The Right Tool For the Job: Modding My Dressmaker's Dummy

This week I modified my dressmaker’s dummy to be a more accurate fit for me. It was incorrectly sized; and also the bright teal color clashed with everything I put on it and made my photos look crappy. 

First I adjusted the shape of the whole thing: I cranked the dials down until the waist and underbust measurement were correct; and then I added bits of foam (from a thin foam mattress topper I had in storage) to bump out the boobs, belly, butt, and shoulders - all secured with spray adhesive and duct tape. 

Next, I wrapped the whole thing in quilt batting (which I got for free from the neighborhood swap group this week), in order to smooth out the whole thing and cover up the duct tape. The batting is secured with spray adhesive. 

The last step was to create a cloth cover for it, which I made from some old cotton sheets I had in my stash. I pinned it in place, sewed it, and flipped it inside out, just like making a quick furniture slipcover. 

There’s a zipper up one side of the body so that I can take the cover off to wash it or resize it; and the bottom is drawn tightly closed around the pole with a drawstring. 

Tada!  I love this. I can pin into it, iron on it, and now that it’s actually the correct shape and proportions it’ll be MUCH easier to drape and fit clothing and costumes on it. Also, the soft gray will look much better in photos. 

This was a fun, quick project (two afternoons), and except for the can of spray adhesive I had to buy ($12), it was almost completely free. 

The Summer Lull

 I haven't posted much lately, have I?  I really haven't been doing anything blog-related.  I'm between projects in every area of my crafty life, and have been focusing on other things instead - like refinishing a couple of tables in my house, cleaning up the yard in preparation for bulk brush pickup day in a couple of weeks, and shuffling around some of the artwork that hangs in my house to freshen things up around there.  

I have also done a little bit of SCA-related stuff lately, but nothing major - just some small mending and repairs to old costumes, and some cleanup and reorganization of my costume closet and my camping gear.  I did also get a new air mattress and a new fancy rechargeable air pump for camping, and I'm going to be replacing my old camp chair next week. 

I do also have some new costumey/crafty projects coming up in the next few weeks that I'll post about: 

• I'm still working on a hand-sewn Viking serk that I started in like May and haven't been working on like at all this summer (oops)
• There are a few new weaving projects I'll be posting about once I get them done, which is dependent on when my new thread arrives in the mail
• There may or may not be a new Regency dress in the works.  In fact, there might be TWO of them, I'm just not sure yet 
• I did make a birthday present (piece of garb) for a friend recently, which I've been dying to show you, but I have to wait until I actually give it to said friend before I post about it 

Just in case anyone actually cares, here's what's been taking up the bulk of my time this summer: 

I got this corner table for free from someone's curbside trash in 2017, and I JUST got around to stripping the paint off it and refinishing it so I could use it.  Whew!  It took me about a month's worth of actual working time to get all that paint off (three badly-applied coats of paint plus a primer coat that had soaked deeply into the wood). 

It lives in my bedroom now, and so far, I haven't piled any laundry on it. 

This little side table/stand is an actual antique, given to me by a friend several years ago, and she believes it's from the early 1900s, possibly the late 1800s (I honestly have no idea; there's a maker's signature underneath it but I couldn't make it out in order to look it up).  

The finish was badly damaged, but the structure was completely sound, so all I did was strip it and re-stain it.  This one took me about two days to do from start to finish.  After working on that corner table for so long, this was a nice, easy, fast project, and really fun. It lives in my living room.  

Anyway, I'll be back in a couple of weeks when I have some actual sewing/weaving projects to talk about.  

SCA: Some New Additions to the Iron Age Peplos Outfit

Some updates to the new peplos outfit: 

• I overdyed the brown peplos to darken the color. It’s subtle, but I like it a lot better 
• I created some new jewelry to wear with it 
• I wove a new belt 

The jewelry is two parts: an amber and carnelian necklace I made from stash parts and a broken amber necklace; and 

A string of bronze colored chains to suspend between the shoulder brooches. They’re the wrong kind of chain, but it’s a good place to start! 

I finished the belt this morning, and I’m in love with it. It’s 8/2 cotton in blue, gold, and navy, with wrapped and braided ends. 

It also just happens to be in my household colors, which I didn’t realize until I was nearly done. Happy accident! :) 

SCA: An Iron Age Peplos Outfit (First Draft)

Here's something new for me: I made an Iron Age Peplos outfit for myself.  I really loved wearing my Roman at Warlord - it was so cool and breezy and comfortable - and I wanted something that would feel similar but still be somewhat adjacent to the styles I normally wear (similar/adjacent cultures, earlier time period).  

the Huldremose peplos

This style was fairly long-lived, and widespread throughout England and northern Europe.  It's known from several Anglo-Saxon burials, and just a TON of early Medieval artwork in which the peplos is depicted often worn over a long-sleeved under dress and under a large wrapped cloak. There's a remarkably complete wool peplos from Huldremose in Denmark (Huldremose II, not related to the "Huldremose Woman"); you also see the style in later Finnish costume from the 11th century (the "Eura dress" outfit).

My peplos is made from linen, because (a) I wanted it to be lightweight and good for hot late-summer weather, and (b) linen was what I had.  In fact, someone recently gave me a piece of linen that she didn't need for anything recently, and that's what I used.  

It started out as a light lavender color, but I dyed it to WHAT COLOR you see in the pic at the top. I actually tried to dye it with black first, hoping it would come out sort of a charcoal color - but I had forgotten that Rit's black dye is actually a deep purple, and so it came out...purple.  

Oops. It turned out it was pretty easy to fix - I treated it with Rit Color Remover, which worked remarkably well  it actually removed the “black” dye as well as most of the original lavender color, and I ended up with a sort of pale band-aid pinky peach color. The stuff smells just AWFUL, though. Anyway, I dyed the fabric again with brown and charcoal gray, and ended up with the sort of chocolate-ice-cream brown color in the first pic up top. 

Anyway, in the picture above my peplos is shown over a light blue linen “Eura” style underdress, which I made many years ago and never get to wear.. A peplos is normally folded from the side across the body and left open on the other side; because of the size and shape of my fabric piece, I had to split it into a front and a back, so it's open on both sides.  There was no sewing involved aside from hemming the edges, which I did by hand. 

It's pinned at the shoulders with a pair of round bronze brooches that I've had for years. They were my first Viking brooches, although I don't know anything about the style - I was told they were "early Viking" but I don't know anything more than that about them, or even if that's true.  But they work here for the look.  

I've seen many reenactors string beads between these brooches like you see in later Viking clothing, and sometimes people wear a long unadorned chain between them as well.  I didn't have any chain on hand that didn't look super shiny and modern, and I didn't have enough beads to make a swag for  my brooches, so for the time being I'm using a few of my leftover homemade beads on a plain cord as a necklace instead. 

The belt is the same tablet-woven one I wear with my viking dresses (not a period design, but that's an issue for another post - and seeing this outfit out together I think I’m going to make a new belt just for this outfit anyway); from it hangs an apron which is a darker blue linen remnant left over from another project. I think the blue color is too strong for the other pieces; I may replace it with a gray one or something else, I’m not sure yet. 

All in all, I'm pleased with the way this came out - it’s a pretty good “first draft.”  It needs work, but it was fun to put together and I’m looking forward to making it better. 

SCA: Tablet Weaving: Decorative Ties for Winingas

 My latest weaving project is done:  a pair of thin ties to wrap around my winingas for my male Viking kit (ostensibly to help hold them up, although they stay in place just fine without them): 

I'd seen this look in several photos on reenactors' costumes on various blogs and online photo albums, and wondered about the authenticity of them.  While the existence of winingas in the Viking age has definitely been proven (through grave finds, artwork, etc.), I wasn't sure about these little ties to help hold them on.  I didn't find any record of physical evidence of straps/ties like these, but I did find a couple of period artworks which depict them:

 

from The Benediction of St. Æthelwold,  971-984 CE, England
 (the person on the far right has straps/ties at the top of his leg wraps)

Bayeux Tapestry, 11th century
(the guy on the right)

Of course, neither of those are Norse art, but at least it does show that these little straps/ties were in use for a while in a couple of different areas around the same time period as I’m going for.  

And I DO love the chevron/diamond pattern that I used to weave them...although I've realized that I've used this same pattern in like three different places now, and I should probably vary that a bit, hehe.  I love weaving and I do it all the time, but I DO need to be careful how much of it I'm using in my Viking outfits - I don't want to overdo it and look like a piled-up mess of competing patterns, colors, and accessories.  In my male kit I now have these leg ties, as well as woven trim on the edges of my tunic, and I think that's enough for one outfit (and my shoelaces, which I need to replace, but that’s a story for another blog entry). 

What's Next? 

So I just got back from Steppes' Warlord, and I'm TIRED.  Warlord is a "work weekend" for me, and I busted my ass the whole time I was there and came home thoroughly exhausted and not at all in the mood to work on projects.  However.  I do have several things I need to work on this summer, which includes (but is not limited to): 

• building a new Oseberg loom
• weaving a whole bunch of bands for largesse purposes
• repairing a few pieces of garb (seam rips, fallen hems, etc). 
• hand-sewing a new Viking serk (halfway finished with that right now) 
• hand-sewing a new smokkr

And I'm also working on some "mundane" projects, like refinishing an antique table and crocheting a summer top I would like to finish before summer is actually over, hehe.  Lots to do!  

More soon.  

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: Updated 9th Century Norse "Viking" Kit (female)

I know I've been posting a LOT of tablet weaving lately - the tunic and the coat and the bag - but I thought I'd show you my full [female] "Viking" kit all decked out with the jewelry and the other tablet weaving I've been doing.  This is my nicest, and my favorite, Viking outfit at the moment: 

The entire outfit is made from linen - the serk, smokkr, and the herringbone weave cloak/shawl.  Yes, wool would be more historically accurate for some of these pieces, but it's HOT here in central Ansteorra, and wool just isn't practical in this heat unless it's the middle of January.  

The dark blue smokkr was a lighter teal color, but I dyed it to a darker indigo shade to make it look nicer and more accurate (ish).  

Tablet weaving on this outfit consists of: 

• The blue and yellow band at the top of the smokkr underneath the blue silk trim fabric
• The ivory/white woven band at the neckline of the serk, which is meant to mimic the look of a woven-on edge, though it's actually just sewn in place
• The blue and white belt
• The thin strap that hangs the metal key from the right brooch (left in the picture)

Here's a better shot of the weaving and the jewelry on the front of the dress: 

The jewelry consists of

• a pair of bronze brooches purchased online
• a silver round brooch to close the serk neckline which I made from a metal button
• three strands of glass beads suspended from the bronze brooches, which I made myself (it turns out I'm awful at making beads, but I managed to get enough made to wear with my kit at least)
• a strand of tiny blue glass beads around the neck
• a strand of amber chips around the neck
• three silver raven pendants which hang from the lowest strand of beads between the brooches - two of them are period replicas, and the third is a modern knotwork design

The only thing missing from these photos is the hair and the shoes, and I'll post more about both of those things later.  

SCA: New Tablet Woven Trim For An Old Tunic

 My men’s tunic needed a little extra fiber bling. (Is “fiber bling” a thing? It is now).  This tunic is like seven years old - it’s been dyed three times and been through four different iterations of trim and edging details. This is the latest: 

The trim is the Oseberg narrow band design (double sided, not that it matters for this application), in cotton crochet thread and 8/2 cotton rug warp, which are almost exactly the same size (the crochet thread is just the tiniest bit thicker, but it ends up not mattering). 

I had a blue thread that was an exact match for the blue of this tunic, but it just looked too homogenous and bland. I wanted something that would pop against the blue and the rust colored edge banding, and I really love the way this dark red and gold look against the tunic colors. 

PARDON the wrinkles. You know how linen is. I applied the woven trim to the neckline, sleeve cuffs, and the lower hem of the tunic - about 6 yards in total. 

Now when I dress as a dude in the SCA, I shall be a fancier dude than I was before. I have some alterations to make to my new boots; soon as I’m done il get some photos of my entire Viking dude kit and show them to you.