Moving Forward

Last weekend I spent some time working on my red cotehardie. I pulled about an inch or so in on various seams, and in a fit of madness decided that I needed to pull the front panels up by an inch at the shoulder seam. That involved pulling the sleeve off, pulling the neckline seam apart at the shoulder, then pulling apart the shoulder seams in the outer dress and the lining, then somehow putting it back together from the outside. I don't recommend it. I ended up just whacking it all back together in the most messy fashion, because I didn't know if it would work. I didn't want to cut any fabric, I just wanted to see if it would work. It did. So now I have to undo my messy work and spend some time putting it back together neatly. The shape of the dress looks a whole lot better as well, it doesn't do the bagging thing so much anymore. It still does a little bit, but I don't think I will ever be able to fix that properly.

Sunday trade starts next week, so we had an overhaul of the rosters at work. I ended up with an awesome roster, even though I reluctantly volunteered to work Saturday mornings. One week I work Thursday night and Saturday morning, and the next I work Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. This means that once a fortnight I get to go to St Basil A&S on Thursday nights at uni! I was thinking recently about how unmotivated I am to pick up any projects and work on them, and I realised that when I started in the SCA I was going to St Basil training every week, and always made sure I had some transportable work to do there. Lately I haven't been going to any A&S meetings, so haven't needed to work on a project to the point where I have handwork to do. So I'm going to make an effort to go to St Basil's every second Thursday and have something to work on. I've got plenty of projects in my fix-it basket now, which should keep me going for a while. Next week I'll bring my red cote and finish it completely. Then I can bring the wool one and fix that around my red one :)

I'm in the process of ordering some gold thread to use as a brocade weft for my awesome belt of awesome. I'm using this site, which sells gold foil wrapped around a silk core, which is very period and should be perfect for my belt. This project is getting a bit expensive, but I intend to do it properly and document it and in the end I should have an awesome belt of awesome :)  My silk is still in transit, it's taking forever, but that's ok because the girl I'm ordering the gold thread from is ordering me a continuous 20m skein of thread, instead of me buying four little ones, and that will take a bit longer. Besides, I haven't even figured out a pattern to brocade. I think I want to make it heraldic and put my little ivy leaf in a little shield shape thing, but I think to make that work I'll need some Latin writings, and I don't have a motto or anything I can use. So I need to think up a phrase or something. I really should continue reading Eccesiastical Pomp for some inspiration.

Disaster

Ok, so there were no progress photos of my wool cotehardie. I had a bit of a disaster week and the stupid thing took me about three times as long as it should have.

Disaster #1
I think I mentioned that the process of dyeing the fabric made it shrink and go all wibbly? The outside edges were longer than the middle, and I ended up measuring out my panels wrong. My two back panels ended up significantly shorter than the rest of them, and after discovering this I pondered two options. Number one was to use either the leftover red wool from my man-cote or some black wool gabardine I have at home to make a guard around the bottom. Number two was to just add panels of blue to the bottom of the two short panels. I chose option number two. Then promptly stitched one of the extra bits to a front panel *facepalm*. I gave up for the evening after that.

Disaster #2
A few of my seams ended up all wibbly and weird, because of the wibbly fabric. It doesn't really matter so much in the bulk of the skirt, because there's so much of it you don't really notice. It does sort of matter a bit more with the front seam, because the front seam is supposed to be the only one with two straight edges touching. I can tell you, the front seam does not consist of two straight edges. It's all wibbly.

Disaster #3
Remember how in my last post I said I would be machine sewing and hand finishing? Well, I machined the whole thing together, but when I got to buttonholes the machine chucked a hissy fit and just stopped cooperating altogether. So I chucked a hissy fit and ended up just handsewing the buttonholes. It was significantly quicker than arguing with the machine. Something odd was going on with the bobbin, I don't know if it needed tensioning or if the case was loose or something, but the result was that the machine was useless, it wouldn't even sew a straight seam anymore. I ended up going home and using mum's machine to sew the sleeeves together.

Disaster #4
I managed to finish the whole dress with exactly enough time to shower and get to the event. But when I put it on I discovered that the whole thing was too big. Miles too big. Enormous. You could fit two of me in there. Also the back seam (which wasn't a wibbly edge, it was cut the exact shape of my pattern) did not follow the shape of my back. I had a little pouch thing going on. Needless to say I was a little upset, and more than a little frustrated. I spent hours working on a cotehardie pattern, and wrongly assumed that the pattern would at least be my shape, even if I was using different fabric. I know wool is stretchier than linen, but if I use my pattern, it should still at least be the same shape. Apparently I was wrong. Although looking back at other things I've made with this pattern, only my gold cote fits right. My ginger cote, also made out of the same linen as the gold one, also came out miles too big. It was still my shape, just big. I took it in by two inches and it's still a bit big. I think I may have to make a new pattern.

Anyway, here's a picture:

I've left it hanging in an effort to get the seams to drop a bit and maybe straighten out. Despite my disappointment, it has come out ok, and it's certainly fixable. Too big is monumentally better than too small. I'm going to do some work on my red cotehardie, because it didn't hold my boobs up at all, then ask someone to help me fit the blue one over the red one. Somehow the neckline ended up over an inch higher than the red one, but I want to fix the red one before I start cutting down the blue one. I also got a lot of comments at the event about how nice my dress was, so it obviously looked ok even if it doesn't fit properly. It can be fixed!

I've learned my lesson now. Just spend a bit more and buy fabric in the right colour. No more dyeing for me, especially wool! Now that I've added yet another thing to my fix-it pile, I think I might just work on that until it is gone. Once I've fixed everything, I'll do some work on my pattern and then start making stuff again. And by stuff I mean garb. My silk should be arriving soon, and I'm working on obtaining some gold thread to weave an awesome brocaded belt to enter in the November Crown A&S.