New challenge...

When talking to Lauren last night, she mentioned a long term project she wanted to work on, and today I thought of a way of encouraging her that also gained me something.

For a while Isolde has lacked clothing from her time period.  I have also been desiring a new late period outfit.  My persona being Roman means pretty much anything is late period for me, and the last thing I made that I would qualify as a "nice" late period dress was my Housebook and that was a year ago.  Right now I'm working on new sleeves for a dress I made three years ago, but I still have very few really nice dresses, and as the kingdom I'm in right now seems to either have camping events or high court events, I've been wearing my three year old dress more frequently than I ever planned.

So, the new challenge is to have Isolde do research into her period, and we'll both make dresses based off her research.  I know, it looks like I'm making her do most of the work, but she'll get both an outfit and documentation out of this challenge.  I get to be sounding board and motivation, and I can do hair research on a specific period, which works for me, as I don't quite have the vested interest in the period, but do like having a focused period for hairstyle work.  I might explore the cosmetics of the time, though I'm still just starting out with cosmetics, we'll see how that works out for me.

The goal is to have inspiration and research mostly decided by the end of January, and start shopping for fabrics in February and March when we get tax moneys back.  The hope is to have the garments done around July for An Tir/West war if I'm still on the west coast, or for Pennsic if I've moved to the east coast.  My husband's job is up in the air right now, so life's a bit uncertain.

We'll get a name for this challenge figured out in the next month or so....
P

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.

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!

My Hemd is hemmed...

It's late, 4:40 am late.  But my Hemd has gone from a pile of linen to a wearable garment in less than 12 hours.  The seam allowances need some kind of finishing treatment, but that can wait till I have more time.  Patterning/Dyeing/Sewing/etc on the main dress is more important than finishing the seams on the inside of the undergarments.

17 days left before the trip.

I'm motivated right now...

So last night I stayed up till 5 working on a bodice mockup for the Housebook dress.  I gotta say, good God, how do people fit themselves for anything?!  I've got some sore muscles from straining to pin my shoulder seams and to mark the cutting lines on my back.  But I've got the first mock up done.  I need to draft the initial pattern and do a secondary mock up.

In order to give myself a little break from the fitting of pain and torture, I'm working on my hemd today.  I've got a nice simple cutting layout figured out, and we'll see how it turns out, but I think it will work out just fine.  And because all the best bloggers include photos in their posts, here's a wonderful image of a woman in her underwear!

After making my hemd,  and doing a second round of fitting the bodice, the next step is to dye the wool I was gifted.  I think it will be time to visit the Eugene Textile Center.  As long as they provide all the equipment, it should be cheaper and easier than trying to dye at home on my stove.

Less than three weeks to finish this dress!

A sewing challenge has been laid down...

I am a very lucky lady, because my family is making sure I get to go down to Texas to visit them, (and also my friends).  I get to be there in time for the local group's Yule event.

I, of course, have nothing new to wear.  Despite it having been almost a year since I've seen people, I haven't really made anything new to wear aside from light weight Roman clothes.  So I was playing with the idea of a fancy new dress, whilst talking to my lovely best friend.

We were both trying to decide if we should make something new to wear for Yule, but couldn't really think of anything we would want to make aside from each of us having one particular dress in mind.  It so happened that the different dresses we were thinking of were both to be worn with the cute red fringed wool hats I made months ago.  And since we were thinking of different styles to go with said hats, I decided it wouldn't be too matchy-matchy to make up these dresses.

So now we are challenged.  We have just under three weeks to make these dresses.  I know we can get it done, we just have to keep motivated.  So we're supposed to be checking in with each other, and seeing how the dresses are coming along.

I'm planning on doing a Housebook dress based on the ladies with coats of arms sketches.  The main difference between these two and the dress I really want is the sleeves.  I found a couple images of women with a tight, 3/4 sleeve that is open up the back and laced across, usually with three points, and allows the hemd to be seen.  

I'm having trouble finding the sleeves and the hat on the same person, but I think if I'm persistent, I'll find the image I want.

I'm working on fitting the bodice, but I never realized just how hard it is to fit oneself!  Hopefully I can get the bodice pattern done by the end of the weekend, and can find the time to dye my fabric next week.

I'll tag Lauren, and see if I can't get her to post and update about her half of the challenge.