My Birthday Suit

Or Birthday Dress, rather.  Ever since I made the "Eura dress" in September I've been dying to make the leftover fabric into something non-SCA-related for myself.  My birthday's tomorrow; so last night I pulled out that gray-blue linen and made myself a dress:

There's no pattern for this...well, technically, there is now:  I have a brown knit dress that I bought years ago that I copied in order to make this one, adjusting the pattern here and there to compensate for the fact that the linen doesn't stretch the way jersey knit does (e.g. a bit of extra room in the sleeves and side seams so it wouldn't end up too tight around, a slight curve in the neckline/bustline to account for the fact that the linen wouldn't hug curves the same way the jersey knit does, etc.).

Including making the pattern, this dress took me about two hours in total.  After the detail and time involved in SCA clothing, mundane clothing is SO EASY.  I love it.

The dress opens up completely.  A long tie on one side passes through an opening in the side seam, wraps around the back of the body, and then meets a short tie attached to the other side - you can see the tie in the back of the dress in the next photo. 

The sleeves are made in two pieces, with a seam on the top of the sleeve.  I'd have preferred not to have that seam there; but I had a limited amount of fabric and had to make do with what I had. 

The color is "Blue Bayou" from fabric-store.com.  It's basically my favorite color in the entire world, and I really need a cotehardie out of it next.  :)


So what IS next, anyway?
BAM is coming up in four weeks.  Last weekend I made some alterations to some of my cotehardies to adjust for recent weight loss (yay!); I've got campsite preparations to make for myself and for Caerleon; I have a new landesknect commission I've just started (omg wait til you see it, it's going to be EPIC); and I have a pair of new cotehardies I'm hoping to have done before the event - I'm in the middle of re-drafting my basic cotehardie pattern (again!) at the moment.


Out in Mundania I'm still working two jobs; but everything's going according to my plan (*knocks on wood*), so I'm hoping I can quit the extra job by this time next month and live like a person again, with free time and ACTUAL SLEEP from time to time! :D  That's going to be wonderful.




See you guys soon, with updates.

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First Up: Not Remotely SCA-Related

Yesterday I made a dress for a 1950s-themed July 4th garden party for next weekend.  I made the pattern myself, based off of similar dresses from the 50s I've seen online.  I wish I'd been able to make the skirt fuller, but I botched the top  (the entire top is all one piece) and had to re-cut it. I still have accessories to put together and a hat to trim up;  pics of it after the party.

Here's the muslin that I draped up on my mannequin while developing the pattern, pinned together and covered with Sharpie notes. I did this back in March; when I made the dress yesterday, I actually had to bring both dress and mannequin down by two whole sizes, yay!

More sewing from Mundania:  

I needed new clothing for my new workplace:  my last job was jeans-and-t-shirts casual, and after five years, I had NO nice, office-y clothes to wear.  I'd also been thinking for more than a year about making some of my old batik sarongs into cute tops, so I put the two ideas together and made some blouses for work at the beginning of June:

A simple peasant blouse with elastic neck
and cuffs, made with my medieval chemise pattern 

A brown leafy tunic with flutter sleeves, adapted from
Simplicity 2690

A little skirt, using the fringe edge of the
sarong for the hem and patch pockets. 

A drawstring "pillowcase" top (not
for work), made in the same way I made
 the top of this set of PJs back in March, from
a pair of old wrap pants. 

In other news: 

I am also a redhead now.  My hair [was] nearly black, naturally, but I started going gray in my TEENS.  It's been many varieties of dark auburn over the years, as well as cherry red, navy blue,  and several purples;  I decided to start growing out my gray - because I've always wanted, since I was a kid, to have loooong, white hair when I'm an old lady (because of the fairy godmother character in the book The Princess and the Goblin).  Since it's easier to maintain root color updates on lighter hair, and also to blend gray/white in with lighter colors, I decided why not go balls-out ginger for a while before finally fading/growing it out?  :) 

OH DEAR GOD WHAT

ACK.  Sorry for the long absence, folks!  I had been working steadily through nearly the end of May, but then I FINALLY GOT A FREAKING JOB, and all of my energy has been spent in hitting the ground running at my new nine-to-five, and in all the emotional and mental processing which accompanies such a huge life change.  I haven't gotten a lot of work done this month, but I'm back at it after nearly four weeks, and I'll have updates soon, I promise. 

Meanwhile, NEW JOB YAY!!  *falls down zzzzzz* 


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