Buttons

I forgot to mention that last week I bought some buttons. I bought these buttons, which are plastic but they were super cheap and look good. They arrived on Monday and I'm pretty happy with them, even if I have no idea what I will use them for :P. The other buttons I bought were these ones, and I bought them specifically to replace the ones I took off my red cote and transfered to the new sphinx ones. You might notice that the listing says that the size is half an inch. Well I assumed that meant diameter, but it turns out they are actually three quarters of an inch in diameter. I have no idea what the seller was measuring, but I was expecting much smaller buttons. These will do for surcote buttons, but they are way too big for sleeve buttons, especially since I already have button holes on the red cote that fit buttons half an inch across. I gave the seller neutral feedback and ticked the box that said item was not as described, but I won't do anything else about it because they cost me a grand total of $10. I will put them away in my stash and possibly use them in the future, or give them away or something. It's more trouble than it's worth to send them back.

So it looks like I'll need to go looking for more buttons to buy so I can replace the ones on my red cote :P

Things

I decided to make sleeves for my cote. They took me an entire week because uni started getting intense and I found myself with less time for sewing. I managed to finish the cote just after midnight last Friday night (or Saturday morning :P), then I got up early on Saturday to spend the day at Perth Medieval Fayre. Here's the one picture that has surfaced of me in the cote:

It's me and Mister Nathan! It's a lovely photo of the two of us looking very elegant and stuff. I stole it from Nancy's facebook album, thanks Nancy! Just ignore the soft drink can that I'm holding. We were waiting for our lunch kebabs to cook, and it was taking ages, and the weather was really hot and sticky, and we'd been there for HOURS and there was tired. But look, boobies! I was really happy with how the cote turned out, it looks good and it was comfortable. I think that may have been the very last outing for my gold ho, because the stitching has come apart in a couple of places and the seam allowance is all frayed as well, so it's not like I could just patch it up. It went through the wash again this week and I really think it's time to say goodbye, which is a shame because I only have four linen hose, so now I only have three. Not a very useful number. I really should dig out those two in the bottom of my basket that just need sewing up, no Cutting Out required.

I spent a little bit of time on my embroidery at the Fayre, because it was something to do, but also the colours and design make it really eye catching whilst still being simple enough to work on and talk to people at the same time. I got a lot of looks of amazement and awe, especially from the lady that asked who had taught me the technique. Mister Mitchell Wymarc taught me from the internet. Also Miss Wendy helped with the bgeinner's stuff like choosing how many plys to use and how to start and finish threads. But the rest of it is pretty much self taught, because it's such a simple technique. The trick is that it LOOKS complicated :P

I haven't done anything at all project-wise this week. Uni is keeping me fairly busy, and I feel like when I'm not in class, I'm either commuting, doing homework or I'm at rehearsal. I get Easter weekend off as well as the following week. I have a couple of assignments to get mostly finished, but the work won't be building up so I should have some downtime to warp up my loom and finish my embroidery or something. My aim for this semester is to have at least one project on the go and spend at least some time each week working on it, even if it's only an hour. That way I can make slow and steady progress on stuff for Pennsic, and hopefully when I get to the end of semester I won't have to cram too much stuff into the three weeks before flying out. I also get two study weeks! TWO! I'm hoping to use the second one to Cut Out my green linen into cotehardie shaped pieces.

Right now I think I deserve a night off, so I'm going to sit in front of the tv with my embroidery, then get an early night.

THOUGHTS

You guys! I finished ALL the lacing holes last night, and I put the cote on this morning AND THEN I HAD A THOUGHT! It's a thought that gives me OPTIONS and now I need to make a CHOICE and it's all so agonising D:

Anyway, here's me in the cote

Yay it fits all good and boobies and stuff :D So the thought that I had was about sleeves. What if I DIDN'T MAKE SLEEVES??? What if I just sew up the armscye and wear it with my chemise just like that? It will be cool and not making sleeves will be awesome because I hate making sleeves. Also I won't need to worry about buttons. But I DUNNO maybe this one should have sleeves and be a proper cotehardie because it's my favourite colour and maybe I want to wear it on not so hot days too. Maybe the green one can be sleeveless. As far as sleeveless being period goes, lookit this picture:

This is from something called the Birth of John The Baptists Turin-Milano prayer book from the early fifteenth century. Apparently there's a few fifteenth century examples of sleeveless kirtles that could still be made of long panels like a cotehardie, without a waist seam. I'm looking specifically at the lady in green at the foot of the bed. I've seen a lot of pictures of fifteenth century kirtles with a seperate skirt and bodice and a round neck and short sleeves that go about halfway to the elbow. This one definitely has no sleeves at all, and a short sleeved chemise underneath, or a chemise with the sleeves pushed up.

Anyway, now I have thoughts and I need to ponder them and make DECISIONS and stuff, which I'm not very good at. I have until I fix up the hem to decide what I'm doing, because sleeves are the next step. I have found some decent looking buttons on ebay that will cost me under $10 for a set of 20, and a mixed set of 30 small and 20 big that will also cost under $10. I think I'll buy both lots because they're cheap and versatile and I need buttons whether or not this particular cote has sleeves or not. I also found 18 more stag buttons which was very exciting, I'll have to put them on something too :)

Happening Things

This past week has been absolutely massive, I feel like it's been at least a month since I last posted. Ok. So. On Friday I fixed up my pattern, then spent ages unpicking the whole thing, ironing it all flat again then making sure all the rights and lefts matched. I tried to take a picture of me wearing the finished pattern, but I didn't try very hard. I ended up with pictures that didn't look much different to the ones of me wearing it before I fixed it. And they were all blurry and taken in a particularly dirty part of my mirror. ANYWAY no pictures. Once I had all the bits of my pattern flattened and matchened I cut two lengths of my linen that were as tall as my shoulder, found some calico and ironed it all. Then it took me an entire episode of Star Trek Voyager to trace the pattern onto calico and cut that out. It took another entire episode to trace the pattern onto my linen. I laid the two lengths of linen out flat, one on top of the other. That way I only have to trace and cut four panels instead of eight, since the right side is the same as the left. Still took me an entire episode of Star Trek just to trace it, and another episode to actually cut it out. It took this long mainly because I hate Cutting Out and I kept procrastinating with solitaire.

On Saturday I went to the Taylors' open house. Soon after arriving I went with Suzie to Lincraft and Spotlight to get matching thread and see if I could find any buttons. Lincraft had some awesome buttons, but didn't have twenty of the same designs. It didn't really matter because the ones I wanted were $2.86 each. EACH. Times twenty that makes $57.20. I can't afford to spend that much on buttons. I think what I'll do is take the awesome gold buttons off my twelve-panel red cote and put them on the sphinx one, because I don't like the red cote and it doesn't deserve such awesome buttons. Later I'll go looking for more buttons for the red cote and also the other cotes I wanna make. Anyway, by the time we got back from our expedition it was lunchtime. I spent the afternoon sewing, and left that evening with my lining completely sewn up and hemmed, and one long seam of the outer dress finished. Sunday after archery practice I spent the afternoon sewing some more at Nathan and Catherine's.

Monday was my first day of uni, even though everyone else got a public holiday. Uni is pretty epic and majorly contributed to the feeling of this week taking up a whole month. I seriously slowed down with the sewing, but I think I got the major stuff done on the weekend. Right now the lining is attached and the front seam is all neatly sewn up, and I've made three lacing holes. Only 31 ore lacing holes to go, then I need to hem the dress and cut out and sew up the sleeves. There's still a week to WAMA fair so I think I should have it finished in time without too much rushing. Although yesterday I started coming down with a cold, so right now I'm feeling groggy and miserable and I dun wanna anything *huff*

Another thing that happened this week is I graduated with a Bachelor from UWA! This is totally relevant to this blog because the robes are just like a houppelande and the whole ceremony is very traditional. Also there were academics wearing Tudor flat caps. Here's me:

Yay robes. UWA is very traditional so only Masters and PhDs get to wear mortar boards, but the people that did got to doff their hats at the cancellor which was awesome. I'm a little disappointed that Curtin lets everyone wear the mortar boards, so when I graduate with my Master degree I'll be one of many and won't get to do awesome things like doff my hat at other Masters and proper academics. It was really quite interesting watching the ceremony, the formality and awareness of rank was a lot like an SCA court. I enjoyed myself a lot more than I expected to at a boring graduation ceremony :P

In other news, I haven't looked at my embroidery since before my linen arrived, and I haven't warped my loom yet. I have a feeling that my SCA activities are going to be slowing down dramatically from now. I think I'll have to work out some sort of vague list of deadlines for my Pennsic projects, or I'll end up caught in that trap where I don't make any progress because I have ages, then all of a sudden there'll be two weeks left that I'll have a million things to cram into.