Pics or It Didn't Happen

Though I haven't had time to take pics and make actual blog posts this week, I am actually getting things done.  (It didn't help that I was deathly ill most of the week, which required a lot of video game playing).

Done!

• red dress for Yule
• brown linen liripipe hood, also for Yule

Next Up

• A friend of mine gave me the most gorgeous white silk, tissue-fine, to use for veil stuff. 
• I picked up a really nice, soft, white cotton sheet at a thrift store recently that I plan to use for a proper chemise/undergown/scooting around camp dress/nightgown. 
• Another thrift store score:  a white linen blouse with a pretty embroidered edge that I plan to make into a coif.
• A couple of period-ish gift items I'm making, which I'll write about here after they're no longer a surprise. :) 

The Big Next Thing

• The next big event is a big one - our baronial Candlemas event, which is a pretty serious deal.  It's also my SCA-a-versary--one whole year! I'm so excited about the outfit I have planned, and I have nearly all the materials and bits to make it ready to go.  Just need to sit my butt down and get to work. 

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Meanwhile, somewhere in the land of lost packages...

So, I ordered some awesome fabric...a while ago.  It hasn't come in yet.  It's not cause for serious alarm or off-pissedness or anything just yet, but I am a bit concerned.  I emailed the company last week to ask for the FedEx tracking number so I could check with FedUp about it, but I haven't gotten an email response.  And granted, last week was Thanksgiving week, and it IS entirely possible that the company was shut down for the whole week.  So we'll see how it turns out.

FedEx is currently standing between me and a fabulous dress.  We wants it, Precioussss.

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Because hoodies are cool.

I'm currently making myself a liripipe hood!  It goes a little something like this: 

The Medieval Taylor

Is that not awesome?  I love it!  I've wanted one forever, but it's only now getting to be the time of year (here) where I might need some extra warmth at events. 

The liripipe on mine is going to be loooong - I fully intend to be able to tuck this baby into my belt, wrap it around my head or my neck, or maybe put marbles into the end and smack people.  Maybe. 

Kat's Hats

  I recently learned that this wonderful weirdness evolved out of the liripipe hood.  There's a way you can roll up the "face" part and leave the shoulder cape hanging off to one side and the 'pipe sticking out the top, and it looks like this. Apparently folks loved it so much they started building a look-alike on a big puffy stuffed roll - because even in the 14th century, your hat had to be more epic than everyone else's, hehe. 




Incidentally, while there is a proper name for this hat, I can never seem remember it in conversation, for whatever reason (it's chaperon, I looked).  Maybe there's a hole in that part of my brain, and it falls out, the way things do when I put them in the left side of my crappy old purse.  I have a friend who rocks a really fabulous hat like this.  I call it his Pile-of-Laundry Hat, because it makes him laugh. :o)

Mine's brown linen on the outside, leftover from a dress I made in January for my very first Serious Event (Candlemas, and no you can't have a picture, it was hideous).  


The innards are a light, muted blue with a bit of a jacquard weave, from an old set of sheets I had a piece of just big enough to make a hood with.  


I'm going to button up the front, but I haven't decided yet what kind of buttons to use.  At some point I reached the stage where I have approximately two frillion côtehardie buttons just sitting around left over from projects, so I'll probably end up using some of them.  Maybe the silver ones from my gray linen côte. 


Who knows?




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Red Côte for Yule

Tada.  *yawn*  I'm getting a bit tired of cranking these out, though they're awfully nice to wear.  Easy, comfy, warm when they need to be, cool when they don't.

Plain red...mostly.

The neckline and sleeves are trimmed in navy blue.  There was originally going to be a wide band of the same color around the bottom of the dress, until I started putting it together and discovered that I'd neglected to cut out *one* of the trim pieces, and was out of fabric.  Fail.

It's hard to see in this picture (phone + mirror = not a great combo), but the buttons are arranged in groups of three. In between each set is a hidden hook & eye.

Navy trim.

This is going to be my outfit for Yule Revel.

If I get time between now and then, I'm going to make myself a liripipe hood to wear with this.

These are the buttons.  From BrazenButton.com










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[Insert Stupid Pun Here]

Not much to post about lately - nothing terribly exciting, that is.  I'm working on a plain*, red cotehardie for Yule Revel + the choral performance, and plans for lots and lots of other things, including gifts, woodcrafts, and some spiffy jewelry.   Also a gown I plan to make, done after a Van Der Weyden painting, that I think is going to be quite the bomb-diggity.  I have to finish the Yule dress first, and all the other little things that are going to be happening over the next month.

* "plain," but with fabulous buttons, of course. ;)

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Month In Review

I was going to start doing these monthly to make it easier to find things at a glance, and also to keep track of everything I've been doing, and the workload I make for myself.  This is the first one I've remembered to do, hehe.

October 2011
Started blue cloth buttons for long blue sleeves
Started a little wooden sewing box
New barbette (2) and fillet cap
Hat
Lute bag/carrying case
Blue/teal half sleeves with gold/crystal buttons
Small red footstool for camp
Grey linen côtehardie
Patterned a friend of mine for a fitted, supportive côte...and forgot to take pics or write about it  :)

September 2011
Black côtehardie & embroidered/pearled veil & wimple for Fall Baronial choral performance
New linen fighting shirt for Vasilii, with padded shoulders to help prevent armor bites
Added faux-fur trim to Vasilii's red shuba
Second pair of [black] pants for Vasilii
Made a few necklace/earring sets to wear with garb
Started this blog!  :D

next project...

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An event report and some long-promised pictures

Vasilii and I traveled to the Shire of Rosenfeld this past weekend for their Three Orders/Tournament of the Cross event.   It was our first one (as is everything this first year), and it was SO much fun, exciting, and the site was SO beautiful!

Here are Vasilii and I - and that black côtehardie I made for Fall Baronial in September that I never got around to photographing!

He made the belt for me - is this not the cutest buckle? <3

The green velvet (velour) sleeves I made to wear with the dress for this event, for court.  Green "velvet" (velour) to match the trim on the dress, and lined with a wine-colored polyester-silk blend.

One of the prettiest site tokens I've seen so far!  I pinned it to my dress Saturday; I think I might make it into some jewelry.

When last we met...

..the wooden sewing box I was working on, it was about here:

 Faux-bois "stain" done with acrylic craft paints (more in the first entry).

The next step was gold outlines on the design, and some color:

photo subt. "Oh, crap, I almost forgot to take a 'before' picture."

After about two days of this, while sitting in front of the TV, you have a...

TADA! 

I do plan to paint something inside the central "frame" here, I'm just not sure what, yet.

The inside is lined with some green velour scraps I had lying around, for cushioning and for pretty. :)

the pocket is in the wrong place, but whatever. 

sides

I'm all set now, with a cute little box to store my sewing things in when I go to events. Now I just have to try not to sit on it and break it, or something.

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Unmentionables

Everybody needs underwear.  Especially in the blisteringly hot Ansteorran south, where walking around in a dress all day without shorts underneath can be hideously uncomfortable and painful.  I have until now worn bike shorts or cut-off yoga pants under my dresses, but they're clingy and hot, and the elastic waistbands create horrible "pantylines" under my clothes.  Yuck!

what babe?

 Not so much, anymore!  These babies are extra-long to keep from riding up, with a nice, flat drawstring waist to preserve the line of my outfits.

They're lightweight and super-soft, too.  The linen was a prize that Vasilii won, and he presented it to me, bless his heart.   We used a good chunk of it to put some padding in his fighting shirts, to keep his lamellar armor from biting and pinching.

Did medieval women wear braies, as men did?  Who knows - there are no extant pieces that I'm aware of, and period artwork never shows us what, if anything, might have been under ladies' chemises.  Even if this isn't correct, I'm okay with that.  I'll gladly be the rebel secretly wearing men's underpants with my clothes.

I read books, too.  I'm scandalous like that.



P.S. - wore them to the even the first weekend in November, and they were SO COMFY.  Also really warm under my dress, with a pair of tall socks underneath.  Win.

And more buttons...

WHEW!

I have finished ONE SLEEVE.  And I have a new and deep appreciation for all the people out there in the SCA running around wearing clothes with cloth ball buttons.  It took me three days to get all 26 done (in time-manageable chunks, and being as nice to my carpal tunnel as I could), and two days to put all the buttons on a single sleeve.

They're lovely and simple and soft, and I dread the prospect of putting the remaining 13 buttons on the other sleeve.  It's not difficult by any means, but it's hard on the hands and fingers, and tedious, and time-consuming.
When I think of all those people I know who wear these, now I think about all the time and effort and discomfort and outright pain they went through to get there, and I'm even more amazed at their abilities and patience and dedication now than I was before.  

It's worth the effort.  But after I finish the mate to this sleeve, I think I'll be done doing cloth buttons for a while.

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