So once again my plans did not go according to plan. I went down south last weekend and had an awesome time fishing, but the rest of the time was spent very unproductively. On Saturday we went into town to run some errands and stopped at just one winery because we couldn't very well go down south and not visit a winery. That all took ages, and by the time we got back to the house it was time to get all the fishing stuff set up, and couldn't be bothered anything so I read some of my book. Then we went FISHING and it was all very exciting and I did catch TWO FISHES and we were out there until midnight. Sunday was a lazy day in which we took the puppy to the beach and watched her frolic in the water and then I got stuck in a hot nap. There was a bit of groggy happening. But I figured I'd dragged my sewing all the way down there, I better do some, so I stitched the front seam of my dress together. That's it. Buttons and buttonholes got done on Tuesday and Wednesday, and yesterday I fixed the sleeves. Then last night I unpicked the sleeves again, because the top of the sleeves have holes that are waaay too small. I don't remember the dress being tight around the armpits, I'd just assumed that the sleeves were fine except they cut in at my elbows. But when I tried the dress on the sleeves were stupidly tight around the armpits, which means I need to add some fabric into the sleeves to make the holes bigger. Stupid sleeves are stupid. Hopefully I'll get them done tonight, because the feast is tomorrow and I hate rushing to finish garb. Also I completely forgot that I was going to enter the A&S competition at the feast, so I haven't even looked at documentation. I suppose if everything else is done then I'll see if I can put some together tomorrow afternoon.

I also took my embroidery down south in case I felt like working on it. I didn't, so it stayed in its bag. When I got home I took it out, and found that it didn't survive the journey very well. It's as if something was catching on the threads and pulling at them. Sadfaaace. There's a good four or five spots that will need to be pulled out and redone, so all of a sudden I'm feeling less motivated to work on it. I foresee that it's gonna be put aside for a bit while I work on other stuff.

Well, what an exciting blog post. Hopefully I won't be invisible at this event, and I'll end up with some nice pictures of me in my fixed up dress that I can post here :)

Sadfaaace :(

My plans for getting the strap for my awesome bag of awesome mostly finished came to a grinding halt yesterday when:

I broke my shuttlebeater! :'( I AM SO SAD. And this is why I can't have nice things. I took it over to Mister Nathan's house last night and he glued it back together. It's now sitting on his kitchen bench in a clamp and I am still very sad. :'( :'(

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.

Another Dye Fail :(

I put my fabric through the wash again, this time with a packet of blue and half a packet of green. It came out... dun dun dunnnn.... the same colour as before. There is literally no difference whatsoever, it's still a boring as batshit plain light blue colour. [insert impressive swear chain here]. My underdress is crimson red, and if I wear it with this colour I'm guessing it'll come out looking a lot like that time I wore it with my green surcote

Not the best photo, but not the best outfit. In my defence I was wearing the red cote on its own all day, at Rowany Festival, and it suddenly got cold, as it does there, so I just threew on my warmest thing over the top. It was dark, no one was supposed to look too closely :P Anyway, the red is just too bright for the demure green, and I think the same think will happen with this very un-vibrant blue.

So, I was planning to make this fabric into a surcote to wear to the Midwinter feast next Saturday. I could still do that, but it would require a whole new underdress, because I don't think the gold one will go either. I could find a different brand of dye from the nearby shopping centre RIGHT NOW and use the house's washing machine, hoping that I don't somehow wreck it and also that it will have an effect on the colour. OR I could use some maroon wool that I pulled out of my stash and make a surcote from that, and wear it with my gold underdress. I need to go the the shops anyway, so I might see what sort of dye I can find and how much it will cost me, then if that plan fails I'll go with the maroon.

Except... I've just realised I've left my linen at home, the linen I was going to use to line the surcote, and if I use the maroon I'll need some fabric to line the sleeves with.... UGH FAIL

Dyeing Adventures #2 (Epic Fail)

There is only two weeks left of holidays. There is no way I'm going to get my list of THINGS done in the next two weeks. Work keeps wanting me to work. I've been working between 30 and 36 hours every week, which is awesome because I get to save up a whole bunch of monies for the proposed Pennsic 2013 trip, but not so awesome in that I have barely any free time and when I do I just feel like sitting and not doing anything.

ANYWAY I have done some things. Sort of. I made a set of arrows :) I wanted them for the Vallon d'Or IKAC since I only had 7 arrows left and you need 6, but my carefully planned plans were thrown off when I went to Achenfeld A&S to borrow the fletching jig and get working on them, but there was no taper tool except an old pencil sharpener that was way too small for my sticks. No taper tool, no nocks, and nocks are kind of essential for using the fletching jig. I really should've been more organised and checked that everything I needed was with the jig instead of just assuming, but there you go. I ended up just going to Vallon d'Or with my seven arrows, and promptly broke one in the first end. Luckily no more broke, not that it would've made any difference at all to my absolutely woeful score of 81. I made my new set of arrows the day after the IKAC :P. I shot in my man-cote with the slightly too-small sleeves because I didn't find time to make new ones.

However, I did make some adjustments to my green surcote. I detached the sleeves, opened up both side seems down to the gores, added in an extra inch-wide panel on both sides, then attached the sleeves again. I didn't get time to finish any of the seams, but that's ok because when I wore it to the feast I realised I would need some more adjustments. It's still too tight around the hips below where the gores start, so I'm going to take out the seams of the gores as much as I can to give myself a bit more room. It's also still too tight at the top above the armpit, where the new panel ends. After consulting with Catherine she suggested that I just cut the neckline down by one button, and since I have room to do so I think I will try it. That also means I can replace one of my lost buttons :P

Today I am dyeing my wool. Last time my selvedge didn't shrink, while the rest of the fabric did, so this time I cut the selvedge off

I'm also going to hang it on the hill's hoist in the sun, because the lines are straight. Last time I didn't want to hang it in the sun because I've had bad experiences with natural fabrics shrinking, fading and turning all stiff because our sun is a bit violent. Instead, I hung it under the verandah on some ropes that have been strung up, which sagged and stretched the fabric in places so it didn't lie flat. Anyway, it's winter now so the sun isn't so harsh, and I'd rather have fabric that wasn't stretched funny. It makes it a bit difficult to cut out and make into things if it's all stretched :P

The next step was to experiment with colours. You may remember I was pondering adding green to my blue dye to get a teal colour? Well, I decided to boil a little saucepan of water on the stove and add a tiny bit of dye to test the colours.

First try kind of failed. I meant to test the blue, then add green and test that, but I forgot my intentions almost instanlty and just added both blue and green. A little bit too much blue and green. This is a piece of selvedge that came out blotchy because of the weird selvedge weave thing it has going on. So I tipped that lot down the sink and tried again

I cut some bits of actual fabric instead of using the selvedge. The blue came out quite a nice blue, but as soon as I added the teeniest bit of green, the whole thing turned aqua. I decided I liked the blue, so I went with just using two packets of blue, and stuck it all in the washing machine. This is what I ended up with:

The strip on top is the colour I wanted. Underneath is the colour I got. I got the same colour as some wool I already have. Guh! I've hung it out to dry, and I think I might buy another packet of blue and run it through again with that to make it darker. I wanted that teal blue, but the next best thing would be dark blue rather than light blue. So frustrating! It means I need to get some more dye, then find a time to come home to use mum's machine because I'm housesitting from Monday and don't want to use their machine in case it all goes horribly wrong. It's a front loader as well, which is a different technique to the top loader, and besides, mum's machine is an industrial one which is a lot more efficient than these dumb water saver machines :P

The other thing I've done is order some silk! I've bought a skein if green and a skein of purple from Treenway Silks, and they should be finished dyeing in three weeks, then posted to me. I've been slowly pottering through Ecclesistical Pomp, and I've been developing an idea in my mind for my belt. I'd like it to have a ground weave of purple and green stripes, then I think I'd like to get hold of some metallic thread to brocade some sort of heraldic bits along it. I've been looking at getting actual gold wrapped thread from here, but so far I can't figure out how to order, or how much I'll need. I figure since I'm using proper good expensive silk for the ground weave, I should really use something of equal quality for the brocade. That reel is $14 for five metres, but I'm not sure if I'll need more than that. Any weavers out there know how much weft they use for a belt about a metre and a half long?

Tonight I'm intending to work on my geen surcote. I'll at least do the neckline and move that button. I want to wear it to the tournament that's on tomorrow because it's my warmest garb and it's generally pretty cold down at Wandi :P