daughters,
Schilling

In Nova Corpora

Sew Mill

Notes

The pattern is based on my usual cotehardie pattern.  It's rectangular construction with inset gores, and only the neckline and sleeves have been altered. (The sleeves are short because I'll be wearing a pair of over-sleeves with the dress for part of the day and working with my hands for most of the rest of it; they're cut as modern sleeves with the seam under the arm instead of behind it, which I did for speed as much as for the slightly baggier look they give to the shoulders).   I would really have liked a fuller, longer skirt; but I only had so much fabric to work with. 

The bodice of the dress is flat-lined in white linen; though it is also turned at the neckline/front opening.  The sleeves and skirt are unlined.  I wanted as few layers as possible for this outfit, since a hall full of people dancing, gaming, and milling about gets pretty hot;  I'll be working most of the day, attending dance classes, and wearing braies and a smock underneath this dress as well.  I'd rather not die of heat stroke before lunch.

A close-up of the front lacing after completion, during a test fit.

The lace is a silk twill tape from a stash of vintage notions I received from a friend several months ago.

There are no hooks or loops or holes for the lacing; rather, a thin, double-fold cotton bias tape is attached inside the edge of the front opening. The bias tape was attached with  line of decorative chevron stitches (machined) that run down the entire front opening edge, with gaps in the stitching to form loops in the bias tape through which the twill tape is threaded.

I was originally going to close the vertical slit with buttons or a hook; but I didn't have anything in my stash that wouldn't interfere with the belt I was going to wear with the dress.

(Sorry, the stitching looks horrible from the inside.  On the outside it's nice and even, and practically invisible on the gold linen).

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With my newest Caerleon sleeves...which I made like a year ago and never posted to the blog. But I kinda love them.  :)








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Project Goals: A Check-In

Last September, I posted this about some changes I felt I needed to make in my project-ing habits (mostly for SCA, but also applicable to my mundane projects).

To wit:

1. Limit the number of projects I take on at a time, so that I don't overload myself. 
2. Establish expected delivery date before committing to a project.  Ditto project parameters. 
3. Procrastination issues: 
1. Work on each project for at least two hours per week - no putting things off til the last week. 
2. Stop putting off things for myself, or mundane projects, until I "get my work done." It just stresses me out. 
4. Clean up and put away my toys when I'm done with a project. 

How have I done? 

You know, I was paging back through my blog, and I came across that post, and I laughed out loud.  Sort of a barking sound, really.  But then I read it through, and really thought about it, and I think I've done pretty darned well in the past four months! 

All of 2014, really, has been an exercise in learning not to take on too much work at a time.  I've had a hard time learning to say "no" and "not right now," but I've done it.  I've learned to do that.  And it's done me a world of good. 

I think going into a project with clear expectations on my part and the part of my clients is doing us all a LOT of good.  My first question is, "When do you need it?", and then we get right down to drawing up some designs, setting expectations, and going over what's feasible and what's not - and THEN I accept, or I can I say that a project is more than I can take on right now; and there are always options at that point (check with me in a month, or, I'll let you know when I'm finished with X, or "Maybe you could ask Lady Whosit, she does this kind of thing far better than I").   I think this process is making me easier to work with. :) 

I'm no longer separating "fun" from "work" - it's all fun, that's why I do it! And I've found that having more than one project gives me relief when I need it.  Something's frustrating me to no end and I'm banging my head against the sewing machine aimlessly?  Switch projects to clear my head and lift my mood! It's great! 

And I AM cleaning up my toys at the end of a project.  My sewing room is usually pretty clean nowadays - no more walking in, throwing up my hands in disgust, and walking out again simply because I just cannot work in there the way it is.  Ditto my workshop in the garage.  It's come in extremely handy in the last couple of months as I've prepared my house in various ways for the addition of a roommate, too, and even in the moving and unpacking process.  

So, what's next? 

For right now, I'm 100% focused on getting ready for Candlemas in February.  After that, it's all about Gulf Wars in March (technically, I should have started that like three months ago, but that's another blog post for another day).  

Now that the Room of Requirement (i.e. having converted my gigantic master bedroom into a craft room for my roommate and I to share) is complete and functioning REALLY WELL, I find I'm actually working more quickly than I was before, and I have a lot more workspace in which to organize the various stages of project completion. Yay! 

A New Frontier

*deeeep breath before I up and say this out loud*

So I'm branching out into actual A&S competition.  For my whole, whopping five years in the SCA I've been perfectly content to work in the background, not calling attention to myself.  I had my reasons, and some of them still stand, to be honest.  Earlier this year a good friend convinced me to display at an A&S table - not compete, but display, which took the fear-of-judgment out of the equation.  A little, anyway.  And I discovered that it was TOTALLY FUN.  I discovered I actually want to start entering competitions, which, to be honest, freaks me out a little, LOL.  I've been lurking around A&S tables at events ever since, examining the process and expectations as well as the staggering and gorgeous array of talent this kingdom has to offer, and I find, I want to join in.  

So here goes nothin'. 

On Project Delivery

One thing I've noticed - I've always noticed, really, but it's been on my mind ever since BAM in November - is that I am absolute pants at delivering any sort of project closure on this blog, and it's driving me NUTS.  I'm only posting "after" or finished pictures of projects on this blog, seriously, like maybe thirty percent of the time, and that's not okay.  This blog is supposed to be a record, a reference for myself on future projects, and a way to show people what I do; and yet it's mostly a slapdash assortment of plans that look unfulfilled.  I HATE THAT SO MUCH.  I do so much more than what you see here! 

So my "New Year's resolution", if it's that, is to get serious about posting finished pictures and project wrap-up posts here, on  every project.

• One problem is that I really don't have a good space in my home in which to photograph myself in my finished outfits.    
• Another issue is that I'm in the habit of thinking, "Oh, it's okay - I'll get pictures at the event coming up" - and then I don't, because I'm too busy or I'm having too much fun to remember.  I ran around BAM with a camera in my hand and never once did it occur to me to hand it to someone and ask them to photograph me!  DERP. 

A friend of mine and I have ben discussing this issue, because we both do it, and have decided to get together at some point in the next few weeks for a joint fashion show and photo shoot, hehe.  That'll catch me up on projects for myself that I've already finished.  From there on out, though, I'll have to really stick to the concept of photography and blogging as the final stage of a project - not an afterthought. 

Oh, and one more thing. 

The other major point in that September post was a commitment to really doing a job on every project - no more working my butt off for other people and then half-assing the work I do for myself.  I'm proud to say that not only have I stuck to that, the ripple effects from that commitment have been a pleasant surprise. 

When you've been sewing for twenty-eight years, things get a little old hat.  And you start cutting corners just to get things DONE.  At least, I did. For a long time. And I was mad at myself for doing it - but I was so overloaded that, well, you know.  

So now I'm not doing that any more.  I'm paying way more attention to detail.  I'm feeling really proud of everything I do.  I'm really feeling that every project IS better than the last.  I'm suddenly excited about refining my current skills and making them even better, and turning out higher-quality work.  

I'm getting really interested in expanding my skill set as well.  I've been reading up on all sorts of new styles of historical dress, new embroidery methods, various types of weaving (I'll be inkle looming by the end of this week, in fact).  I'm also learning a bit about tailoring techniques from a that same A&S friend, and from some online reading I've been doing, and it's really exciting!  (I've always been a seamstress and a dressmaker; but until now I've never even understood that *tailoring* is a completely different discipline, and it's fascinating).  

The moral of the story:  

Never do anything half-assed. ALWAYS USE YOUR WHOLE ASS. 

And, of course: 

And Now For Something Completely Different

Something I've been meaning to try for a long time:

20ga gold-colored copper wire.  The first one took two hours; the second forty minutes, hehe (because "the first one" involved two failed attempts before I figured out what I was doing).  And now that they're done...I'm NEVER EVER making a pair of these again.  WHAT a pain in the arse.

They're kind of...beginner-looking.  I'm not very practiced at working with long lengths of wire just yet.  But they'll do for a first effort, I think.

Yes, I just saw Battle of the Five Armies today, why do you ask?  Hee.

Now all I have to do is keep from losing these or messing them up between now and the ren faire in the Spring, LOL.

:)

MOAR BLING

I made a circlet!  It's the first one I've ever made, and my first major wire project, aside from small things like links and bead dangles.  Whee!  I saw something similar online and decided the pattern would make a nifty circlet.  Couldn't find a tutorial anywhere.  So I made my own as I went along. Enjoy.

First, the finished circlet: 

Here's how I did it: 

1. I used 22ga copper wire for this.  The first thing I did was fold over the end so that it's not poke-y, because ow.  Also because it strengthens the loose end. 
2. Then I curled the end into a round loop. 
3. With a marker.  High tech, I know.  I hope you can keep up. (Dear Santa...)
4. The second loop, next to the first. 
5. I bent back the loose end of the wire, similar to how I started, then wrapped the wire around the marker again to loop into the next loop. 
6. Seriously. Bailing pliers. This was my trial run for this design.  I'm getting myself some bailing pliers tomorrow so I can do the next one in, hopefully, half the time, and fewer broken fingernails. 
7. Keep going. Forever. 
8. Each loop is 1/2" in diameter.  The finished circlet, roughly 16" in diameter, took nearly thirty feet of wire, and about 2.5 hours to get to this point. 
9. Finally, I pushed the marker back through each loop to round them all out and make them uniform in size and shape again.  Wire is bendy. 
   
10. Then I made a ton of these little loopy guys. 
11. Clip the loopy guys around two loops, and wrap them tight around, to hold the loops together.  After the wire is wrapped around the loops, press it flat with your pliers. (The pliers you DO actually own, not pictured). 
12. The finished wrap.  This keeps the loops from shifting out of place, stretching (because up until this point, this thing was a giant spring), and getting bent out of shape. It also adds stiffness and stability to the entire piece. 
13. I curled the folded ends back over on themselves, to form little spirals. 
14. And just because, I glued some teeny (2mm?) glass rhinestones to each wrap joint.  
15. The closure is simply that curled loose end from the beginning clipped through the closed round end at the other end of the circlet. 

Is it perfect?  Nope.  But it's sparkly.  And not bad for a first try, I think.  It's also too small for my head, LOL.  Circlet 2.0 will be better. :) 

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