Bliaut Progress & Sleeve Adjustment

Progress!

•  sleeves have been lengthened with a long, diamond-shaped gore in the long seam under the sleeve (they were too short before;  I added about thirteen inches of both length and width)
• seams finished and flat-felled where they'll show (sleeves, lower hem) 
• trim applied to the upper arms and sleeve hem.  

I also split and hemmed the side seams in the body so that I can lace the sides;  I'm honestly not sure if I want to mess with it (hand-stitched eyelet holes...blergh...), so after I did that, I sewed the sides back up again.  Means I can wear it right now, and if I decide in the future to do the side-lacing, I only have one seam to undo and no prep-work on the edges, just the eyelets themselves.

Next:  neckline trim & lower hem.

sleeve gores to widen and lengthen

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In Which Our Heroine Makes Yet Another Blue Outfit

Because, as you know, I need more blue dresses.  I only have like five.  Because my heraldic colors are red and black, LOL.  *shrug*  I love blue. :)

And I love making these things:

This is going to be a 12th century bliaut - navy, with the exact trim you see in the pic above (from Calontir Trim, purchased at Gulf Wars in March), with a deep teal undergown (just a simple lace-front plain gown).  I'd been thinking about doing one ever since I saw a friend in a really pretty black one at Gulf Wars this year.  Then I saw this, and just I had to get on the bliaut train. :)

The belt is not a cloth or woven belt like you usually see with bliauts -   I'm no weaver.  I've tried making belts like that out of just fabric, and they always bunch up and become fabric ropes.  So I'm still testing out some ideas that I think might work.

(And yes, that's a hair tie around the waist in the pic.  Without it the dress just looked like a bunch of blue fabric on the hanger, hehe).

For the time being, I have this awesome, BRIGHT blue leather belt that I bought at Gulf Wars (for fifteen dollars!);  and Kress needed to order belt parts for himself this week, so he got a set like the one shown in the picture for me, too.  Yay!   (Hardware from Armor and Castings).


So far, so good!  It fits beautifully, and the only thing I plan to change is that the sleeves aren't as long as I thought they were going to be (because I measure wrong.  Whoops!)  That's a simple fix, though; and once that's done, I'll be ready to finish the seams on the inside, and then start working on the trim and the bling.  Yay!

April In Review

Yes, I know it's May 24th.  SHHH.

April In Review: 
PROJECTS

• whomped up a simple, black cotehardie for myself for Queen's Champion
• Made a little red cloak for the Clothiers' Guild entry into the A&S competition at the Stargate-Loch Sollier co-baronial event
• painted six new charters for the kingdom (not blogged about, sorry.  They're not original designs, just un-colored blanks that you paint and turn in. I'll blog about originals when I do them). 
• hosted a silk banner painting class at my house for friends, and learned to paint silk!  Also helped make a giant awesome banner for the company...and then completely forgot to share it here.  Whoops!  

EVENTS

• Queen's Champion 
• Stargate-Loch Sollier co-baronial

Light month!  I was actually sick off and on for most of it.  :( 

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Another Sneak Preview

IT'S ALIVE!!!   A bit sniffly still, but alive.  And done with a HUGE project that I've been working on for nearly three weeks (give or take a few sick days).   I don't have "real" pics of it yet, because the person I made it for isn't going to be wearing it until this coming weekend; but in the meantime...

what's this? 

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Bring Out Your Dead!

Man, am I SICK.  I'm usually pretty okay at being sick or hurt, but apparently a plain ol' cold is not only kicking my butt, it's turning me into a big whiny baby.  DO NOT WANT.  *coff*  Day five and counting.  >_<

But, oh, boy, do I have a cool project to show you when I come back from the near-dead.  I'm halfway done.  Gotta do something with all this spare time I have laying around coughing, sneezing, leaking, bitching, and hacking.

Plush Bubonic Plague, from Drew Oliver's Giant Microbes

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Yay!!!

Last Saturday I and two other members of the local Clothiers' Guild entered a competition - "outfit a new person for $30 or less", at the Stargate-Loch Sollier co-baronial event.  There were three grand prizes: one for each barony, and an overall winner - and we WON one of the baronial titles!  Hooray!

Shortly before the contest was announced, a person very kindly donated a HUGE pile of stuff to the guild - fabric, trim, buttons, lacings, yarn, and all sorts of other stuff.

The guild decided to use the donated materials to put together an outfit for this A&S competition - and since most of the fabric pieces were too small to get a whole adult piece out of, we decided to put our $30 to use making a complete kid's outfit instead: an Italian Ren for a young girl.

Franchesca did the dress and chemise (there's a removable forepart in the front that matches the sleeves which isn't visible in this picture, because someone had closed the skirt after looking at it), I did the cape and the documentation, and Simona did the little doll, which itself is handmade (and a period doll design), and which is dressed to match the girl's outfit, out of the same fabric.  How neat is that?  :)

We got a really nifty prize basket too, full of fabric, yarn, a lucet loom, some enameled wooden pendants, ribbon in kingdom colors, a fantastic art analysis book, a vial of lavender flowers, a crocquil...and other stuff!  I can't even remember everything, hehe.

Go, us!  Hee.

The entire girl's outfit will be donated to our B&B this week, to use however they see fit (loaner clothing, gift to a new member, largesse to be given in court, whatever they decide).

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A&S Sneak Preview

A bit of a thing I made over the past weekend, for an A&S competition coming up.  Some friends of mine and I are entering together, each of us working on part of the entry.  I'll post details and pics next week after the competition;  in the meantime, here's a little peek at my portion of the entry:

Rabi approves of this fabric. 

Another One For A Friend

Speaking of stuff I've done recently but neglected to blog about:

Here's an English/Norman surcote I did for another friend of mine, back in the September 2011.

This is Sir John of Severn, leader of the fighting company I mentioned in that post about the Japanese jin-baori.  Every member of the unit has at least one outfit done in company and kingdom colors, but in the style of their persona, be it English, Japanese, German, etc.

The whole thing is heavy linen, and unlined.  It's also quarter-charged (divided quarterly, as opposed to having a gold half and a black half).  I sewed the surcote and the appliqés (stars and lions);  another friend of his painted the company's motto around the bottom (Ut simus invicti:  "together we are invincible").

There's more coming, too, on this front, in future posts.
Stay tuned. :)





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