Mah hubby sent this picture of Demitri to me the other day....I don't know when it was taken, but it totally needs a LOLcat caption....Ideas, anyone?
I can has camp bed!!!!!! My wonderful super wonderful crafty wonderful hubby has made me a bed!!! It's tall enough to store tubs under it, even!!!!! *love* After Uprising, we'll be carving the posts and painting it, and probably adding a headboard/footboard. For now, it does the job of keeping our mattress out of the muck. (Which is what ended up making us leave Quest early...)
I got the waistband added to the Cranford Dress. I tried on the bodice with the corset and everything, and it FITS!!! i forgot to take piccies tho.
:|
Holly found some awesome dishes to (once again) build up my SCA feastgear. Hopefully I can grab them from her as she passes this way on the way home from the dog show tomorrow...I'd really like to have them for Uprising!
I forgot to post about this when we actually did it......we power washed Holly's groundcloth....it looks like new! (Almost)
Demitri is a helper dog, helping me sew Matt's new Roman quilted armor. (Never. Again.) But, it makes Matt happy, which in turn, makes it easier for me to hang out with my sister. Which I can never have too much of!
But anyway, here they are....
The tops of the legs are attached with a band, and the lower greave portion is sewn to that. The foot flappies are attached to the bottom of the greaves. Everything will be attached with leather straps. (But that's his deal, not mine)
The mitt portion will cover his lacrosse gloves. He gets ONE arm (probably left) before Uprising. I may or may not be able to gag down making another one.
Total count --
*8 broken needles
*58 snapped threads
*108 stab wounds
*208 swear words
Where did I leave off? I don't quite remember....
Ok, go the neckline and the arms piped and tacked down....
The pattern calls for a strip of selvege to be sewn to the arm seam. I can only assume this is a double-purpose of some support of the poofy upper sleeves and to cover the raw edges. My selveges are not the prettiest, so I used a piece of linen twill tape I had lying around. Seems to have done it's job.
With the tape tacked down over the seams, I added a 3" piece of the lining material to the edge of the sleeve. The pattern calls for the edge to be raw, but I just *can't*. ('m allergic to raw edges, I think?)
Now comes the fun part...marking out all the 1/4" gathers....first I did dots, then went back over to do the lines since it's curved, not straight each line had to be *ever so slightly* curved. Whoa. What a painola! I like the look of the gathers continuing down the upper arm, or I would not have bothered with this step.
I'm going for more of a look like this:
I did three rows of stitching, one 1/4" from the edge, one 1/2" from the edge, and another 1 1/4" from the edge. My pleats are not as tightly packed as the ones above, but I think the overall look (especially after stuffing the sleeves) will be pretty good.
At any rate...since there is piping in the way of where I would normally tack my pleats, I'm in a bit of pickle. The instructions were not too helpful on this point. So I totally fudged it.
There's a itty bitty piece from where the piping was tacked to the lining... I lined up the edge of the gathers with the inside edge of the piping casing. Looking back on it now, I maybe should have run the tacks through the strip of fabric between the piping cord and the body of the dress? hm....I guess I'll never know. Here's gauging the pleats...
And the entire sleeve tacked from the inside....
Because the pleats were set back about 1/4", there was a little flappy flap that poked up. I hemmed and hawed about what to do with it....
And I finally decided to run a stitch next to the piping cord, catching the tops of the pleats.
So everything is nice and snug now!
Wow....This bodice is mightily un-impressive for how long it took! Load and loads of hand sewing and fiddly little bits. Ah well. At least I can wear it and feel good about it! Only the skirt to go!
I also finally tacked down the inside of my bonnet. And about 30 minutes after I had finished, I found the most beautiful lavendar silk on sale for $6 that matches perfectly! (I bought the whole bolt. 'Cause I'm a fabric whore hoarder) Gaaah! So now the dillema of how to trim my bonnet. Change out the silk to lavendar? (Makes the ruffles on my lace cap dissapear next to the white silk) On the same lavendar silk shopping trip, I purchased more ribbon than I'll ever need for bonnet trimming and belt possibilities, and some silk flowers for possible bonnet usage. I'm fail when it comes to researching bonnet trim. Srsly fail.
BTW, had an awesome time shopping with sis, even though
Bags under the eyes, massively fuzzy hair, and the enormous zit I attribute to the stress I've been feeling at work lately....but here's the bonnet...I loves me teh bonnet!!!
I will be torturing you all with bonnet trimming possibilites in the next few weeks. Comments, suggestions welcome!!!!!
I hesitate to post the pictures below, because it makes me wish I had seen them before I had done so much work on the dress, but here are some things I love of the same(ish) period:
I LOVE the neckline on this one, otherwise almost exactly like the dress I made....I just love the solid yoke, tho! Dang!
If I had seen these sleeves just a week earlier, I woulda done these!
Or even these, although probably too complicated for my skillz and timeframe!
This one....it looks like it's almost the exact same original shape as mine, but the fullness is tucked and gathered to down around the bicep.
So anyway....I'm gaining a better understanding of the dresses of the period (I hope!) and should I ever do it again, I have some pretty Cool Ideas.
Too bad I've found all this stuff after the fact. I'm still on a continuing hunt for hattery ideas.
How 'bout this?
-easy to obtain fabric (red velvet)
-undies already made (purple dress undies)
-super cool geeky hairdo
-fairly flattering princess seam w/ pointy bodice
-simple patterning/tailoring
I am slightly worried about one thing though -- this particular style is quite reminiscent of the gowns that the Charles group is doing. (Even though the two periods are 200 years apart, there are some crazy similarities...I don't want to be mistaken someone who tried to horn in on the group and failed at the details. (Because, honestly, this is kind of what the portrait looks like if you squint)
***ETA the remainder of my thought above!!!***
