Parasol Refit

This is my parasol.  It started life as that same ubiquitous white parasol that's sold at wars and which everyone has - you might have one yourself.

Well, mine suffered a terrible fate:  as so many people do, I tried to paint mine, but I messed it up very badly.

So I took it apart and made a pattern from it, and used that to make what you see above.  I made the wide ends of each piece wider and longer, long enough to hang down like little awnings.  I regret not having a source for the design;  I saw it somewhere on someone's Italian renaissance costuming page but never could find it again.  Those little awnings sure are great for keeping the sun out of your face, though.

However, by now this cover was six years old.  The heavy cotton fabric (originally a RITVA curtain panel from Ikea) was badly stained by spills and some wet leather that got dropped on top of it.  Seams were coming apart.  Edges were frayed.  The hem had come undone on most of the awning edges.  The ribbon that tied it closed was positively shredded.  This thing's been through a lot.

The first thing I needed was new fabric.  It had to be lightweight, washable, light colored, strong enough to withstand the pressure it would be under when opened, and maybe something I could paint eventually. I ended up using a white cotton bedsheet that I had sitting around.

I removed one of the triangular panels from the old cover and used it as a template to cut out eight new ones.  Then I sewed them all together at the sides, leaving the last side seam open, hemmed the top opening and the bottom edge, then closed up the last side seam. The cover attaches to the frame by pushing the small center opening over the crown of the umbrella, then stretching the seams down to the buttons on the ends of the spokes and tacking them in place around the spoke buttons with sturdy button thread.  Done!

Tada!  All done.  I really like the cotton sheet fabric - it's SO lightweight!  This thing feels practically weightless compared to the heavy cotton curtain fabric that was on it before.

After I attached the cover to the frame, the whole thing got a heavy coat of Camp Dry spray to waterproof it.  I use that stuff on everything, it does a great job.  Great timing, too - it's supposed to rain at the event!

So What's Next? 

Valkyrfelt is this weekend! I'm so excited!  The weather should be cool and somewhat rainy - just right for camping on a beautiful little forested island in the middle of nowhere.  I can't wait.  

Rory helps mama with the sewing.  

A Heraldic Chest

In 2014, when I made this chest for my friend Simona, I made one for myself, too.   I didn't stain or finish it - it came in very handy at events, but it was always unfinished.  Eventually I painted it plain black.   I've always wanted to do something cool with it, but I never got around to it.








However, I finally painted it!  It's an adaptation of my device: 

I painted one half of each side of the box white with 3 coats of Killz primer;  then painted the red parts with red artists actylics and acrylic craft paint.  I used  artists' acrylics for the green leaves.  I coated the entire box with polyurethane to seal the paint.  While the hardware was off the box, I also sprayed the handles with primer and then a metallic gold spray paint, to spruce them up since they were looking a bit tarnished and gross.

I'm not sure exactly how to use it, though.  I used to use it at big events to pack and store all of my underthings and accessories - braies and bras, socks, headgear, and jewelry.  On the other hand, my feast basket recently died and I'm thinking this chest might make a great little feast box.  I'm not sure yet.

What's Next? 

I still need to fix or replace the back of the blue chair I re-covered a few weeks ago.  I may also make a new cover for my old parasol this week,  if I have time.  And, of course, Valkyrfelt is coming up - not this weekend, but next, and I'm planning and scheming like mad because I'm nervous as hell about camping for the first time in nearly three years.  

About A Bag II: Hedeby Bag Refit

When the handle of my Hedeby bag broke at its first event, someone told me that back in the day, people wouldn't necessarily replace things when they broke, but repair them instead, in order to save resources and time and work - he cited several examples of repaired and patched wooden items that he'd seen in his studies.  The bag would have a story, he said, a life of its own, and he assured me I'd get A&S brownie points if I made period-appropriate repairs.

What I really wanted to do was replace the handles entirely, and do a better job at creating them in the first place.  Sadly, my efforts failed, and the new wood I was working with didn't survive the creation process - and I couldn't afford to get new wood to try a second replacement.

So:  repairs it is!  I don't know anything about period repair techniques, but I did the best I could with what I had:

The first step was to un-tape the broken handle and use a solvent (WD40) on a cotton swab to get the sticky residue off the wood.

By the way, you can click on these pics to make them bigger, to see detail.

Then I used a small paintbrush to apply a thin layer of wood glue to the broken edges, and pushed them back together again. I used clamps to hold it together while it dried, with scrap wood blocks to help keep even pressure on the cracks.

Next I made a tiny little scrap of wood to use at a patch, which I glued over the crack.  The patch is about 1.5" long x 1/2" wide x 2mm thick.  I'm hoping this will help hold the crack together.

I used a cotton swab to stain the patch to match the rest of handle and to fill in around the broken edges (Minwax's Jacobean, to match the original stain); and also to apply a tiny bit of polyurethane over the areas to seal them.

There! Two bag handles, ready to be pressed into service once more.  (The repaired handle is in the front;  you can see the original repairs to left side of the rear handle).

All that was left was to sew the handles back onto the bag. I used  embroidery floss to whip stitch the handles onto the bag, which is how I affixed them the first time.The repaired handle is in the back here.











I'm nervous about the strength of this repair - I've never done a repair like this, and the wood is so thin and weak to begin with, I just don't know if it'll hold or not.  I mean, it should: the original repair to the side of the other handle has held up just fine.  The way the bag opens puts a little pressure on the center of the front handle, but that one's held up just fine over the years - and I put the broken one in the back.   The broken handle broke because of a sharp blow, which, with any luck, won't happen again. Anyway, it's finished, and we'll see how it works at the upcoming event.

Have I mentioned that I ADORE this bag?  Hearts.  

What's Next? 

At the moment I'm painting a wooden chest, and I have a parasol I'd like to recover soon, too.  

Dyeing Stuff: A Pink Cotehardie

I made this pinkhardie in 2016, and I loved it - except that it was pink.  It was a lovely pink, but I'm just not a pale-colors-person.  I usually keep my SCA wardrobe to blues and greens and earth tones;  in Mundania I wear black almost exclusively, except for a few very dark colors.  I needed this cotehardie to be something I was more comfortable in.

RIT dye to the rescue!  I hemmed and hawed forever over the color - red or purple? - when what I really wanted was a deep mulberry tone.  Why not mix them, I thought?  I do it with house paint, art paints, and nail polish - why not dye?  Turns out, RIT has a handy color mixing chart on their website - and the answer was red AND purple.  And brown.

1 = Wine only; 2-4 = varying degrees of Cocoa Brown;
5-7 = varying degrees of Eggplant;  8 = final mixture

I used a bottle of Wine, a bottle of Cocoa Brown, and then added 3/4 cup of Eggplant to cool off the maroon color and give it a hint of purple.  I tested the color on strips of paper towel just to be sure I had the color right before dropping the dress in.

This was all done in my stainless steel kitchen sink, by the way.  I keep meaning to try out my washing machine, but it's new and I'm not sure how well it'll work yet, so I keep opting for the safer, known route. The water in the sink gets hot enough to steam and burn people, so I assume it's hot enough for dyes, and I have yet to have a problem with colors coming out right.

I LOVE the finished color! (It's a good thing I love it, too, because my thumbs and a couple of bath towels are now also this color.  Oops).  The linen took the dye really well, without any splotches or voids or other weirdness.  The color is a little bit lighter than my test piece after going through the wash to remove the excess dye.  Still, it's rich, deep, and kind of delicious.  Now I have the dark mulberry cotehardie I've been wanting, and the whole process only took about 45 minutes.  I've got two other dresses that need to be re-dyed, and now I can't wait to get started on them.

A note: the buttonholes were done in polyester thread, so they didn't take the dye at all.  Yup, I have pink buttonholes.  At some later point, I can either pick them out and replace them with new thread, or try to stain them with ink, which I've done successfully before with black ink.  We'll see. 

What's Next?  

I'll be making new handles for my Hedeby bag soon, and at the moment I'm painting a wooden chest.  Updates soon! 

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.  

Making Over A Camp Chair

There's a big push in the barony lately to reduce the appearance of mundanity.  That means finding ways to obscure the modern and blend it with the historical - things like phones, coolers, tents, chairs, mugs, tennis shoes, etc.  In one of those things I found an opportunity to do my part:

BEFORE

This is my camp chair.  It's brand new, really comfy, and even has a little table that flips up from the side, with a cup holder in it.  Neat!  It is, however, glaringly modern with its metal frame and nylon upholstery.  Fortunately, I've solved this problem before.

The first order of business was to remove the upholstery from the chair and spray paint the frame.  I wiped down the frame to clean off any dust, then sprayed it with an automotive self-etching metal primer (2 colors, not that it matters).  Once that was dry, I sprayed it with a brown spray paint.

PRIMING THE FRAME

I painted the plastic flip-up tray with dark gray all-purpose primer, then the same brown spray paint. I clearcoated the entire tray with Polycrylic to seal the plastic.  With the metal primer, the paint won't flake off the frame, but the plastic might flake or chip if not protected.


Next I made copies of the seat and back pieces that I removed from the chair in a blue polyester upholstery fabric with a swirly Italianate design on it.  I made these double-thickness, the seams reinforced with two rows of stitching on the inside, and the seat 5" longer than the original, so that the ends could be wrapped around the frame and sewn in by hand (which was a big pain in the butt!)


This chair had armrest pads, too, which I copied, and used the velcro and interior padding harvested from the original pads to close.  And yes, the cloth seat and back will be just as strong as the original nylon pieces - the red chair I made over in 2013 held up just fine until the frame itself broke.

AFTER

Now, does that look like a period piece of furniture?  HELL no.  But it looks less modern, and when placed under a tent with wooden poles, next to wooden chairs, it kind of blends in because of the frame color.  It's by no means going to fool anyone, but every little effort helps the overall ambiance.  I do need to re-do the back piece:  see how it looks all twisted?  I tried to cut my fabric as straight as I could, but I was cutting it out of an old dress, and I think I got this piece a little on the bias.  I'll fix it. 

What's Next?  

I'm working on a little painted wooden box right now, and on some embroidery on a new Viking apron dress that I made last month.  Show you soon!

A To-Do List: On Project Management and Prioritization

In days past, project management was a big topic on this blog, mainly because I (like most of us) tend to take on too much work, work in a rush, and end up either not getting everything done or turning out half-assed work.  Right now, as I come back into the SCA after a long hiatus, I'm in a pretty great spot:  I have no projects right now, and it's up to me to pick and choose where I spend my efforts going forward.  A fresh start!

So I'm looking at the upcoming Bjornsborg Viking event, Valkyrfelt, and trying to decide where to spend my money, my time, and my sanity.  The event is on October 19th, which is exactly one month away from my start date of September 20th (payday).  Here's what my list of ideas looks like right now:

• a new apron dress
• a pair of men's pants for myself
• repairs to my broken Hedeby bag
• a refit of my old parasol which needs a new cover
• new Viking jewelry for myself
• a wooden box I'd like to make just for fun 

Let's look at the time frames on those:  

• apron dress - 3 hours, not including embroidery (approx. 6 hours)
• men's pants - 2 hours
• broken bag - possibly 12 hours
• parasol - 2 hours
• new jewelry - 3 hours
• wooden box - 6 hours

All told, that's 34 hours.  I'll round it up to 40, because you just never know.  That's great!  I have plenty of time to get everything done.  

However, I also have a set of couch cushion covers that I'm making for a friend, and I'm spending about 4 hours a week on those right now.  All in all, I still have "plenty" of time to get all of this done...but do I really want to spend an average of 14 hours a week working on all of this?  No. No, I do not.  I want to have time to do other things with my life, too.  So how do I prioritize this a bit better?  Let's look at what each project is worth to me:  

1. Apron dress:  I'm down by two apron dresses, and so this is definitely needed for this event. 
2. Hedeby bag:  this is my only Viking bag, and I'll need it to carry at the event - it's not unusable right now, but it's definitely a pain in the ass.  Plus, I'm very proud of it and I want to have it with me, and I want it to look its best.  This one stays.  
3. Wooden box:  this takes very little time, and I've already got the box and the supplies I'll need, so this project is free.  It stays on my list for Valkyrfelt, but it'll be the first to go if other things need more time. 

• Men's pants:  while I really want a pair of pants to go with my male Viking outfit (great to pack up camp in on the last day!), I don't really want to spend the money on this right now.  Tabled for future events. 
• The parasol isn't necessary for this event.  The site is fully shaded by trees, and the parasol isn't Viking at all - I'd rather use hats and sunscreen for a Viking event.  This one can go.  
• New jewelry would be fun, and beautiful (and I'm craaaaving amber right now), but do I really need it?  No, I do not.  I'll table this project until necessary items are done, if I still have time and money.  

There.  I've just cut my list in half!  From +/-40 hours to about 23 (round up to 26).  That's much more doable, and I'll have the time I need to do each of those three "needful" things nicely and correctly, instead of rushing through trying to get 6 projects done.  I'd like to try to time myself as I work to get a better idea of if my estimates are correct - if I remember to, I'll post about it here.  

As of right now, I've already completed the brown apron dress and am now working on the embroidery (seams, top edge);  and I've begun the wooden box.  Hopefully I'll have pics of finished projects for you soon. 

CIVUS ROMANUS SUM

I'm back!  Hi!  When last I wrote, I had just attended Candlemas in February of this year.  Not a lot has been going on since then - there are very few events in the summer, and the couple that happened in the spring, I couldn't attend for one reason or another.

But this weekend I made it out to our Roman-themed baronial event.  It was 107ºF outside, so a lot of us just sat around in the shade fanning ourselves and guzzling water.  But it was WONDERFUL to see all of my friends again, and to hide from the sun geeking out about history together.

I don't have a great pic from the event that shows my whole outfit;  this is a pic taken before the event, in my bedroom.  A white linen tunica (which is badly hemmed and needs fixing, but it was what I had on short notice - I only decided to go to the event the day before!),  a teal linen chiton (the pattern for which is here), a looooong sash made from upholstery fabric (stolen from one of my Italian outfits), and a palla cut from what I think might have started life as a chiffon curtain panel.   Simple, lightweight, breathable, and comfy.  The jewelry is the same blue lampwork-glass bead jewelry you've seen me wear with many an outfit (better pics soon).

IT ME

So what's next?  

The third weekend of October is Bjornsborg's annual baronial event, and it's Viking-themed, as usual.  Hooray!  I love Viking!  While I threw the Roman outfit together out of pieces I already had, and at the last minute, this time I have time to properly prepare, and I plan to create a few new pieces for the Viking event - namely, a new hangerrock, new wooden handles for my Hedeby bag, and some new jewelry.  I'll be back soon!