peteyfrogboy

There comes a point in every SCA tailor's life when he must make and wear a loincloth. For me, that day is today.

( Everything You Ever Wanted To Know )

Okay, I've finally done the pre-Pennsic clothing inventory. I think I have my packing list mostly figured out, as well as my list of stuff to make:

( Packing List )

So the sewing I have yet to do is:
* 5 pairs of brache
* subligaculum
* reinforce seams on old shirts
* cut and hem toga
* raise linen doublet waistline
* another pair of linen hose

I think that's doable.

Just trying to plan out the next several months of eventing. It's mostly the usual suspects, and about one event a month.

7/18	RUM
8/1	Pennsic (Lorenzo)
8/29	Tourney of the Foxes (Adela)
9/12	Coronation (?)
9/19	Red Tower
10/3	Pillage on the Plains (Adela?)
10/24	Danelaw (?)
10/31	Silver Hammer (?)
12/5	Magna Faire
1/9	12th Night (?)
2/6	Midwinter
3/6	Atlantia Kingdom A&S

Guesstimated travel plan

So in the past I've been using buttonhole stitch for my eyelets and buttonholes. It has been pointed out to me recently that the extant samples in Textiles and Clothing use blanket stitch instead. I tried it out on the eyelets on the linen hose, and it worked just fine. I'd only ever used a wide blanket stitch on tricky hems and stuff in the past, and didn't think it would be as sturdy as buttonhole stitch for eyelets, but I couldn't really tell the difference. It was, however, less fiddly to do and caused fewer tangles, so I call it a win. That is all.

Hose are finished. Now maybe I can focus on getting my Pennsic clothes made.

For years I've avoided making bias cut linen hose because linen was expensive, and cutting on the bias was wasteful, and I was generally scared of them. Now that I've finally bitten the bullet and started a pair, like so many other things, they're not as bad as I thought they would be.

Either linen isnt as expensive as it once was, or I've just gotten used to having to spend a certain amount for decent fabric, but this pair of hose constitutes maybe $15 of materials. Not too bad at all compared to buying them, even if I could buy hose that fit properly.

( Long winded construction details )

I whipped up this cappuccio today. It's made from the same tropical weight wool as my last farsetto, hand sewn with quilting thread for the construction seams and pulled threads for finishing. The roll is padded with cotton upholstery batting. I'll try to get a better picture the next time I have everything else on.

Anyone who has held the job of Chronicler in the SCA knows how hard it can be to get people to write articles. You beg your local populace to write something, they promise they'll get around to it, and you end up having to write something yourself at the last minute to fill the extra space. vox8 had the idea recently of creating a website to serve as a repository of articles suitable in content and length for local newsletters, to help supplement what can be had from local sources. In addition, it would provide a larger potential audience for articles than could be reached through a local newsletter alone.

Never one to pass up a challenge, I cooked up something I call the Known World Free Press. I know my readers are few but very clever, and I'm sure some of you have articles squirreled away somewhere just waiting to be unleashed on the world. The website is still very new, so let me know if you have any issues or suggestions.

Pictures, as promised!


(click for more)

The cioppa is done. Overall, I'm happy with it, though of course there are some things I'm not entirely pleased with. If anyone cares, I can expound in the comments. It's not as heavy or stiff as the old one, which is very nice. Getting it on and off is a little ungraceful, but certainly no worse than putting on your typical woman's gown.

I also uploaded pictures of the sleeves. Here is the original shape (the camera angle makes it look like it tapers, but the overall shape is rectangular), and here is the adjusted shape (flipped because it's the other sleeve). It doesn't look like much of a difference, but it improved things immensely.

If anyone wants detail shots, let me know and I'll try to get them up.

The cioppa is done. Hand tired. Pictures soonish, I hope.

I spent all day getting the first sleeve put on the cioppa. I already had it cut out and the bottom guard put on, so today I finished the top edge and put on the guards for the front opening. I basted it into the armscye and found that it was too long and hanging at a funny angle. I marked where it needed to be, unpicked the tops of the guards, and cut it down from the top. The new length looks much better, but then I couldn't get the pleats to hang right. I tried knife pleats and rolled pleats,forward and backward, but it just looked bad no matter which way I tried it. Each attempt just word out my hands more. I finally decided to punt and do cartridge pleats, which aren't what I really wanted but look much better than what I was coming up with before. I probably should have cut the whole sleeve differently to begin with, but it's way too late for that. Now that I know what I'm doing, I should be able to get the second sleeve on with no problems tomorrow (knock wood).

I'm getting used to changing my plans on this thing. I had planned to have hooks and eyes all the way down the front, but the bottom part just wouldn't lay right. I ended up sewing up the front opening to the waist and having hooks and eyes from there up and it works much better. A little trickier to put on, but at least I have less hooks to mess with this way.

The top stay tape was also a bit too short, so it was pulling funny on the pleats and felt tight around the chest. The remedy there was to cut out the sections of the stay tape under the arms, where everything will be covered by the hanging sleeves anyway. It feels and looks much better now.

Once the sleeves are done that's pretty much all she wrote for this thing, unless I end up adding some more hooks and eyes. Haven't quite decided on that yet. I'm not quite as happy with it as I hoped I'd be, but it's still a damn sight better than the old one.

All sections are pleated and assembled:



The first stay tape is installed, and the second is pinned. Once they're done, all that's left is shoulder seams, hooks and eyes, and sleeves...

If anyone thinks they may have lost some keys in the back of my car, let me know. I don't recognize them.

On Friday morning, I dropped adelavanbrugge and the kids off at the airport to go visit family for a week, then came home, loaded the car, and headed south for Trimaris Summer ArtSci. ( Details... )

Here there be long-winded musing on sewing plans.

( Details )

I was just thinking about the ridiculously inappropriate clothes I'll be wearing at Pennsic, and I felt the unusual urge to filk:

( To the tune of 'Summer in the City' )

This is going to be a somewhat excessively detailed description of how I'm assembling the pleated sections of my new cioppa. It's mostly for my own reference, so I'll put it behind a cut.

( Details and Pictures )

adelavanbrugge received a request a couple weeks ago for a scroll for Kingdom Arts & Sciences (which was this weekend). Rather than try to find someone else to complete it on such short notice, we decided to take care of it in-house. To keep the layout simple, I suggested we base it on this page from Poggio Bracciolini's Orationes in Laurentium Vallam (c. 1485). It's a relatively simple example of Italian white vinestem that doesn't require a full page border, but is still attractive. I laid out the design in pencil, then transfered it via light box to a sheet of Pregamenata. I made two mistakes when inking the design: 1) the pen I chose was actually a very narrow oblique rather than a crow quill, so the lines came out a bit wide, and 2) the ink I randomly chose from what was already set up was Higgins Black Magic, which, as it turns out, gold is very happy to stick to.

Once I got the initial inked, I turned it over to adelavanbrugge for text and gilding. This is a relatively new hand for her, but I think it turned out very well. It's a very modern looking hand, which is not surprising as it's the basis for a large number of modern typefaces.

After the gold was applied, I got the scroll back to do a quick paint job. This style is very paint-by-numbers, so I just kept alternating red-green-blue until everything was filled in and then put little trios of white dots everywhere they would fit. The example I was working from appears to have left the vines themselves unpainted, without even any shading that I can see, so that made things go a lot faster. I also went back and re-inked the places where the gold had stuck to the lines with a technical pen.

While looking for other things, I noticed some interesting details in this Mantegna fresco:



1) Unstructured Giornee
No big surprise at this point, but the children and, I think, a man on the right side have unstructured giornee.

2) Heraldic Giornea
Far more interesting is the man on the right, whose giornea (and the most visible leg of his calze) looks to be boldly heraldic. Never really seen this before.

3) Calze seams
The white calze of the man on the left show some interesting seams on the lower leg. There's a horizontal seam just below the knee, which curved upward on the outside of the leg and downward on the inside. There appear to be two vertical seams, one on either side of the leg. There are also seams that indicate a separate heel and vamp on the foot, unless that's a shoe. It's also possible that the whole thing is a very snug fitting boot. Very curious.

Sometime last year, THL Miramah asked me to help her with a secret project. She's lost a lot of weight recently, and wanted to play a little trick on her husband Guillaume. Her plan was to show up at the masked ball at Lusty Month of May this year, wearing a late period Italian gown (as opposed to her usual T-tunics) and dance with him (she had never done any dancing), to see how long it took him to figure out it was her.

( The Dance )

( The Dress )

( The Result )