Solstice 2011

I had a wonderful time at my birthday party Solstice!  John came to his first court event, and Jaquelinne kindly shared her table and spread as a 'home base' for our little crew.  (By the by, she shared the most delicious goat cheese I've had in quite some time.....I need to find out where she got it!)  Final court put a damper on our dinner plans with Aine's crew (*sad*), but a small cadre of people ended up going to dinner in garb (except for Jane) at Macaroni Grill.

I made a whole bunch of plain (due to potential nut allergies) toffee, and pawned it off on anyone who would take it.  The tub disappeared towards the end of the event, but I'm not to sad about that, since I technically met my goal of not taking a single bit of toffee home!

I wore my chopines all day long with a trained skirt and a very crowded hall, and managed to only have one close call! I (at the end of the day, wrestling with bags and skirts!)

I had multiple comments containing the words 'elegant', 'graceful' or 'statuesque'. Never, ever, ever have these words been applied to my person! It is amazing what happens to ones carriage when one is aware (and slightly terrified) of every step!

Hubby took some pictures of the event, and they turned out quite nicely, if I do say so myself!  It will be nice to have some more photographic evidence of events past; after the first year or two, I stopped taking pictures at events, and now, of course wish I had been taking pictures all this time!

Sleeves update

So the sleeves are constructed.....just need to do button, lace cuff and figure out how the aitch-ee-doublehockeysticks to attach them!
My mom and dad spent the afternoon yesterday making yards and yards of velvet tubes (for which I am forever grateful!), now I just need to sort through the actual attaching! Hopefully with some sleep I can come up with something!
I had someone drop out on a piece of clothing earlier today, so I'm hoping I can finish the sleeves and the last minute chemise tomorrow, leaving me 2 days to do laundry, pack, and do any last minute stuff.......wish me luck!

Red Gown–Sleeves & lace

I’ve got a whole mess of lace to work with, and I think I’m suffering from having too many options:

I like the pattern on this one, but I’m cringing at the synthetic content:

These two are on the cheezy/little girl side, I think, but might be made more appropriate with some creative clipping or embroidering:

My second choices if I decide the synthetic of my favorite pattern is too much to bear are one of these two, probably the first one. 

Gah!  Decisions, decisions…..

Red Dress Roundup

Because I was having trouble with the stamp and running out of fabric very quickly, I decided to cut my losses and try to find a different sleeve that would work with the gown I’ve already made.  What I came up with is this:

Muziano, Girolamo (1528-1592) Portrait of Vittoria Colonna (1490-1547). Galleria Colonna, Rome, Italy

This is a fabulous find for me, for two reasons:

1)  It makes me feel a lot better about a partlet that I already have 90% complete.  (It’s just the hems that need to be done…..worst case, they don’t get done; it’ll be hidden inside my bodice anyhow….)  If I had more time, I’d do the rows of ruffles and the cords with wee tassels, but I’m feeling like it won’t happen.  (But that’s OK, I tend towards the plain side anyway)

2)  The sleeves have a lot of interest, and aren’t like anything I already have in my closet.

Back to the sleeves for a minute.  Because I built my gown bodice to have the shoulder straps sitting on top of my shoulder, rather than the decidedly off-the-shoulder look in the portrait, I had to change some of the details in the sleeve to make it work, but I think it works anyway.

The biggest change I made to the look of the sleeve is to create a sleeve cap that extends up to the shoulder strap, rather than the straight-across poufy band in the portrait.  This is also probably a good idea for me because I tend to have hams hanging off my shoulders rather than arms.

		Sleeve muslin VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Here’s what the sleeve looks like on me:  (The bottom is wrinklier than I want, but I think that’s because the sleeve isn’t pulled up all the way, and the seam allowance isn’t turned under at the wrist…..when all is said and done, I’ll turn over however much I need to at the wrist to make is lie smoothly on my arm.

(Forgive the disaster area that is my sewing room!  Oh, also, you can see my sister in law, Anne, standing in the back.  I’ve been helping her make a late 1400’s gamurra & giornea – I am so impressed!  She has been sewing for a very short time, and is already very accomplished.  I explained (poorly) how to draft a sleeve pattern, and off she went!  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  She’s going to be an amazingly talented seamstress, I can’t wait to see what she does next!)

I had originally thought to selectively ignore the horizontal stripes on the lower sleeve, but after doing a test pinking, I realized that a couched cord between the rows of pinks would make the whole thing much more stable.  So now I’m 3/4 done with couching the first sleeve…wish me luck!

If all goes according to plan, here’s what it’s going to look like.  I haven’t quite decided if I’m going to line the pinking with black or white…..opinions?

Little bit of progress, little bit of setback

I don’t have pictures at the moment, but I replaced all the nail heads on my chopines; I removed all the plain headed ‘pins’ (actually scrapbooking brads) and replaced them with honest-to-goodness decorative nail heads.  The effect is very subtle, but I like the new look, and the pins are much, much more stable.

Also, I mentioned the other day that I’m having problems with my sleeves…..if I can get through two sleeves without *$%&#ing up, the design looks like this:

I’m very quickly running out of fabric, so I’m thinking it may be time for a Plan B.  (Gotta figure out what that would be!)  If I had unlimited fabric of this color, I would bend it to my will and make it work No Matter What, but since I’m running so low, I’m scared of continuing and ending up with no sleeves at all.

I spent a little while last night making pearl ‘buttons’ for the coat.  I actually wanted to use decorative headpins, but all I had on hand were plain ole flat tops.  I made a few ‘buttons’ with just the large pearl bead and head pin, but found that the head of the pin kept wanting to pull all the way through.  No Bueno!

I went back to my stash and experimented with a bunch of different small beads to use as a ‘cap’, and settled on a small pearl.  Not the best/prettiest solution, but 1) it works 2) is stash.

Now for the final test.  Here is the trim with the bead buttons in place:

I still really wish I hadn’t made the trim mistake, however, with the buttons may be slightly less noticeable.  (I would be putting a crystal underneath the bottom most button to continue the pattern repeat)

So, what say you?  Can I get away with it, or should I plan on carefully snipping and re-sewing?

Uh….if I told you aliens abducted me, so that’s why I haven’t posted, would you believe me?

What?  No?
Oh.
Um…..well, life has been capital C     C-R-A-Z-Y.
And then there’s getting ready for Barons War.  Which is only a few short weeks away.  Yikes!  Good news is, there is more or less only the whites for hubby and I to go (plus some other nit-picky things as far as the clothes go….I’ll get into one of those things in just a few paragraphs.)
But I should update on what I’ve been sewing on!  Although there has been silence on my end, and my steam is certainly running out, I’ve still managed to be somewhat productive.
Here’s me with tiredface and wild hair.  But look at my hair – not really the hair, but the pearls and bows!  Since all of my hairpieces match my old hair color, I also need to make more braids; I have two different shades waiting for me to test out and make up some hair pieces.  (The ribbons are gold….kind of hard to see in this shot, but are trying to mimic the pink ribbons in the portrait below….)



I didn’t have enough gold findings to do pearl-and-gold as I was originally thinking of, but I think plain pearl suits me better anyway.  I’m really mostly a plain-jane kinda gal.  Here’s one of the portraits that has the hair action I’m kinda going for:

Portrait of Isotta Bermbati Grumelli 1550-1555
Giovan Battista Moroni

Here’s one later than my target date, but is plain pearl, sans bows:

Portrait of Isabella de Medici - ???
(via Aneafiles)

And here’s the ‘big’ update……the Turkish coat is nearly done!  (I’ll explain the ‘nearly’ part in a minute…..)

Portrait of a Lady 1555
Titan

Over all, I’m pretty happy with it!*  It’s a bit shorter than I had originally planned, but what with limited fabric and somewhat wonky hem action, there wasn’t much I could do about it.
What is really bugging me, however, is the skipped space in the trim.  Of course it didn’t happen, yanno, on the hem in the back or something.  No.  Right.  Smack.  In.  The. Front.  See it?



Of course I didn’t notice it until all the trim was sewn on and I put it on for the first time and looked in the mirror.  I saw it and about had a breakdown. 
Anyway, so my options thus far are as follows:

• defensively walk around with my hand firmly placed like the portrait and cover up the mistake.  (Not too practical, I admit)
• try and forget about it, (Yeah.  Right.) and tell myself that no one will notice.  (See above)
• Re-do the trim from that spot down.  (Time consuming and especially difficult as it’s sewn down now.)
• Use that empty space for buttons.  (Most likely scenario)

I was going to put massive pearl buttons on the  edge like on the portrait, but because now of my epic fail, I may cut off the crystal spacers for 8” or so and pretend that I meant to put the buttons on the trim instead of next to it.  This seems like the least time-intensive option, though not perfect.  My ARness wants me to rip the trim off completely and re-do it all, but that is just not gonna happen.
Below is a detail of the trim on the portrait…..see how the buttons are on the edge of the trim?

Detail of:
Portrait of a Lady 1555
Titan

So, opinions please:  Just how dorktacular would it be to move the ‘buttons’ over to the center of the trim to hide my boo-boo?  Like so:



Ok, enough angsting about that for a minute.  Here is a close-up of both the neckline and the sleeve:



ETA:  I should mention that the reason I’ve not listed re-spacing the beading as an option is because the trim has little spaces for each of the elements, so I’m not sure if I’d like putting the crystal in the ‘X’ of the undulation rather than in the center as the rest of them are.  Dunno.  Does that change anyone’s opinion?  (Um, yeah, it is much more obvious IRL than it is in this crappy pic.)



Also of note, whether I end up using the partlet I’m not-quite-in-love-with-for-this-outfit is done, thanks is large part to my momma and Elizabeth!  I do like this partlet, but maybe just not for this dress.  I’m still undecided!



Also of note, I picked up the blackwork for my camacia (potentially new/4th partlet) from the ever-fabulous Jaquelinne this past weekend.  It is smashingly awesome.  Seriously, you have no idea!  My goal is to get that piece into a finished garment by the end of the week!
I also dropped off linen with my Apprentice sister at fighter practice yesterday and she posted last night about her blackwork progress for my hubby’s shirt.  Holy cow can that woman embroider!!!



*It’s short, the sleeves are much wider than I had intended (but look less crazy big when my arms are in there), the bust/waist are not as fitted, but hey, that means it’s more comfy? 

Quick Update…..

I had a quick fitting of my two gowns just now, and I am much relieved.

Bertha was, in fact, messing with my head, and the green and gold gown fit just fine. In fact, this gown may replace my lavender gown as my “go to” outfit! (I just need to find my danged sleeve pattern!)

I finally tried on the red velvet gown with petticoats and chopines. I’m seriously torn about hemming. Right now the hem hits right about halfway down the chopines….which means that I have to wear the chopines with this outfit. I could take the time to re-cut the hem to normal walking length, but really, do I want to? Argh. I was going to start on the tuck right now, but since I’m wiffling, I may just go ahead and keep searching for my sleeves.

Sorry, no pics…..apparently every mirror in the house has decided to be woefully dirty today, and I couldn’t bring myself to clean them while wearing pretties.

UPDATE: I finally found my sleeves. *que big sigh of relief* There are two patterns that have taken ages to get just so......I'm seriously thinking of making a copy of them and storing them elsewhere.

Progress! All the half-finished stuff

Warning: this post is text-intensive, and probably mind numbingly boring to pretty much everyone other than myself!

I have a whole pile of stuff that is started, but unfinished. I am hoping that by tonight, the green kirtle will move from this post to the ‘finished’ post……I only have to attach the skirt, and it’s all done. I’m not going to be wearing sleeves, but I’ll probably make them now just so they’re available when I wear it next.

The red velvet gown is still on hold, as I’m still waiting on my die stamp. Hopefully I’ll get that soon!

The beading on the Turkish loose gown is closing in on the finish line, and my friend Gypsy has taken it home to get it finished off. I’m hoping I can get the body done before Uprising so I can wile away the day attaching the trim.

I’m having a hard time remembering if there is anything that I need to start still, but unless I’m forgetting something, all I have to start on is my partlet……I still haven’t figured out what I want to do with that yet. My brain is saying “No more decisions! Noooooo!”

To be started stuff: (I forgot about needing a dedicated camacia for the red gown. That velvet crocks all over the place, and whatever I use for that dress will likely be used for ONLY that dress.)

• Partlet - decide what to do, and just freakin' do it. Gosh, Noelle! Also want to bring to Uprising and work on there if at all possible.
• Camacia for red gown - simple, simple, simple. If for some reason there is any time at all, I'll do a very simple band of blackwork at the neckline. "but thats it".
• Stockings - I keep remembering things that need to be on various lists. Stockings! Astrid is going to help me pattern them sometime after her wedding. They shouldn't take that long to make, so I'm not worried.

Here’s the full accounting of my half-finished projects, and what needs to be done to them:

• Shade fly – needs poles, ropes & stakes. Also need to sew rear casing after I figure out the cross-support pole size. If hubby remains as busy as he has been recently, I may be doing this myself.
• Red gown – needs sleeves & tuck to be wearable. I’m hoping to also do cutwork trim on shoulder treatments, bodice and hem trim.
• Green gown – only needs skirt pleated and attached to be wearable. Am also hoping to get the sleeves done so I actually do them. I’m notorious for finishing a gown, and never doing the sleeves. (Sorry, Holly!)
• Purple Turkish – the beading on the trim is started, and nearly completed. (handed off to Gypsy for finishing) I have the fabric for the gown, but just need to get it cut out and constructed. I’m hoping to work on attaching the trim during Uprising.

And mostly because I need to write this down somewhere, here are the projects that other people have volunteered for:

• Hand towel – Praksedys (I hope I spelled that right!) has graciously volunteered her embroidering talents to make a towel.
• Hubby’s shirt – Ashe’el and Michelle are on the shirt project…I sat down with Ash during court and picked out some blackwork patterns that I liked, but left the final decision up to her.
• Hubby’s outfit – The fabulous Johanne has taken on the task of the doublet, coat, venetians and bonnet for my hubby. We sat down yesterday and raided my stash for supplies and figured out some of the details. She left with two large garbage bags of fabric and some sketches, so I hope she’s set!
• Chairs – Johanne’s husband has taken my chair commission, so I’m really, really excited. I cannot wait! I need to get him the cash this week so he can go shopping for supplies. He’s going to be carving the back support with my fleur (hooray!), and we’re thinking that the body will be oak.
• Jewelry – As if it needed to be said, Holly/Aine will be working on my jewelry. She is retrofitting my favorite belt of all time for the red gown, and is making a new pearl & garnet necklace and earring set. She got off easy!
• Camacia - I forgot this one....I asked Elizabeth if she'd do a camacia for the green gown, but I still need to get the fabric to her.
• Garters - D'oh! I forgot the garters! The fabulous Marguerite (another that I'm terrible at spelling!) offered to make my garters! My forgetfulness reflects on no way on my gratitude for this work, I'm just distracted as all get out! The garters will be card woven red silk & gold, and I'm insanely excited for them!
• Shoes! - Astrid is making shoes to go with the green and gold gown. I am so excited!!!

Then, I have other stuff that I’d like to get done for Uprising: (crazyface, I know.)

• Since it’s my last Prize Tourney (sniff, sniff!!!) I want to enter some stuff….the PPoD just needs to be sewn into pillow form, though I may just bring the top to show off….depends on time. I’ll probably going to be entering my chopines and blackwork sampler as well. I’m wracking my brain for more entries but am drawing a blank. Argh! I was going to teach a few classes, but what with all that is going on, I am in a serious time crunch, and don’t have the time to put together kits and handouts.
• I’m a couple of outfits short of having a change of clothes for every day at Uprising, but I have nearly an entire linen “V” gown done, just need to finish the rings and get the skirt attached. I may just get everything cut out and bring the pieces to work on at Uprising and if it gets done, then voila, another dress. Woohoo.
• Not to mention all the mending, gathering, and cleaning of garb, bedclothes etc. and packing thereof. *ooof*

Then, there is the DNP (Double Noelle Project) stuff for Costume College, which is the weekend after Barons War. Seriously?! Argh! (After CoCo, I’m going to fall-down-go-boom.)

• wigs x2
• petticoat
• stays
• gown
• jewelry

Petticoat & Gown update

Because boofiness (yes, “boofiness”) is the name of the game for this gown, I’ve made a petticoat out of one of the many gold brocades I have hanging out in my stash. 

I felt it needed a guard, and dug around until I found some green silk. (I really wanted some green somewhere in my outfit)  After I got the silk sewn down, it felt very plain.  I dug through my stash again and found some gold cording and did a simple design on the guard.  (Also did dual duty as stiffening the hem just a touch more)  I’ve dabbed glue at each of the cord joins – this gold cording is a fraying monster!

I may or may not add another, thinner guard above.  But as it is, the petticoat is properly boofy and will serve it’s purpose.

 

I ended up ripping out the stitching in the neckline and doing some internal surgery on the bodice and pad stitching some felt in.  I like it loads better now.  (Learn from my mistakes – it is very difficult to go back and fix certain things!)

The bodice looks abnormally long when on Bertha, but on me, it’s not that bad.  It’s a touch longer than I would have liked for this particular style, but because I’m a goober, I didn’t check my existing pattern before I started.  (The pattern was originally for the bodies that go under my coats, so the waist is just a smoodge longer than ‘normal’ so the layers of pleats stack upon one another without making the coats’ waist miniscule……I also have a ridiculously long torso and short ass legs!)

Bertha also suffers from ‘noassatall’ syndrome, so the skirts end up hanging flat down instead of boofing out nicely over the derriere.  I’ve got no problem in that department.  (d’oh!) 

Out of all the pictures I’ve posted so far, this particular one most accurately reflects the true color of the fabric.

I don’t really have anything to say about the following pic, other than I love the train.  teehee!

 

 

Also, because it makes me laugh:  (from watching “Dual Survival” today)  Sometimes I have the humor of a kindergartener.

Dave:  Hey, what’s this thing, man?

Cody:  That’s elephant poop.

Dave:  Looks like a freakin’ coconut.  Where’d you get that?

Cody:  Where the elephants are pooping.

Red Gown Chopines

As much as I love the elegance of this shoe, it looks a bit tricky to walk in; also the geometry of the heel looks none too stable – I’d hate to break it off in the first wearing!

The easiest chopine to construct (and walk in, I would imagine) are the “Spanish” style chopine. Not very elegant, but serviceable for creating height.

I could probably knock these out all by myself without any power tools at all, but then again, honestly, they lack a certain ‘sex appeal’.

After flexing my Google muscles, I found what might be an acceptable compromise: (The red velvet pair on the left)

I’m not terribly enamored of the Spanish-style lacing, but the curves make up for it. The curves aren’t so drastic that I’d worry about snapping off the heel, and the base seems wide enough to keep me nice and stable.

It is paramount that these chopines are comfortable enough to wear, since my gown is constructed to be worn with 6-6.5” chopines. (Yeah, I went a bit overboard on the height. Go big or go home, right?) EDIT: I tried on the gown again, and it’s looking like 4-4.5” will be plenty. Anything over that will be icing. Also, I just purchased some yoga blocks on amazon.com, so hopefully they will be stable enough to use. (I bought 3, two for the base, and one to stack for a heel if more than 4” are needed.)

I’m a bit stalled on the gown right now, since I can’t decide if I want the tuck to be on the inside or the outside; there is evidence of both methods, but I don’t want to decide until I know about the potential hem trim, since that could affect (effect?! dang, I can never remember) the over all look. I’m slightly leaning towards an inside tuck, but that is still TBD.

I also can’t start on any of the shoulder treatments or sleeves, since again, I’m waiting on finding out about the stamp.

Today, I am going to start on either the camacia, the petticoat, the partlet, , or rehab of the bodice, but I’m so indecisive, I’m posting instead!

EDIT II: I am getting more and more excited about this gown….I just spent the last 15 minutes swanning around my sewing room picking up all manner of crafting detritus with the train. sigh.

More Red Dress

Bertha has already stage dived off my cutting table, so you know it’s a rock star dress! 

This pic looks really dark, but that’s the gown turned inside-out so I could work on the padded hem without having to muck around on the floor.

I was really nervous about the train (as I’ve never done this style before), but I’m really liking the outline.

I don’t have enough fabric to make the facing out of bias, so I’ve pressed and eased the curves as much as I could.  Because the curves are so gentle, it’s actually not that bad.

The turn for the clipped hem is just a smidgeon bigger than I had planned on, but I think will be just fine.  I’m going to leave the clipping until last, because I’m a bit nervous about it!

I was really nervous about the padded hem, but so far, it’s turned out the nicest!  Now I’m really mad at myself that I didn’t pad the bodice.  I may have to remedy that….but still TBD.

I’m looking into having a die stamp fabricated, and if it all works out the way I’m hoping, I’ll have cutwork trim for the bodice, hem and shoulder treatments – but only if the stamp comes through…..I don’t have the energy or hand strength to do it all by hand with an X-acto knife!

I’m going to be doing the hem tuck (like on the Pisa gown), but again, that will have to wait for a minute….I still need to sew down the felt, figure out if I’m doing the trim, and try it all on and get an accurate hem length.

Red Velvet–coming together

I don’t have the luxury of being picky (what with time constraints and whatnot), so I think I’m more or less done with the major construction bits.

Here’s a picture of the bodice on Bertha, and on me – I certainly fill it out a bit more!

 

The pins are holding the lining seams in place – so you can kind of see what I did with them.  Here’s a better diagram:

This is the “pattern” folded in half, going from front to back/A to D.

“A” panel is the front two panels of skirts.  I used my angle method I talked about a little while ago to find the correct curve.  (Yellow line)  Because the back is straight across, I only needed to figure out the front 2/3.  I didn’t cut the curve until after constructing the skirt.

“B” panel is a full width of fabric as well.  I used the diagonal cut out of “B” panel to create the “C” panel gore.  In modern sewing, this’d be a “no-no”, since I’m using a velvet, and turning that piece upside down would put the nap of the velvet running the opposite direction, but since it’s all about historic re-creation, I decided to go for it and conserve some fabric.  I waffled about which seam to line up with my side-back slit, but ended up deciding that it would probably be best to go with the two selvedges as the slit.  So far, so good.

“D” panel is the ‘train’ bit of the gown.  I had some drama with my velvet being warped off-grain, so one of the “B” gores is a bit wonky, but I’m hoping with all the fabric all over the place, it won’t be that bad.  The yellow line is my final cut line of the hem.

I’m really kind of bummed out that I didn’t felt pad the bodice.  I honestly don’t know why I didn’t, I certainly meant to.  If it still bugs me, I can open up the neckline seam and finagle some felt in there.

Next up:  I’m going to move onto the felt stiffened hem while Bertha hangs out in her new duds.

Red Velvet Gown–Skirt attachment

I’m nearly done with the skirt attachments – the next post will be of a dress on Bertha!  I’ve done a few things differently than I have in the past, and I hope it’s not going to come back and haunt me!

For now, I’ll be talking about the cartridge pleats (and how much I love them)

-Mark gather increments on inside of skirt.  For mine, I did every 1/2”, and used one of my favorite sewing room tools, the chalk pencil.

-Using a strong thread and large (upholstery) needle, make a large running stitch at the marks.

-I like to even the gathers out, and then pin at intervals to make sure I’m not over-packing the pleats.  (As I tend to do!)

-Take the same needle and some strong thread (I’m using buttonhole twist) and catch the edge of both the pleat and the bottom of the bodice.  I like to go through each pleat twice – and I’m going to go back through again for extra security since these skirts are far and away heavier than any I have done in the past.

Here’s a sneak-peek of what the skirts are going to look like: