SCA: An Exercise In Repeated Failure

And now for a fun post! Warning:  I'm going to cuss in this one.  You'll see why.  

Sometimes things just don't go your way.  I love dyeing fabrics and clothing, but man, when dye goes wrong, it goes WRONG.  I had this "natural" colored (oatmeal colored) linen serk that I wanted to dye blue, and it took way more work than it really should have...mostly because I screwed up in the beginning. 

Here's where we started.  This "oatmeal" color is lovely, and correct for the period, but this tone looks AWFUL on my skin.  Every time I wore it, I looked ill.  No bueno.  

I selected a teal Rit dye, and a charcoal gray one.  Just a bit of each, and the gray was supposed to tone down the tealness of the teal and make it more of a plain blue.  According to the Rit recipe from the website, it should have happened that way. 

Except that I forgot to take into account the native color of the fabric, which was basically BROWN.  Brown + blue = more brown.  So effectively, the two colors cancelled each other out and all I added was gray.  So the dress came out...gray.  

So I bleached the fabric.  Twice.  The first time didn't accomplish anything at all; the second time returned the dress to more or less its original color.  

But I thought...I could go lighter.  

Bleach spots on the third time through.  Oops again.  And also, fuck.  

I tried again, with double the bleach the fourth time.  I was leery of doing it, because too much time in the bleach can start eroding the fabric.  Thankfully, throughout this process, THAT never happened, at least. 

After the third round with the bleach, I had achieved something that looked kind of like zombie flesh:  mostly chalky white, with some brown streaking and spotting.  Gross.  

But once the dress was dried, the spotting/streaking barely showed, so I thought maaaybe it might be ready to take dye now.  

Wary of using too much teal dye (and no gray this time!), I only put a couple of capfuls into the washing machine with my dress. 

Shit, it's green!  Like, candy mint Peeps green.  UGH.  

But the color came out even.  Hm. 

I decided to give up.  I threw the rest of my teal dye in to the washer, and a couple of capfuls of the gray, and let 'er rip, let the chips fall where they may.  I was sick of messing with this dress. 

To my surprise, the dress came out a light greenish blue - exactly the color I'd wanted to dye the dress in the first place!  

Finally! Yay!  The color is nice and even, maybe a touch dark around the side seams, but that's okay - that'll be hidden by an apron dress anyway.  

SO DONE WITH THIS DRESS.  Glad it turned out ok. 

The End.  

The Headgear Discrepancy

In the Hungarian National Museum exhibit, the extant Hapsburg wedding gown is shown sans headgear. There's a white scarf or veil wrapped around the head of the display mannequin (as seen here); but no other head covering is shown - the focus is on the dress itself.  To my knowledge, there is no headgear that goes with that extant dress.

So, in researching the Hapsburg wedding gown for my red-and-white version, at some point along the way I decided that I'd make a truncated hennin to wear with it.  The decision was based on (a) the Hapsburg gown being a combination of Burgundian and German styling, and (b) I kept coming across portaits of Mary of Hungary/Hapsburg that were either German in styling or French.  A little bit more research and I would have realized that I was actually seeing portraits of two entirely different women!

Marie de Bourgone, Michel Pocher, c. 1490

The first is Marie de Bourgone, (1457-1482), daughter of Charles the bold and Duchess of Burgundy. This is the Mary of Burgundy so often depicted in classic Burgundian dress with the steepled hennin.

Hans Maler, 1520

The second is Mary of Austria, also called Mary of Hungary after her marriage to Louis II (for which event the "Hapsburg gown" was created), and Governor of the Netherlands after his death, as regent for her brother, Ferdinand I.  She's the daughter of Philip I and Joana "the Mad" of Castile, and the niece of Catherine of Aragon...and is no relation to Mary of Burgundy.

Portraits of this Mary are often of Mary as Governor of the Netherlands, after her first husband's death, and in these later portraits, her garb looks decidedly more German.

(There are a also couple of portaits of her wearing mourning dress, after her second husband's death, which looks like it's probably Tudor-y, but I haven't been able to track down sources for them other than or hobbyist blogs which have no documentation).






Why didn't I catch this?  Because all of my research was about the *dress*, not the woman herself.   There is a also, I've discovered, a LOT of confusion between the two out there on the internet, a lot of blogs and A&S papers and other sources which list incorrect names for both women and/or present both women as the same person.  It took some digging into the parentage and domain of both Marys to figure out which one was which.  ARGH.

So, now what? 

Man, I have no idea.  While the Hapsburg gown is, technically, contemporary to late Burgundian fashion, during which women were still wearing hennins, I *could* get away with it...but now I know I've been confusing my Marys, I feel like it's not the right hat for the dress.  And, of course,  I can find NO period portraits of her in a gown that looks like the actual Hapsburg wedding gown.

I don't have time to make a big ol' German hat.  And the Hapsburg gown isn't a big ol' German hat type of dress, anyway.

When I did my original research on the patterning and construction of the Hapsburg wedding gown, I found three others made by SCAdians on the web, and...none of them are wearing headgear at all in the photographs.

Sigh.

Anyway, in the meantime, I thought I'd share my research-fail with you, because I thought it was kinda funny.  I really should have clued in, earlier, to the fact that I might actually be looking at two different women!

Oh, yeah...

So, here's the truncated hennin that I made:

(this is my "seriously?!" face)

The hat is made of a double-layer of heavy cross-stitch fabric (because that's what I had), covered with some blue drapery fabric scraps that I adhered to the cross-stitch fabric with spray adhesive.  The drape across the front is black velveteen salvaged from an old coat.

I folded the point of the cone inward to blunt the end and add stability to the hat itself, which was pretty flimsy before I did that.

Inside the "brim", the edge of the blue drapery fabric is turned under the edge of the cross-stitch fabric and the raw edges covered with a strip of ribbon hot-glued and stitched in place by hand.

While it doesn't show well in the photo for whatever reason, my silk gauze veil is sheer enough that the color and pattern of the hennin shows through it.  I really like the effect.

Not bad for a little hat that I totally didn't need and don't have anything to wear with.  :P



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Well, Shit (An Autobiography)

Remember my painstaking experimentation with dyes last week, in an effort to find the perfect blue for my next project?

See, I had this thing where, if I was creating something for someone else, I would work on NOTHING except that project - no fun stuff until the work is done!  Yeah. It always worked out just like you'd imagine - stress stress deadline stress don't wanna stress deadline procrastination stress stress.  It made everything miserable and no fun at all.  So I stopped.  And it's been great - now everything is fun, and I'm usually working on one for someone else and one or two for me at once, and I can switch when I get bored or tired, and there's always something going on.

Except that last night, after I threw my white linen into the final, official, blue dye bath, I got to work on something else while the linen was soaking...and forgot about it...for three hours.  It never got stirred, it stayed in the bath too long, and well...

Yeah.

It's ruined.  I mean, it's *beautiful*...but it's no longer fit for SCA-anything, regardless of the probability that ancient peoples DID actually also fuck up when dyeing things.  I washed it three times after this, and the color(s) faded enough that if I run it through with bleach, it MIGHT actually be fit to try re-dyeing, which I'll attempt this evening.

At the moment, though, I'm pretty angry with myself about it.

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January Sewing Challenge + Blue Silk Cotehardie Finished

TADA and stuff.

Hey, look, it's another blue cotehardie. I should start a blog or something.

Closeup of sleeve buttons and buttonholes.  Nom.





Buttons given to me by a friend in trade for some jewelry and jewelry parts.

Photo of the actual fabric texture, a woven stripe with very nearly a seersucker effect, once washed and pressed.


This fabric was a birthday present!  :D

Since I wanted to button the sleeves, I had to convert the top-seam raglan sleeve pattern to a back-seam pattern....I realized after I'd cut the whole thing out.

Nearly thirty years sewing, and I still do stupid crap like that.  I originally made two right sleeves, too, and had to re-do one.
Derp.

So I sewed the top seam closed and cut a line up the center for the new opening.

I intended to make a paper pattern for my raglan-sleeve cotehardie pattern set from this, but there were some minor complications* that led me to skip it, for now.

The sleeve openings and neckline/front opening are faced with a dark blue washed silk bias tape that I cut from a remnant.



(That's Rabi, my sewing helper, or, as a friend of mine calls these things, a "fuzzy pattern weight").









*About that "minor" complication:  while I'm not normally one for New Year's resolutions, I did something crazy this January 1st and joined a gym, and have been going nearly every day since then (go me).  While I've lost a bit of weight already, I realized, while doing the final fitting and alterations on this cotehardie, that I've got muscles in new places, and I'm already taking on a completely different shape:  not just "less of me", but my upper back is widening with muscle development, my ass is higher and hips narrower, and my biceps seem to be reaching for the Hulk Hogan stars.  Gotta watch the upper arm development, yikes.

That's all well and good, but I cut this dress out weeks ago and have been just staring at it since then, until just the other day.  I've changed shape so much since I cut out the pieces that the dress no longer fits - and it's not a matter of letting out or in: there are sections of the dress that just aren't the right shape, as if I'm putting on an outfit tailored to someone else entirely.  Which means, sadly, that I can't wear my Candlemas dress to Candlemas.

I did, however, come up with a solution to at least that problem.  Details tomorrow!

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OHAI LOOK I...never mind.

So, I ordered this fabric a few weeks ago.  It was a rayon challis jacquard, and while I knew the design had paisleys in it, from the pic on the website, they looked pretty hidden in the design.  In fact, the design looked so subtle, I didn't think you'd notice there WAS a design until you got right up close.

But then this (finally) came in the mail today:

Don't get me wrong, it's GORGEOUS.  But the fabric is insanely shiny, and both the paisleys and the giant roses that I somehow had either not noticed or forgotten were there catch the like like crazy and it's basically all you can see.

Soooo not SCA-able.  Into the stash of "WTF do I make with this?" it goes.  My roommate suggested a cocktail dress, but, when the heck do I ever need anything like that?  I don't go anywhere I'd need a cocktail dress.  But I have no clue what else I'd do with it.  I'll figure it out someday.


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The Problem With Experiments...

Is that sometimes, they just come out all weird.

Lemme back up.

Remember the Ikea linen dress, that once was gray, got renovated, and then dyed purple?

This one. 

I wore it to Crown Tournament a few weeks ago, and on the way home from the event, my friends and I stopped Waffle House (a longtime road trip tradition of mine).  They had just mopped the bathrooms.  Raise your hand if you already know where this is going.

I thought I got my dress off the bathroom floor in time;  I grabbed it the second I smelled bleach...but it was too late.  When I got home I realized that nearly the entire hemline, and some of the front of the skirt were covered in huge, white blotches.  

Damn it. 

I considered spot-dyeing it, but I didn't want to end up with patches along the bottom that were dyed differently, or overlapped, or what have you.  So I opted to lighten the dress and re-dye the whole thing.  Since this purple was achieved with plain ol' Rit dye, I thought I'd give Rit's Color Remover a whirl, since I'd never used it before.  I barely worked.  When I dyed the dress purple originally, I had to do it twice, because the first time, it came out all blotchy.  The color remover, it seems, removed only the top layer of dye - the dress was back to being blotchy purple again.  Sigh. 

So I bleached the crap out of it, hoping that it wouldn't ruin the fabric.  Thankfully, it didn't.   Here it is wet: 

And dry, the bleaching process finished: 

I now have a very pale lavender dress, with yellow tapestry sleeve linings.  Also, all of the buttonholes remained the same color, because I used polyester thread, which didn't bleach.   o_0   The fabric is actually quite a lovely lavender, and it actually looks good on me - and I'd keep it, if the color were remotely even, but it's really, really not.  

I'll be dyeing the dress again tonight.  Wish me luck. 

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OHNOES.

The fabric I was waiting for showed up over the weekend!  It's gorgeous. It's a heavy, upholstery-grade woven linen, and it's SO soft and supple and silky.

It's also the wrong color.

The fabric I ordered, I thought, was a cranberry-pink-gold-brown design on a white or off-white background.  The website description called the background "wheat"...but all the pictures looked off-white to me, except for one, which I thought was just a photo exposure thing.  Because I'm an idiot.

Turns out that the yellow-y picture was the only one with the correct color:  the background of the fabric is a lovely, golden-brown, cafe-latté ...wheat...sort of shade, which, don't get me wrong, is absolutely gorgeous...but it's also horrible for my skin tone.

Which honestly wouldn't matter--because I do like it just the way it is--except that it was for a pair of sleeves.  Will they be close enough to my face/shoulders to make my skin look horrible, as I suspect they will?  Or will the shoulder and neckline of the gown they're to go with be enough distance to keep this "wheat" color from making me look transparent and jaundiced??

And if it's the second thing, and it doesn't work, what will I use it for?  And what will I do for sleeves for this dress, if this fabric doesn't work??

Drumroll, please...