Pictures of the Housebook...

So I just realized it's been over a week, and I never posted the "finished" photos.  Oops... I have a few snagged off Facebook from various people, and somewhere in the realms of her camera are the photos my lovely wifey took of us posing and other silliness.  Those will surface eventually.

M. Amber Bayles hoc fecit

The photos that have shown up so far are mostly from M. Amber Bayles, and are of the dancing.  I had the whole skirt kilted up to dance, and look at how pretty the folds are on the front.  The skirt is about 6ish inches past the floor on the front in order to puddle properly when released from the belt, like in some of the seated images.  The back of the skirt had a lovely little train that I happily dragged allover the site, and every time I stopped to talk to someone, or merely to stand still, I'd turn just a half step so as to properly drape the train out behind me.  (And then I would look down and giggle like an idiot about my train.)  I never got around to lacing the sleeves closed though I put in 16 handmade eyelets the night before.  My excuse was the event was in 70+ degree weather, and I was in wool, but really I was just being lazy.  I appreciated having my hair braided, and sewn up for the warmth of the day, and there are several photos of the dancing wherein I'm bareheaded due to shucking the warm woolen hat.

M. Amber Bayles hoc fecit

I think the back turned out nice enough, though I'm not sure about the sleeves.  They gave me SO much trouble, and I still don't understand why.  I'm pretty sure I understand exactly how they work, but for the life of me, I couldn't get them to work right for me.  There are a few tweaks to the overall dress I'm thinking about doing before Midwinter's in January.  I'm not pleased with how narrow the front of the neckline seems to be.  I'm considering taking off the "silver" lacing pieces, cutting the neckline wider and reattaching them after.  All the images seem to have very wide necklines, without appearing to fall off the shoulders.  If I go ahead and change the neckline I'm tempted to reset the sleeves, and cut the armscyes just a little deeper in the fronts.  I have plenty of sleeve to go around a larger armscye, and had plenty of trouble trying to ease the sleeves in in the first place, so it might even go easier the second time around.  The other alteration I'm considering is picking out the hand stitching in the pleats on the front, and lowering the height of them.  I wouldn't cut anything off, but refold the height down so the pleats don't bend under my bust as can be seen in the last photo.  The extra fabric in the pleat would also pad the rolled pleats a little better, which was one of the original plans, but I didn't have enough fabric left over to pad the pleats!

John P Van Domelen hoc fecit

 I love the red hats that inspired this challenge.  I had to show documentation to some friends to prove that they were in fact a historical style, they looked too much like modern ski hats to believe me.  Unfortunately, the fringed hat style doesn't go with the 3/4 sleeves, and when I get the time, I'm making a Wulsthaube to go with it.  I would also love, love, love to find a decent fabric to make a checky petticoat or underdress for it.  Though on that one I should probably do a little research to see which item is the appropriate under... thing  for the style.

Score is Lorien 1, Lauren 0

Because I'm a responsible student, I've spent most of the last couple of weeks working on studying and projects and preparing for finals. This is good, except it also means that my time for working on the Red Dress Project has been limited. Had my pattern cooperated from day 1, I might have been okay, but alas, it has been giving me fits, and at this point, to finish the dress in time for Yule, I would literally have to work all day and night, Lori and I both, and probably rush some things I'd rather not rush. So, instead of doing that, I'm merely getting Lori to help me with the pattern, and wearing my red hat with a different dress on saturday. Eventually, I will finish the dress (soonish I hope, actually) and hopefully our hats can be reunited at an An Tir event, but for now? My sanity and qualiy time with my BFF are waaay more important. Also, not spending today slaving away on a dress means I actually have time to cook my A&S entry--w00t!


In other news, even though it's been giving me fits, I still love and adore the Herjolfsnes method of making a gown. The basic idea is that the center front and center back panels of a dress are more or less straight cut, with little to no flare or shaping, and that all of the shaping is achieved by a series of gores. Some of these are the normal (to me) triangles that are inserted at the waist, but the Herjolsnes gowns also include a number (4-8, depending on the specific garment) of elongated gores that extend all the way into the armpit, forming the sides of the dress and the bottom of the armsceye. My major issue came with the fact that I am much, much squishier than most women (hooray plus-sized!), and keeping 4 very narrow panels all on grain while trying to fit myself was seeming kind of impossible. Insert the clue-by-four, and I went back and examined the research (http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/cloth/herjback.html) and found that, contrary to what I'd been told, the rule that women's gowns always had four side gores and men's always had two is just totally fallacious. Specifically, check out #39 (woman's gown, 2 side gores) and #41 (man's garment, 4 side gores).

So, secure in that knowledge I cut a new starting-place mockup and adjusted the seams to match the straight-cut fronts and backs, then combined my four side gores into two. Already, I like the shape much, much better, and Lorien's tweaks were going much smoother last night.

I'll hopefully update with progress photos soon, but I've got a sleepy BFF to go have adventures with and documentation to write.

Well, this is it...

It's about six hours till we leave to drop me off in Portland, 10ish hours till I hop on the plane.  The dress is almost done, save for the eyelets on the sleeves.  Had to keep part of the dress to do with my Wifey, cause it isn't a project with her if we aren't sewing till at least the day before the event.

It looks pretty good.  I need to bring some kind of belt though, as I deliberately left the skirts long like they are in the pictures.  I debated bringing the sky blue petticoat from my Italians, but I don't have any room to pack it.  I try to pack light, even for a 2 1/2 week trip, so there's only my small rolling luggage, the dufflebag that goes with it, and my purse.  I packed the dress in the duffle for a carry on, because after this much work, I don't want to risk the dress not making it on time.  My regular clothes can get lost for all I care, but I would have a crying fit if the dress didn't make it to Houston.  Nearly couldn't find the red hat that started it all.

I have packed a few things from the braid box, just in case.  Not the full box, but the few necessities that would be harder to justify replacing.

I'm excited!  I really should sleep, but I'm not sure I want to.  Less than 15 hours till Lauren and Lorien are reunited, this could be disastrous...

Nearly there...

 Not the best photos, but the dress is coming along!  I think moving all the eyes will help with the gaping in the front, but I'm not sure.  Still to do: Make lacing cord, eyelets in the sleeves, move the blasted eyes or figure out lacing strips somehow, hem the dress, and shorten the sleeves on the hemd.

Collar didn't go too well...

I evidently cut the collar that I beaded on the wrong curve, and when I attached it to the bodice, it dug into my shoulders and neck uncomfortably, and curled in on itself.  So, since I have very little time left, the collar has been cut from the plan.

The bodice is now assembled, aside from hooks and eyes down the front.  Sunday is for Skirts!  I have less fabric for the skirt than I had hoped, but I hear Tim Gunn in the background telling me to "Make it Work" and that is what I'll do!

Left to do on the dress:
Figure out the skirt cutting layout
Attach the skirt
Hem the skirt
Sew on hooks and eyes
Make lacing eyelets for the sleeves
Possibly make lacing cord, depending on what I get from my friend
Sew on the neckline lacing findings.

I have until Wednesday to finish, but I also have to pack clothes for the trip somewhere in there too... And I have work on Tuesday... EEEK!

I finished patterning my Housebook Bodice...

And I'm about to go and cut out the pieces of the bodice now.

I'm so giddy.

Yesterday I had a tiny change of plans....

Which turned into a distraction that kept me up all night working on the new divergence.  Bettina's version of the dress points out that the lacing on the collarbone is actually attached to a separate collar piece on the dress.  Several of the Housebook images show women from behind where the collar is clearly made from more elaborate fabric.  I know it wouldn't require a lot of fancy fabric to make a collar, but I don't happen to have any pretty brocade fabric right now.  So instead I decided to cut the collar out of the same wool fabric as the dress, like Bettina did, but I wanted to embellish mine with beading, like the delicious dresses of the Babenberger family tree.  After 8 hours of work, ending just after 5AM, I ended with:

The color of the teal is way prettier in real life, but so far I've had an impossible time getting it to photograph  properly.

I believe the chips are amethyst and both they and the pearls were largess I received for A&S competitions in 2010.  The silver seed beads have been in my stash for ages.  I'm a little worried the spaces between the pearls might be too empty, but I think it will look better once I have the seam allowances turned under.  The beaded band is only an inch wide.

On other fronts, I've been running against a wall all day on the stupid sleeve pattern.  I keep thinking I'm so close, only to have it need tweaks here and there and not fit at all!  It's gone from too small around my fat upperarms to too big and back again!  The angles of everything are mostly working, but I'm having a harder time doing the Moy bog/Grand Asiette style sleeve than a normal fitted sleeve.

And on top of the trouble with patterning the sleeve, the linen I'm lining the bodice with is stretching out of all understanding.  So now I'm all angsty, and nothing seems to be getting accomplished today.  Hopefully working till like three am tonight will help get something accomplished.  I'm running out of time, I have to have this dress done by NEXT WEDNESDAY, and I'm STILL patterning!  ARGH!

Quickie update...

Just a quick update to show off the cuteness of my hemd, and a Paint sketch of my hemd pattern.  Tomorrow I work on patterning sleeves, and then it's time to cut out my dress!

Tag, I'm it!

As the loveliest BFF ever has explained in a previous post, 2,000 miles between us isn't enough to keep us from making costume plans together, and most especially not when SHE IS GOING TO BE HERE OMG!!!

Yes, I'm just a wee bit excited about time with my bestie, can you tell?

Anyway, the idea for my half of the red hat challenge was born before the red hats, at a class I attended at Gulf War XX on the subject of the "Greenland gown" or the "10 gore gown" or whatever name you may prefer. The class itsself was taught by a lovely woman who I recognized as having taken Petra's flame-test class at Gulf War 19, and was very informative and enjoyable. Well, apart from one unpleasant attendee who felt the need to "correct" every other statement out of the teacher's mouth, but that's another post.

I seem to have mislaid my handout, but a lovely explanation of the garment in question can be found here http://www.damehelen.com/cotes/index.html

I've long been fascinated by the variety of interpretations of the close-fitting somewhat-to-completely-supportive gowns seen so widely in western Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries, and while many people have made many lovely dresses, something about this method just feels more "right" to me than others. I mean, aside from the fact that this construction method is not conjecture at all, the gowns I have seen constructed this way just look and feel more correct. The differences can be tiny, but they're there, and they are often the differences between a strikingly pretty dress, and a strikingly period looking pretty dress.

While the originals were all, I believe, made in wool (of such a weight and weave that they would have clung and draped *marvelously*), my first attempt at this style is going to be linen, for a few reasons. One, this is Ansteorra, linen is wearable more often than wool. Two, I have a dress-length of butter-yellow linen that'll dye up nicely into the exact shade of green I want, and I'd rather not drop the cash for wool until I know I can do this style correctly ; )

Other than the gown, I'm mostly set. I'd love a new hemd, but that's going low on the priority list, since I have a shift that will work. I've got appropriate shoes, stockings, garters, braies and jewlery, I've got a pretty pair of sleeves if I choose to make the dress short sleeved, I've got an ossim frickin' hat, and in like 15 days, I'll have my BFF here to squee over our pretty new dresses with.

There's a funny story about how I'm going to pattern this thing, but that'll have to wait for another post, as I need to go tie up some loose ends and finish packing for BAM. Which, y'know, I was a little morose about, as it's my first BAM minus Lorien, but OH MY GOD SHES COMING HERE I CANT EVEN BE SAD!!!