A Very Wrinkly Bliaut

Another commission finished, yay! 

Another bliaut, for the same client as the blue and magenta one, and the viking coat.

click to embiggen

• Gold linen with black linen trim, lining, and applied neckline and upper sleeve contrast bands.  
• Same pattern as the blue and magenta one, with a different neckline. 
• Caerleon livery, yay! 
• Side-laced, with hand-sewn eyelets.
• Lions (7) hand-embroidered (*fingers fall off*) 

Yes, I could have ironed this before I photographed it.  But...I didn't.  :P 

Closeup of the embroidered lions.  I'd originally planned to appliqué these,  but they're only about an inch and a half high - way too small to appliqué on the machine without it becoming a huge mess.  I decided to stitch them down by hand instead; but seeing that the white embroidery thread I was using to edge them was a completely different white than the linen I cut the lions out of, I decided to just embroider the entire thing(s) instead.

I finished the lions on the neckline facing before attaching it to the body of the dress, then ran the lining in last, so that all of the seams were enclosed within the lining and the back of the embroidery would be fully hidden/protected. 

I'm rather pleased with the way these little guys came out. 










The gold stripe along the edges of all the black pieces is a couched cord of embroidery floss.









Whew!

I have one commission piece to do in September, but first I have to make it to/through LPT without spontaneously combusting from stress.  :D

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Two Weeks Left To Laurel's Prize Tourney

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re-Organizing the Sewing Room A Bit

Playing the sliding-tiles game with furniture in my house again:  

Problem: 

• a giant armoire full of towels and sheets in my bedroom, which was in my way, and was also inaccessible to my roommate when I was asleep in there
• a mostly-empty hall closet
• some slapdash shelves on a corner wall in my craft room, full of boxes of fabric and supplies, and  surrounded by piles of same on the floor

Solution: 

1. I removed the shelves in the craft room and put them up in the hall closet, and moved all the linens into the hall closet where they're accessible to everyone
2. I moved the armoire to that corner of the craft room, and re-organized the boxes and supplies into it

And then...

A friend and I swapped dressers over the weekend - my small one for her large one (she wanted to use two smaller dressers in her daughter's room instead of one huge one).  And so this came home with me on Saturday: 

Ikea HEMNES

Most of my fabric stash had been stored in sixteen of those white plastic Ikea (SNALIS, discontinued) boxes (like the two on top of this dresser in the pic), stacked in/on top of that long, low, black shelving unit under the window in the pic (it'll be re-homed soon).  The contents of all but those two boxes fit neatly into the four main drawers in this dresser, and I got all of my small scraps into the smaller drawers at the top.  

So, what do I do with fourteen 5-gal plastic boxes?  I'm not sure yet.  They'll probably end up holding craft supplies in the closet in this room, or full of small tools and things in the garage.  

Cross-posted from my house/furniture blog at pushingfurniture.blogspot.com

Linen Skjoldehamn-Style Hood (Unfinished)

Not much to see here, just a hood, unlined.  The color is "Bayou" from www.fabric-store.com - I luuuurrrve this color; I have more on the way soon for a new Viking dress (Eura, Findland, 10thC).

Still trying to decide how to decorate it.  I've been on an embroidering binge lately; but I also borrowed an inkle loom from a friend and have yet to sit down with it and try my hand. (I've woven on an inkle loom once before, and it was really fun.  I borrowed the loom intending to learn new things, maybe make myself some belts and some dress trim).

More soon.

Refashioning An Old Viking Tunic

Back in 2012 I made a [half-assed] Viking outfit for the Battle of Ethandune event in the barony of Bjornsborg.  I haven't worn it much since then - maybe twice in the past three years.  I wore the white tunic with everything, though; at some point I dyed it green for some reason (I really don't remember, and I never liked the way it came out).  It was getting pretty worn around the edges, the color was weird, and the neckline never sat correctly on me.

So, this month I began taking it apart.  I removed the damaged lower sleeves and replaced them with a darker green linen fabric from a remnant.  I created a neckline overlay for it out of the same fabric, to bring the neckline up farther on my neck, and also to change the look of the tunic:

Over the weekend, I dug out the last of my fabric dye stash - which just happened to be a dark blue-green, and threw this thing into the sink.

It's definitely not the dark, forest green I was hoping for; but I LOVE the way the color came out.  After washing the dye out of the dress, I ran it through the washer with a bit of hair conditioner to soften up the fabric - I do that about every fourth time I wash my garb, and it keeps the linen from getting scratchy. (My skin reacts to 99% of commercial fabric softeners, but hair conditioner works great!)

Once it was dry, I ran a simple chain stitch around the trim pieces in a leaf-green embroidery floss, just so the dress wouldn't be completely plain.

This'll be a great knocking-around-camp casual dress; it's loose enough that I can wear it as a second layer in cool weather; and it can be dressed up into just about anything with the right accessories and headgear.  Success!

Meanwhile...

I'm finishing up the last two summer commissions this week, which I'll show you as soon as they're done and delivered.  I'm still in the process of refashioning my other old Viking stuff, and I have some new pieces I'll be talking about soon, too.  Stay tuned! ☺



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A Long-Overdue Project Update +

Back in **2013** I posted about a dress I was making with fabric I'd gotten that year at Gulf Wars -  an amethyst-colored rayon-silk blend that I was absolutely in LOVE with.

The fabric is very thin, and hangs very close to the body, so it looks kinda weird on the mannequin.  It is, however, extremely comfortable and lightweight, which is perfect for the hellish climate in this kingdom.

(L) wearing it at the A&S Tiny Tourney September 2014
(R) on Violet the Mannequin this week

Speaking of Gulf Wars, I made a whole bunch of cold-weather clothing in January and February of this year, thinking that as usual, Gulf Wars would be frigid for the first several days at least.  It turned out to be a scorcher from minute one, and an entire BOX of warm clothing I packed with me was never worn.  (In fact, it was so hot that on the second day I walked to the market, bought linen, and wore it as a Roman chiton for the next two days, because they don't let you walk around in the nude even if it's 9,000 degrees outside).

One of the cold weather pieces that I made early this year was a Burgundian dress, in a green cotton velveteen, trimmed with brown faux-fur.  I still haven't had a chance to wear it.  I thought I'd posted it here, but earlier this week, I realized I never even mentioned it.

It doesn't show well in the picture, but the bottom hem is trimmed in the faux fur, too.  The dress is fairly loose when unbelted, and open low in the front, so I'll need to wear something underneath it.  (I'm just sure I made a little privacy panel to pin into it, but I couldn't find it anywhere today when I was photographing this, so maybe I imagined it?)

The little truncated hennin I made in January of this year got crushed at the bottom of a pile of fabric in my craft room, sadly.  I'm looking forward to getting to wear this dress later this year;  I'll just have to make a new hat for it.  :)




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Because I Needed A New Hobby Like I Need A Hole In My Head

So, a friend of mine has been charged with bringing some largesse items to Pennsic for a foreign royal house (who will be giving them out as largesse to their populace members), and she asked for my help.

We went to Café Monet, a paint-your-own-pottery place here in Austin, and IT WAS SO MUCH FUN OMG YOU GUYS.  I've never painted ceramics before - I've painted terra cotta planters to look like ceramic, with acrylic paints, but this was a whole new animal for me.  (It was totally weird to paint something and not really have any idea if it was going to look right after firing, but it was also kind of exciting!) Each of us painted two pieces.  Here are the two that I made:

They're cordial cups - about 8" tall, with a cup about 2", I think.  The one on the right is sort of a fish-scale thing, and the one on the left was meant to resemble an Egyptian lotus chalice (I've always loved them, and this color scheme is basically my favorite thing in the entire world).  My friend made a really lovely green-and-yellow one with a design on the stem meant to make it look fluted, and one in the colors of the kingdom where these cups will eventually live.  It's so neat to think that somebody in another kingdom - another whole country, even! - might be carrying around something I made! Squee!

I cannot WAIT to go back and do some more of this.  I LOVE painting things.  Pictures, yes, and furniture - but my favorite thing to paint is little boxes and containers. I have soooo many ideas of things at the studio that I'd LOVE to paint as gifts and as feast items for myself.

You know, because I have all this extra time on my hands....o_O  

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S'Mo Viking Stuff

More hand stitching on my old Viking clothing, at which I'm still plodding away in my spare time.  I've been using this stuff as a brain-break between commission projects, so it's going very slowly, but it'll all be ready to wear this fall.

new blue stitching in my coat

it replaced this stuff - which is mostly picked out in this pic,
but MAN what an awful color.  Idk what I was thinking. 

I also (back in May, actually, and I'm just getting around to putting up a photo) took apart a LOT of my old jewelry and used some of the bits to make some new bling for my Viking stuff.  I had two sets of Viking-y jewelry before - one in red glass and fake bone, and one that was mostly metal.  I was feeling more colorful:

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