SCA: Some Roman Updates

We have a Roman-themed event coming up in April, so sort of in the background behind all the other stuff I’m working on right now*, I’ve been making some slight alterations to my Roman outfit, which I posted about in April. 

I got a booklet of Greco-Roman themed tablet weaving patterns from Etsy a while back, and used one of the patterns in it create this trim for my blue linen chiton: 

I ordered some new white handkerchief-weight linen and made it into a new palla - four yards long, nearly two yards wide. I hemmed the edges by hand and then embroidered this little toothy gold edge design all the way around it. 

I also made a new blue sash to wrap around the whole thing, as the dark gray just wasn’t working for me (it was kind of boring).  The blue is much better. 

I also ordered these adorable little wire fibulas, which I’m using to close my brown linen peplos (made for my Iron Age outfit in June, but I’ve since had to scavenge the blue apron for use in another project, and the under dress ripped and wasn’t reparable, so all I have is left of the IA outfit is this brown peplos, which will be pressed into service as a Roman peplos in April).  

Now. Is tablet weaving period for Ancient Rome? No. Is edge embroidery? Who knows? Both mimic the look of whatever trim they DID use, though, and it’s fine. I like chasing period accuracy in my Norse wear, but since this is a one-off event, I’m just going for “looks good” and not necessarily 100% accurate. I’m fine with it, and I love the way the outfit looks. 

*Meanwhile, I’ve got February to prepare for: both Candlemas (A&S) and Laurel’s Prize Tourney, a week apart.  LPT is not a tournament, and there’s no prize - it’s a display-only event whose entire focus is to be able to sit down with the laurels and talk shop like a bunch of geeks, and it’s SO FUN. I can’t wait to go - but I have a LOT of work to get done for both events in the next four weeks. Wish me luck! 

SCA: The Blue Bycocket

 So, I was at coronation yesterday, and a friend of mine busts out this huge box full of felt bycockets she’d made, and gives one to another friend who was sitting nearby.  And I said, “That’s f——-g cool! I want one!” AND Y’ALL, SHE UP AND GAVE ME A HAT.  It’s been years since I rocked The One True Century*, but I’ve always wanted a bycocket to play with - and now I had one. 

using sewing pins to mark the position of the future embroidery

It didn’t take me long to figure out how I wanted to dress it up.  It needed feathers, and I just happened to have a stash that included some teal McCaw, Blue Jay, and some lovely brown feathers that I’d picked up over the years. I bound them together with some teal ribbon and sewed the package together. 

feathers before securing them to the hat

Now for the body of the hat. It’s midnight blue, and what could be more perfect and more me than a nighttime full of stars?  I covered the crown of the hat in gold and silver embroidered stars, and teensy pearl beads: 

Next I used some of the leftover teal silk ribbon from other projects to cover the edge of the brim, and added a strip of some old blue and gold medallion jacquard trim that I had in my stash. I also found a fabulous giant button to use to set off the feather cluster. 

Tada!! A finished starry night bycocket.  I’m in love with it  and I can’t wait to get into what’s next - this hat has engendered a whole slew of new ideas as far as what to wear with it! 

* my friend JM calls it that, and I love the phrase.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my Viking and I always will, but 14thC rocks.  

SCA: 1490s Florentine

 After refitting my two Florentine-cum-Venetian dresses, I still had my old red velvet court dress to figure out. Here it is in 2013 when I first made it: 

It still fits! I still had the original pomegranate-print linen sleeves, too, thankfully.  They were too tight, however, and originally I thought I'd just add a gusset under the arm to widen them, but then I thought, hey, I'm a bona fide Crazy Person, right?  Let's do something crazy! 

So, I cut them apart and re-shaped them as pieced sleeves a la 1490s Florence, to make them a little more accurate for the style of the dress (see below).  See the embroidered pouch on the far left?  It's the same fabric, but in 2013 I embroidered over the printed design to spice it up a bit, and I decided to do the same thing to these sleeves.  

Here they are finished: 

And here's the whole dress, updated and complete (click to make bigger): 

The dress isn't period accurate, I'm afraid.  A big thing with the laurels around here is to be able to explain THAT you know something is wrong, and WHY you chose to let it remain wrong.  Technically, the red velvet gown should be a giornea, open at the sides or the front to reveal a gamurra dress underneath.   However, I simply don't have the funds right now to make a whole new gamurra to wear under this dress, so I left it closed and used the matching sleeves and front panel to simulate the look of a separate under-dress.  I'm not a huge believer in the "10 foot rule", but it passes the 10' rule, and it looks cool, even if someone who really knows their Italian stuff would know right off the bat that this isn't right.  It bugs me, but it's what I've got.  I guess for making something old wearable again, I didn't do a half bad job.    

So now I'm all set for Baronial in October! At least, as far as things to wear goes.  I've been designated site decorator for the event, so I have a lot of work ahead of me making loads of flags and pennants and signs and ribbons and who knows what all.  I'll be busy with that for the next month and a half.  Meanwhile, I might even figure out what to do with my hair for the event.  And before Baronial, the annual fall Bjornsborg event is coming up early in October, so there's that to prepare for, too!  October is going to be busy.  

 

1831 Pink Reticule

You know how much I love making little bags.  Here's a new one, not exactly Regency style but close enough:  

I used this pattern, from 1831, from this website.  A little old for Regency, but I figure the design probably goes back a ways.  And if not, it's still a pretty shape and a neat design.  The bag is triangular - three sides, which come to a point on the bottom.

My fabric, a cotton sateen with a pink and gold embroidery, was taken from an old Elizabethan coif I made for the SCA approximately one million years ago.  There was no way I was going to wear this thing;  I basically just made it for the exercise of learning the pattern.  Once I took it apart and ironed it out flat, the fabric was just enough to do this three-sided bag.  

Isn't that pretty?  I've always loved this fabric.  I got about a third of a yard of it from a friend forever ago, and have used it for small projects off and on, including the Elizabethan coif - that was the last thing.  With three sides, it was a little tricky putting the drawstring in, but I figured it out.   

Here's the finished bag.  Tada!  I love the shape, it's so unique.  The ribbon and tassels are the same shade of green;  the ribbon looks brighter because it's reflecting the light really strongly in this pic.  I love the green ribbon and tassels with the pink and gold embroidery.  I'm working on a white-and-blue Regency outfit at the moment, and I wanted something that wasn't blue to go with it, to add something that helps the outfit not be so monochromatic.  I'll show you that soon!  

Black Apron Dress: Another Makeover

After making over the blue apron dress, I decided to tackle my black one next.  This just happened to be my apron dress with the most work to take out:

I hated all of the embroidery - I felt like I did a good job at the time, based on my meager skill level five years ago, but now all I can see are the flaws, and it all looks so amateurish now.  The vine motif around the top of the dress (next to the ribbon)  is period but is inappropriate for an apron dress.  The other vine motif on the straps isn't even Scandinavian, it's English, and 13th century to boot.

The blue ribbon around the top of the dress IS a correct Viking device, but it's executed incorrectly and badly.  There were two blue ribbons around the bottom of the dress, too; and the side seams were also all embroidered.

I took all that work out.  All of it - I made the dress completely naked.  I didn't track the hours it took me to remove it all,  but I spent somewhere around 5 evenings carefully picking out all the stitching so as not to damage the fabric. Probably about 20 hours. 

To replace the embroidery across the top, I opted for a trick we know the Vikings did use in their embellishment of the tops of apron dresses:  stitching a strip of imported cloth, often silk, as trim around the top of the dress.  In this case, my "silk trim" is a soft rayon strip cut from an old sarong. I considered layering it with a silk ribbon underneath or something like that, but I really just loved the way the sarong fabric looked with the black on its own.  I fully intend to replace this strip with real silk if any real silk ever happens to me.

I also took apart the long, flat straps and made them into looped straps instead, which is correct for an apron dress based on loops we've found attached to brooches.  I also like they way they function better:  they're easier to use, and once they're affixed to the dress, don't require any adjustment. My straps came out a bit thicker than I wanted them, but that's okay - they look just fine and they work great. 

There:  all finished.  The new design is simpler, but I like it much better than all that ridiculous embroidery I had going on before.  I love that this dress is full length - I prefer a long apron dress. 

And I really love the green and black (the color shows better in the previous picture, sorry).  That came out better than I'd pictured.  I have a ton of the green rayon sarong scraps left, too - I may use them to line a new Hedeby bag I've been thinking about making.

What's Next?

I may play with the bag I just mentioned a bit;  I'm also working on some new cuffs for my Viking coat and a new underdress.

A Makeover: Blue Split-Front Apron Dress

.


In 2015 when I was in the process of spiffing up my entire Viking wardrobe, I created this dress:

Isn't it neat?  It's wrong in so many ways. I did a really good job based on my knowledge at the time;  it's just that that knowledge was incomplete, and based mostly on what I saw other people doing instead of on actual solid research.  And so we had this dress:  split down the front, which is incorrect for the accepted understanding of how apron dresses work; the wrong type of straps - flat straps, not loops; embroidered to the eyeteeth, and apron dresses weren't covered in decorative embroidery; and with a front trim band and skirt guarding in a contrasting color, which was an idea I copied from someone but has no basis in historical anything.  

So, I decided to tear this dress apart and make it over completely into something that is actually correct and which I can wear to events without looking like a bad example.  So, to start with,  I removed all the embroidery, the straps, and the orange trim. 

I also removed both of the remaining blue front panels - they were too narrow to simply sew closed into a single front piece - it made the dress way too small, and it would have placed a seam directly down the front of the dress, which would have looked horrible.  I needed to create a whole new front panel to insert into the dress. Thankfully, Fabric-store.com still sells the same exact color (Bluebonnet), so I was able to order a single yard so that I could make a new front panel. 

Once I'd closed the dress with the new front panel, I also cut a new top facing to replace the one I'd removed in the front.   Then I removed the embroidery from the flat straps and took them apart, and made two new loop straps out of them, as well as front loops.  After that all I had left to do construction-wise was to hem the whole dress, since I'd removed the skirt guarding from the bottom, leaving a raw edge.  

To finish the dress, instead of all that incorrect embroidery I opted for a trick we know the Vikings used on their apron dresses:  I stitched a length of blue ribbon around the top of the dress.  In period this would be a strip of silk fabric or ribbon, or a tablet-woven band. 

In my case, it's a rayon faux-silk seam binding ribbon, and it looks perfect at the top of the dress.  It's almost exactly the color of the fabric, just a bit darker.  It is awfully plain, especially since it's supposed to be simulating "fine imported silk";  I may replace it with something a little fancier at some point in the future if I come across anything that will work. For now, I like it just fine.  

So there's a piece of fantasy made over into something with a little more fact woven in.  The best part is that now I have a "new" dress I can wear, for only about $11 (the cost of a new front panel).  I needed an extra outfit to wear to BAM in a few weeks, and this goes a long way to fixing that hole in my wardrobe.  

What's Next? 

Now that this dress is fixed, the question is, do I launch into a quest to re-do all of my apron dresses to make them more correct, or do I leave the rest alone?  I hate to take out all the work on the orange and brown dresses just yet - I did a really great job on both of them and I love the way they look.  My black dress, however, is covered with some very amateurish needle work and is glaringly incorrect, so I think I will make that one over next. 

Brown Apron Dress

ignore the blue hemline; it hangs correctly
on me, just not on a hanger

With a Viking-themed event coming up in October, I wanted to be sure my Viking wardrobe was ready to go. I realized, though, that the various pieces of my wardrobe weren't all as interchangeable as I thought - I could make ONE outfit out of the pieces I had, and that was it!  I needed a new under dress and a new apron dress.  I decided to work on the second problem first - because I already had the fabric for it.

The fabric is a chocolate brown linen/cotton blend,  harvested from the skirt of a costume that I made back in 2011.  It's got a lovely drape and feels really nice.  I really wanted it to be full-length, but I didn't quite have enough fabric.  As it is it comes down to about mid-calf.  The pattern I used is the same as this one (though I made myself a paper pattern so I don't have to do the math every time).

it's straight, trust me.  It's laying weird in this picture. And I suck at photography.  

The seams are decorated in a 2-color double herringbone stitch.  The band of embroidery across the top of the dress is a double herringbone stitch, too, but the second color is much narrower than the first, and a third color accents the Xs between the stitches.  The entire band is surrounded by a border of teal embroidery floss couched in a spiral with green.  There was supposed to be a pair of ravens capping this off in the front, but my embroidery skills are no longer up to par - I tried three times and couldn't get it right. I have a lot of practice to do.  For now, I am raven-less.

The straps are loop straps, similar to what I did on my orange apron dress. It's just a long tube of fabric, folded in half and hand-sewn together leaving a loop at the end for the brooch to go through.  I really love the look of this style of strap, and the ease of wear. They do have to be exactly the right length, though - they're not as forgiving as plain straps, and not adjustable at all. (Are they period?  Maybe.  We've found loops constructed in this way on brooches that seem to suggest that there were loops on apron dresses - but then, our evidence for these apron dresses is sketchy at best, and only based on small fragments of garments, so the whole "apron dress" idea is kind of made up anyway).

I had every intention of timing all of this work - especially the embroidery - to see how it stacks up against my estimate - but I completely forgot at first.  I can tell you I watched about two dozen episodes of Forensic Files and all of the new Dark Crystal series (and the original movie) while I worked, but I also went way, way past that.  All told, the dress took me about 3 hours (I actually timed that), and I believe the embroidery and hand-sewing on this dress took about 30 hours. My estimate was 6!  How long does embroidery take, anyway??  I guess now I know a little bit better: it takes forever.

So there's one new apron dress to wear to Valkyrfelt in October.  I'm very pleased with it.  I really love the colors in the embroidery, and I love the way the dress fits and the fabric feels.  In the pictures here it's shown with the blue linen Eura dress that I made in  2015.  (I know the hemline looks wonky in the first picture - it's not.  It hangs perfectly straight on me, just not on a hanger!)

So What's Next? 

I have a dress to dye!  Actually, it's already done.  I'll post about that in the next couple of days.  

Gulf Wars!

Only four days left before Gulf Wars, you guys!  And guess what?  I finally got to quit my night job!!!  *DANCES AROUND IN CIRCLES**   I've had time to actually get all of my chores and prep for war done on time, and I'll be taking commissions again once we all get home.  YAY!  So excited.  (In case you couldn't tell).

Completed in the last two weeks:

1.  A man's Viking tunic, embroidered.  There are pants and cloth winingas to go with it;  I'll have pics of the finished outfit after war.

2.  A new Caerleon company surcote, which I made from a black linen cotehardie that I made back in 2012 (I don't have pics of it, sorry).  I closed up the front and cut out the sides, over-dyed the whole thing with a fresh coat of black to spruce up the color; then added the gold binding at the top (cut from some lightweight damask from my scrap pile), the white faux-fur on the sides, and three appliqué'd lions down the front of the skirt.

3.  HOLY CRAP I FIT INTO THIS DRESS FROM 2012 AGAIN:

4.  Seven new flags for the Caerleon campsite ropeline (five pictured) and a new canvas banner/flag to hang outside of my tent (that's the big one on the left):

5.  More canvas bags, this time made from a blue, heavy cotton with a decorative weave and stitch, from which I removed a TON of orange thread in January:

L-R:  finished bag; fabric before thread removal; fabric after

6.  Fixed up this mask for the  Known World Party next Friday night - this year's theme is that of a Venetian-style masque:

L: finished, painted with teal/black nail polish, with dark flowers, star-shaped
spangles, and "raven" feathers (dyed turkey feathers from the craft store);
R:  The mask as purchased in NOLA before Gulf Wars (aside from a bit of nail
polish on the nose - I almost forgot to take a "before" picture), where a few of
us spent a day before heading to the war last year.

I've also done a million small alterations on my older cotehardies; the green Burgundian dress which I made last summer and then never wore; re-painted a small wooden chest I made last that had a horrible finish on it; and completed a Sekrit!Projekt! about which I'll post after I'm back from war.

I'll have pics of everything when I'm back. This week I've got to run a thousand errands, and finish packing - which just seems a Danaidean task, at this point, but I'll get there - and then I'm on the road Friday afternoon. Whee!

TO WAR!   

A New Kind of Crazy

So, what do you do when you have an ape-ton of projects to complete before an event? Sit in front of a tv and learn a new skill in your "spare time", of course! 

Yeah, I have no idea.  Actually, this only took me a couple of hours, on a night I was taking a break, and all my stuff is done (posts soon), so this was a fun little diversion. 

I've always thought drawn-thread embroidery was lovely, and had intended to learn to do it "someday".  Then a laurel I spoke to at LPT in September about my other embroidery brought up the subject, and the idea has been standing at the door of my mind making faces at me through the window ever since.  So a couple of weeks ago I grabbed a linen scrap out of the trash and decided to try it out. 

 

1. I removed about 14 threads from this fabric.  MAN that was a pain in the butt.  I hadn't even realized it, but the variation in the thread widths in this fabric which give it the "nubbly" texture make it really difficult to remove them one at a time!  I'll have to remember that on future projects. 
2. I used plain sewing thread for this project, first to gather groups of 4 fabric threads together on one side of the design...
3. ...and then to gather the same 4 threads on the other side, so that they were grouped like ladder rungs. 
4. Then I used a length of white embroidery floss to weave every two "rungs" together in an X 

I also experimented with using a colored thread to do the weaving; and also with weaving 4 "rungs" together instead of two - you can see that it didn't come out very well.  the groups of 4 are very bunchy. The completed panel is about about 1cm wide.

 

My second attempt was on a smoother, lighter-weight piece of linen.  It was easier to remove the threads from the fabric, since this fabric wasn't nubbly; but because threads are thinner, they broke often during the process.  Because they were smoother, though, it was much easier to get groups of 4 woven together, and the design came out a lot better on this one.  The completed panel here is about 1/2", which I believe was about 20 threads, if I remember correctly.

This piece ended up being made into a coif; but I don't have pictures for you because it ended up being too small for my head (oops), and a picture of it laying flat just looks like a wad of fabric.  I think I'll give it to a friend of mine this weekend.  

I REALLY ENJOY DOING THIS.  I think my exact words, to my roommate, on the first attempt were that this is "exactly the kind of crazy I want to be."  I have GOT to do more of this!  There are so many cool things you can do, so many different designs and uses for them!  YAY!  

. 

Blue Velvet Redux

new dress, for Candlemas 2016

In 2012, for my second Candlemas, I made a midnight blue velveteen gown that was more or less cotehardie-ish, with a shimmery leaf-green lining in the sleeves, embroidered with gold thread and tiny faux pearls. It had seen some wear, and was far too small for me, the last time I tried it on (six months ago), so I decided to adjust the sizing a bit, and to change the look of the whole dress.

In an awesome turn of events, when I tried the dress on a couple of weeks ago, before starting this project, it fit me perfectly!  Yay!  No re-sizing necessary!

Here's What Changed: 

1.      I removed all of the gold metallic embroidery and beading, steamed out the impressions left by the decoration and brushed up the fabric's nap with a soft brush to smooth it back out. 

2.      The original front lacing placket was removed and replaced with buttons. 

3.      I unstitched the neckline edges and flattened them out, then re-shaped the neckline at the bust. 

4.     The neckline was a wee bit deeper in the front than I wanted before, so I added a 1/2" edge binding in a linen the same color as the velveteen. 

5.      A twisted, blue, cotton, embroidery floss was couched in along the join between he body fabric and the edge binding. 

6.      I removed the green sleeve linings were removed and replaced with a blue washed-silk fabric from stash.

7.    Finally, I put smaller buttons onto the sleeves.  The size and design don't match the front buttons, but the metallic tones of both styles look great together, and I like having smaller buttons on the sleeves, anyway - less banging my arms on feast tables. 

The dress in 2012, made from a pair of
cotton velveteen curtains purchased at Ikea

Buttons and edge binding on new dress

One Last Thing

I tried out an embossing technique that I'd seen online - there are many tutorials on YouTube and on various blogs out there, this is one.  Basically, you wet the fabric with a spray bottle, place a rubber or foam stamp underneath it, and use a hot iron (without steam) to dry the fabric against the pattern of the stamp.  I thought it would be nifty to have a band across the lower hem, and one at the hips -  similar to the decorative bands in this image from Les Belle Heures du Duc du Berry.  At first, it looked fantastic: 

yay?

After a day or two, though, the embossed design simply disappeared from the fabric.  I tried it a few different ways (wetting the fabric on the inside, the outside, different iron settings, using starch, not using starch), but no matter what I did, the pressed pattern simply would not stay where i put it - after hanging for a couple of days, it just vanished. Oh, well.  It was a neat idea.  

Okay, Two Last Things

I thought I might "reupholster" my old red ear cauls for this outfit, as well, before I remembered that one had gotten badly crushed at war last year, and I'd thrown the pair out and resolved to make a new set when I needed one.  

Instead, since I felt like trying out something new, and didn't want to spend the time on making a new set of cauls, I decided to try my hand at making a bourrelet, or padded roll headpiece, instead - which, of course, ended up taking more time than a new set of cauls would have.  Whatever. :) 

Cotton/poly damask scraps from stash, over-embroidered along the fabric's design, with (plastic?) silver trim, plastic pearl beads, and a glass "ruby" and plastic pearl drop in the front.  There's a wire inside from an old Halloween witch's hat, and it's stuffed with the contents of an old bed pillow that had gone flat.  I love recycling old stuff!   

I may or may not end up doing some more embroidery on it.  The more I look at it, the less finished it actually looks.  Then again, 90% of it will be under a veil.  I'm not sure yet. 

I'll have pics of the finished outfit, with jewelry, veils, and other accessories, after Candlemas. 

.