Thanks, It Has Pockets!

Whew!  It's been a minute since I was here.  After BAM I took a much-needed rest, and then everything sort of stopped for the holidays, for everybody, I think. 

After making my blue linen apron dress and smock, I had a tiny bit of fabric left over - just enough to make a bag of some kind.  I also had a few things laying around I could use for a lining, so I threw this together:

The front and back are decorated with a bit of the silk from the sari quilt project, and at this point it was lined with the same blue and green sarong that lines the green Hedeby Birka bag I made in early November.

Should a bag like this have the decorative appliqué on the front?  There's no telling. We know that the Vikings did use appliqué, and we know they used strips of imported silk cloth in their clothing and household goods.  But no actual bag like this has ever been found - only the handles - so we don't know for sure if they decorated them or how.  I'm using my best judgment based on what I know, and I'm making it pretty because I like pretty.

But hang on, I thought.  This bag could be better:  what if this bag had pockets on the inside?  That would keep things from banging against my phone in there!  The sarong fabric was way too flimsy to support any sort of real weight in a pocket, so I took it out and replaced it with a linen lining - it started out white, I dyed it brown (with RIT):

Thanks, it has pockets!!

At BAM, during a lull in the activity one afternoon, I whip-stitched the lining to the blue outsides (pinned in the picture), and began making a braid to sew around the edge of the bag.  I hadn't been able to find any crochet thread in the right colors, so I grabbed some yarn in a teal and a green and proceeded to make a mess:

I hated this.  A teal and a green might've blended well with the muted blue of the bag, but not THIS teal and THIS green - this was just horrible.  And the yarn was way too thick for this application anyway.

Instead I wove a whipcord out of a thin, dark blue yarn I had in my stash and tacked it around the edges, and it was much better:

Now it was time to make the handles, and I was dreading it.  My jigsaw is just too big, too heavy, and too clunky to be safe working with little wood pieces like this - and I have such a hard time controlling that thing.  The previous two sets of bag handles were really hard for me.  This time, though, a friend let me use her scroll saw, and THAT was such an easy, precise process!  I loved working with it, and now plan to get one of my own someday.

For the attachment slots for each handle, I used a similar process as I used on the first bag:   I drilled a series of holes where each slot should be and then very carefully chipped the wood away  with a chisel.   Not as carefully as I should have done:  I split the wood on one of the handles and had to glue it back together.  Oops.

These handles are made of walnut wood (the wood started out as 3/8" x 3" x 25" thinstock;  finished handles are 9 1/4" x 1 5/16"). The handles found at Haithabu (Hedeby) were made from ash and maple.  They used what they had on hand - for me, that meant what was local and on sale, and that was walnut. After sanding these handles smooth, the only finishing they got was a coat of wood conditioner, and a very thin coating of polyurethane rubbed onto the wood with a soft rag, to protect the wood and preserve its color.

So there's my third Hedeby bag:  blue linen lined with brown linen, a scrap of sari silk as decoration, and walnut handles.   With POCKETS.  After my next event, I'll evaluate how the new bag holds up as compared to my other two.

The Sari Quilt

So I had this huge silk quilt.  The front was made from dozens of pieces cut from the edge banding on silk saris from India.  The border around the front was made from a deep purple dupioni silk.  The backing was made from a royal purple rayon challis.   It was GORGEOUS.  It had been given to me by someone who'd received it as a gift many years before and didn't want it anymore. It was also something I was never, ever going to use - my cats would destroy it, and it was really hot. 

After having kept it in storage for years, I looked more critically at the quilt: on closer inspection, the quilt was badly worn around the edges, some of the sari pieces were fraying, it was discolored in several places, there were bleach stains on the back, and the inside was lined with an open-cell polyurethane sheet which was crusty and starting to melt with age.  

So I choked back my revulsion to destroying a beautiful piece of art, and cut all the sari silk and the dupioni free of the quilt so that it could be salvaged for other applications.  Since we know that Viking apron dresses were often finished with trim made of strips of imported silk and other fine fabrics (Hilde Thunem's paper on apron dresses, see Inga Hagg references/biblio and Birka finds), I opted to use a few of the pieces from this quilt on my naked apron dresses and smocks:  

Here's a bit of navy blue sari silk with pink and blue on the top edge of my brown linen/cotton dress.  And yes, I picked out all that embroidery on the brown dress.  It killed me - I'd just done it in September and I did a really good job, but it was incorrect for the dress and the time period and I just couldn't look at it anymore.  

Here's a lovely gold and teal on the "bayou" blue smock sleeves. (Bonus cat).  

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Here's a bit of the same navy and gold with blue and pink that's on my brown dress, on the "bayou" blue apron dress.   

And two extras: 

A bit of gold and silver on the sleeves of my white smock. This fabric actually came from an old lightweight curtain panel I had in my stash, and I was really pleased with the way it looked on my white smock,  It was this look that convinced me to try out some of the sari fabric on my clothes.  (I'm NOT pleased with the zigzag stitch I used to put the trim on - I'll be picking that out and using a less obvious stitch as soon as I get back from BAM).  

 This isn't from the quilt either, but I did find a bit of trim in my stash that works with the color on my "bluebonnet" blue apron dress (the one I just made over in October).  I really love the way it looks with the teal rayon ribbon at the top.  

And finally, lest you think the orange cat (Rory Williams) is my only sewing friend, meet Rabi and Gypsy:  two brothers who also like helping me with my sewing, usually by sleeping in my chair or sitting on my lap to keep me warm while I work.

What's Next?

Technically I'm out of stuff to do before BAM, but I do have a couple of small projects I'm playing with that might be done before I leave - I'll show you if I get them done, if not, I'll see you after the war!