Cheating FTW

I have to share a nifty thing with you guys.

My shiny new sewing machine is down for repairs, so I've been using my old 1994 Singer 2517.  It's a hoss, but definitely leaves something to be desired in the buttonhole department.  It's almost completely a manual process - each of the four sides of a buttonhole are stitched individually, and the wheel has to be turned to the next setting for each side. Stitch, turn, stitch, turn, start, stop, start, stop, wash, rinse, repeat.  It's got a clear foot that allows you to see markings on the fabric to guide your buttonholes, but it's actually really hard to see any detail through, and doesn't let the fabric slip under it smoothly at all, so I end up using my regular steel one - and no matter which foot I use, the feed dogs walk the fabric ALL OVER THE PLACE when the buttonhole settings are in use, so it requires a LOT of pressure and fidgeting to get the things to come out relatively straight.

So on my latest project (which I'll show you in a few days once it's finished), I tried something new:

That's Washi tape.  Washi tape is a craft masking tape that is re-usable and doesn't leave a sticky residue on surfaces.  My roommate uses a lot of it in her paper crafts; she got this measuring tape Washi in a sampler pack she ordered (Etsy? I think?), and passed it along to me. It only goes to 16" and and then repeats; but the measurements are accurate, and so I've been finding lots of ways to use it in my sewing room - there's a yard-long strip on my table in front of my machine, and a 6" strip on the machine it self for a quick guide. 

On my most recent project, I also used it to help me make a nice set of buttonholes.  I wrapped one piece of tape around the edge of my garment, to line up all the buttonholes correctly near the edge of the fabric, measured my buttons, and then placed a second piece of tape on the outside - all I had to do was go from one piece of tape to the other, and I used the measurements on the tape to space the buttonholes out evenly.  I still had to put a lot of pressure on the fabric to keep the buttonholes straight, but that was the ONLY thing I had to worry about. And when I was finished, the tape lifted right off the fabric, didn't pull the fibers at all, and didn't leave anything behind. 

It worked GREAT!  I had 42 buttonholes to do on this proejct, and the tape was a HUGE time-saver. In the 22 years I've been using this machine, I've never had it go as smoothly as it did with the Washi tape!  I will definitely be doing this again! 

Until I get my new machine repaired, that is.  

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Blue Velvet Redux

new dress, for Candlemas 2016

In 2012, for my second Candlemas, I made a midnight blue velveteen gown that was more or less cotehardie-ish, with a shimmery leaf-green lining in the sleeves, embroidered with gold thread and tiny faux pearls. It had seen some wear, and was far too small for me, the last time I tried it on (six months ago), so I decided to adjust the sizing a bit, and to change the look of the whole dress.

In an awesome turn of events, when I tried the dress on a couple of weeks ago, before starting this project, it fit me perfectly!  Yay!  No re-sizing necessary!

Here's What Changed: 

1.      I removed all of the gold metallic embroidery and beading, steamed out the impressions left by the decoration and brushed up the fabric's nap with a soft brush to smooth it back out. 

2.      The original front lacing placket was removed and replaced with buttons. 

3.      I unstitched the neckline edges and flattened them out, then re-shaped the neckline at the bust. 

4.     The neckline was a wee bit deeper in the front than I wanted before, so I added a 1/2" edge binding in a linen the same color as the velveteen. 

5.      A twisted, blue, cotton, embroidery floss was couched in along the join between he body fabric and the edge binding. 

6.      I removed the green sleeve linings were removed and replaced with a blue washed-silk fabric from stash.

7.    Finally, I put smaller buttons onto the sleeves.  The size and design don't match the front buttons, but the metallic tones of both styles look great together, and I like having smaller buttons on the sleeves, anyway - less banging my arms on feast tables. 

The dress in 2012, made from a pair of
cotton velveteen curtains purchased at Ikea

Buttons and edge binding on new dress

One Last Thing

I tried out an embossing technique that I'd seen online - there are many tutorials on YouTube and on various blogs out there, this is one.  Basically, you wet the fabric with a spray bottle, place a rubber or foam stamp underneath it, and use a hot iron (without steam) to dry the fabric against the pattern of the stamp.  I thought it would be nifty to have a band across the lower hem, and one at the hips -  similar to the decorative bands in this image from Les Belle Heures du Duc du Berry.  At first, it looked fantastic: 

yay?

After a day or two, though, the embossed design simply disappeared from the fabric.  I tried it a few different ways (wetting the fabric on the inside, the outside, different iron settings, using starch, not using starch), but no matter what I did, the pressed pattern simply would not stay where i put it - after hanging for a couple of days, it just vanished. Oh, well.  It was a neat idea.  

Okay, Two Last Things

I thought I might "reupholster" my old red ear cauls for this outfit, as well, before I remembered that one had gotten badly crushed at war last year, and I'd thrown the pair out and resolved to make a new set when I needed one.  

Instead, since I felt like trying out something new, and didn't want to spend the time on making a new set of cauls, I decided to try my hand at making a bourrelet, or padded roll headpiece, instead - which, of course, ended up taking more time than a new set of cauls would have.  Whatever. :) 

Cotton/poly damask scraps from stash, over-embroidered along the fabric's design, with (plastic?) silver trim, plastic pearl beads, and a glass "ruby" and plastic pearl drop in the front.  There's a wire inside from an old Halloween witch's hat, and it's stuffed with the contents of an old bed pillow that had gone flat.  I love recycling old stuff!   

I may or may not end up doing some more embroidery on it.  The more I look at it, the less finished it actually looks.  Then again, 90% of it will be under a veil.  I'm not sure yet. 

I'll have pics of the finished outfit, with jewelry, veils, and other accessories, after Candlemas. 

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2016

Happy [Mundane] New Year, everyone!

2015 Was Kinda Weird  

For the first six months I was unemployed, and I got a LOT of commission work done. The next six I spent working two jobs and having precious little time to work on SCA stuff, but I managed to at least complete my remaining commissions and get some personal work done in my spare time.  I spent several months working on expanding and updating my 10-11thC Viking wardrobe.  I embroidered all the things, and became a better embroiderer. 

I think by far the most important thing I managed to do in 2015 was not go completely banana-balls insane with stress.  Which, okay, I totally did that.  By October I was so stressed and depressed that I could barely function; but I managed to work my way through it and make some changes to the way I was dealing with my stress and my time management issues, and things got a lot more comfortable.  It took a lot of hard work, and a lot of difficult discussions with myself, but I did it, and I'm proud of the fact that I was able to take a step back and re-evaluate, re-prioritize, and keep my most of my cheese from sliding off my mental crackers.

These will not protect you.

So What's Next?  

The job thing will continue to be a thing until further notice.  Honestly, I'm not sure when.  In November I made it to my financial goals with flying colors, only to have the football pulled away from me just before the kick, Peanuts-style, so it'll be several more months yet before I'm "back on my feet" enough (again!) to cut my spare job loose and enjoy something like a "normal" schedule again.

That said, Candlemas and Kingdom A&S are coming up VERY soon.  Alas, I don't have anything fantabulously wondermus planned, because I don't have time to pull off something really spectacular; but I am currently in the middle of re-fashioning an old gown that I can't wait to wear again; and have embarked on another slow wardrobe makeover, this time with all of my fourteenth century clothing.

So. Some things will get finished.  Some things will not get finished, and that's okay.  I am not accepting new commission work: no ifs, ands, or buts (or butts).  I'm going to try not to post here about what I'm working on until it's done and I have something to show you.

I don't do New Year's resolutions, but, I do have two goals for the first half of 2016:

1. Do not go crazy.
2. Make it to Gulf Wars in March. 

I'll let you know how it goes.

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What's Purple and Pink and Yellow All Over?

A friend asked me if I'd make her a Landsknecht dress.  She sent me pictures she'd seen online, and, because I'm a crazy person, I thought it looked like SO MUCH FUN.

This was hard. And I'm never doing it again - but it WAS SO MUCH FUN.  And my friend loved it, so, yay!  :)


It's all linen (from fabric-store.com), and all machine-sewn, except for the stripes on the bodice, which were appliqué'd onto the bodice by hand.  The bodice and sleeves* are fully lined; the skirt is not. 

* I forgot to get a pic of the sleeves before I delivered the dress.  They're made to be detachable, and lace on at the shoulders of the dress.  They're also made in two parts, an upper and lower sleeve that lace together, so that the dress may be worn sleeveless, or with long or short sleeves. They're purple, with pink and yellow bands; no checks. 








My original thought process was this:
1. Man, this looks like quilting. I hate quilting!
2. Oh, but wait! Somebody once told me a trick for doing checks the easy way! This'll be great!

And then I realized that "the easy way" involved only two colors, and that my first-ever checkered panel did, in fact, have to be done The Hard Way:

Yikes. 

It was, in fact, far easier than I'd thought it would be, and I'm really happy with the way it came out.  I made the skirt in four sections: the checkered panel, the striped panel above it, the striped panel below it, and the top panel which is solid purple.  Once the checkered panel and both striped panels were made and combined, the bottom half of the skirt looked like this:

Altogether, this is about eleven hours' work.

STRIPES
All the purple strips in this section are 2" wide, as finished (all pieces were cut with a 1/2" seam allowance - I wanted a lot of woodge room, just in case), except for the very bottom, which is 3" with a folded 2" blind hem. Both yellow stripes, and the two pink stripes that border the checkered panel, are 1" wide as finished. The top pink stripe is 3" finished.

CHECKS
All of the checks are 2" as finished, and also cut with a 1/2" seam allowance (cut as 3" squares).  I could not have done this dress at all without my trust cutting mat and rotary cutters, or I would have gone completely banana-balls and rampaged naked through the town.

I very nearly went banana-balls and rampaged naked through
the town just sewing them together, fyi. 

The construction on this was painstaking, tedious, eye-numbing, repetitive, time consuming, and exhausting; but at every step of the way I kept stopping to look at it and going, "Wow. I did that! I can't believe I did that [and didn't screw it up!] I've never done this before, this is great!"  and that is my very favorite thing about sewing.  I LOVE learning to do new things. I love doing things I've never done.

As always, Rory helped.

P.S. - this was my very last commission.  I know I've said that before, but this really is the last one.  I'm freeeeeee...or I was, for a minute.  Until I found out a dear friend will be elevated soon!!!  SQUEEE!!! 

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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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About A Bag

The Hedeby Bag that I made for the A&S table at the Quest for Valhalla event last weekend:

with documentation, whipcord spool, and sewing/embroidery samples

It went over pretty well.  And I REALLY love it, and can't wait to start using it. (We'll get to that in a minute).

The bag started with two ideas: (a) more embroidery practice, and (b) I wanted to try out a period seaming technique.  The embroidery is very simple, and uses only three stitches - chain, stem, and blanket (for the teeth on the green guy).

close up of the embroidery

The embroidery motif is an amalgam of time periods:  the stuff-inside-circles was inspired by an embroidered fragment from Oseberg (9th-10th century), but the faces inside my circles are from the Isle of Lewis Chessmen (12th century). Meanwhile, the bag itself, based on handles found at Hedeby and at Birka, is 11th century.  There's a little more leeway for "artistic license" and whimsy in some areas, and this was one of those; so this project is a bit all over the place, but the end result is still a Really Cool Thing. :)

The seam technique is one detailed by Mytte Fentz in her analysis of the shirt found at Viborg.  I really want to make a Viborg shirt for one of my clients (as soon as I can afford to buy the right fabric for it), but looking at the construction and piecing of the shirt, and at several recreations of it, I realize that although I could probably whomp out at least 60% of the shirt on the machine, it will be a much better piece if I sew it entirely by hand - and I've never made a garment entirely by hand.  There are three kinds of seams in the Viborg shirt.  Two of them are easy, but one I'd never seen before, and wanted to try out on something small, so I chose this bag.  I'm seriously impressed with the seam - it's really strong and flexible, which is exactly what you want in a garment that's going to see serious and regular wear.  (It's almost like the Vikings knew what they were doing, eh?)

Fentz's diagram of this particular type of seam.
Lining and outside, front and back, are all stitched
together at once, and the raw fabric edges are auto-
matically concealed between the lining and outside.

The seam edges are decorated by a "Viking whipcord" which I wove, and stitched on.  The documentability of whipcord is sketchy at best.  We have ample evidence of four-strand braids identical to what's produced by the SCA whipcording method, and several warp-weighted looms for weaving cloth, so we know they had the technology - but we've found no actual bobbins we can tie directly into the process of weaving whipcord.  So it's one of those "SCA-isms" that we accept because it's fun and also hey, maybe, right?  The strap of the bag is also a whipcord. 

Whipcording is meant to be a two-person activity; I usually
do it alone, with my cord suspended from a curtain rod in
a hallway doorway. 

Like.

The handles were pretty tricky, and nearly gave me a heart attack at one point.  I need glasses pretty badly, you guys - little details are starting to get away from me.  Little details like, oh, say, "Hey, this isn't solid wood, it's very thin plywood!"  which nearly cost me this entire project (mostly because I was so frustrated that at several points I nearly burned the entire thing and mailed the ashes to Sweden).

L-R:  tracing the design on my wood;  design cut out;  drilling holes for the slots where the bag would be attached

L-R:  shattered the wood while making the first slot, which is how I realized I had PLYWOOD. Argh.
Glueing the wood back together;  sanding it VERY VERY CAREFULLY.

Fortunately, it all worked out okay.  Once the handles were stained and then sewn to the bag, you couldn't even see where the break had occurred.

Yay!

I love the way this thing works.

Unfortunately, Friday night at the event (the competition was Saturday), I snapped one of the handles in half, right in the center.  I made a note on my documentation, and entered the bag anyway.  I'd already resigned myself to replacing the handles with thicker ones made of, you know, actual wood; but several people came to me at the event very excited about this opportunity to do some period, Viking-style repairs on the wood - because you wouldn't have simply thrown something away and replaced it back then, you'd fix it!  I'm kind of excited about the ideas I got; but I'm also on the fence about it.  The fact is, the wood is too thin for this application, and it's very flimsy.  I think I'll probably just replace them. I'm hoping I can scare up some nice pieces to use next week after payday.

Anyway, I freaking LOVE this bag, you guys.  And I'm really proud of it, warts and all. :)

Seriously. How can you not adore these
little guys?  <3

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Event: Quest For Valhalla

The event in Bjornsborg this past weekend was *FANTASTIC*, as Bborg events usually are.  Really great (and sometimes hilarious) fighting scenarios, nifty arts & crafts activities, spectacular persona play within the theme of the event - and as always, good friends, great food, and wall-to-wall fun. Actually, make that AMAZING food.  That was seriously one of the best feasts I've ever had.

Even though we were supposed to get a good drop in temperature, it was still too warm to wear half the Viking stuff I've been making all year.  But I did manage to get a couple of pics of me in some of it:

Simona & me

I also finally managed to get a pic of Donnchad in the yellow Viking tunic I made for him last Fall, with the red embroidery on the front placket:

Tom Hiddleston made an appearance...well, sort of:

Since this is the near-Halloween event in Bjornsborg, they held another skull-bedazzling.  I won one of the judges' favorites spots again this year, with my Frida Khalo calavera:

For a little while, I was Odin:

Odin has a migraine. Leave Odin alone.

And finally, my A&S entry, a Hedeby-style bag, about which I'll say more later this week.  Suffice to say, for now, that I love it, everyone else loved it, I broke it Friday night before I had even entered it, but now it has a story and begins to take on a life of its own, so I'm cool with it.  For now, here's a shot of it on the A&S table:

(the pretty blue beads I'm wearing in the preceding
picture were given to me by the baroness as
largesse on my A&S entry )

S'mo Viking

I've finally finished ALL of the items in the Great Big Viking Project! 

These are the things I've finished since LPT last month:

Here's the coat I've been working in fits and snorts for several months.  I made the gray shell in 2012 for the Battle of Ethandune event; I've just recently added the blue trim, and the burnt-orange lining. 

It's reversible!

Another Skjoldehamn-style hood, this one in Caerleon company colors. The lion appliqué down the center front was embroidered by Simona, on her fancy-schmancy embroidery machine.

A red dress that started out as another plain under dress like my black one, but which scope-crept itself into a lace-fronted loose gown, with seam and edge embroidery and hand-stitched eyelets.

My original apron dress (also from 2012), which was dyed to refresh the faded color, and then embroidered along the seams and straps.

Next on the blog: last-minute event stress (aka Wednesday). 

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