Slighty Sidetracked

My gold thread arrived!

It arrived a few weeks ago, but it was before Championship and I was Very Busy. It's 20 metres, but it doesn't look like that much. I'm feeling a little bit anxious about having enough for my belt.

But I'll think about that later. Championship was two weeks ago and it was awesome! I decided to stay up on Thursday night until the buttonholes on my wool cote were done, because when I left work at 9pm it was bloody freezing and I knew it wasn't gonna be any different on the weekend. I still need to fix the hem and look at the back seam, but I made it wearable, and I did end up getting it out on the Saturday night. I think I got an average of five hours sleep every night, between going to bed after midnight because there were Exciting Things happening by the fire that I didn't want to miss out on, and getting up at 6:30am to have a shower before cooking breakfast. On Monday after we'd packed up and everything was finished, I crashed. I napped at the post revel, then went home and was in bed by 7pm. Tuesday was sort-out-the-baronial-trailer day, and boy was that exhausting. Then I had to go back to real life and face the past two weeks of uni that I'd been ignoring. Except I had an assignment dur on Thursday, and it took me all day Wednesday to turn my brain back on. So by Saturday I had three weeks of uni to catch up on, which I have finally done now!

So now Championship is over and I'm all set with uni, is it time to start weaving my belt? Nope. Bal d'Aneala is on in two weeks, and the other day I remembered that I wanted to enter the A&S competition. This year's theme is flowers. For a long time I've wanted to make an heraldic pouch with tablet woven edges that will actually be a decently sized functional pouch. I love my little German pouch, but it's tiny and not good for much except decoration and carrying around my lip balm. Anyway, here's my device:

You may notice that there is no flower on my device. But there is a leaf! A leaf is sort of a flower, right? Anyway, an ivy flower is kinda ugly

 

So I'm going to embroider my ivy leaf onto my pouch, and enter it in a flower competition. I should at least get some points for creativity :P You may rememeber that my little German pouch was my first attempt at embroidery. I don't think German Brick Stitch will work for me this time, so I've been teaching myself new stitches!

 

I keep forgetting to pick up my camera battery charger EVERY SINGLE TIME I go home. It's very frustrating. So I'm still taking pictures with my phone and emailing them to myself. What you see about on the far left is my first ever attempt at split stitch. It starts at the top, goes around the curve and then turns into stem stitch. Over on the right across the top is chain stitch, then some more split stitch going down. I think I must be mad trying to teach myself these things. I want to get it done this afternoon so I can thread up some cards and try out this tablet weaving edge thingy, so I can finish this project and get going on my belt, since I have less than a month to finish that. I think I like split stitch the best. Or at least I like the idea of split stitch the best. I'm not sure that I'm practiced enough yet to make it look very neat.

Anyway, I should get back to it. I'm optimistically thinking that it'll all turn out fine in the end. Or I'll end up completely ashamed of it and hide it away and start again another time  :P At least I have plenty of purple wool and gold cotton, it's not like I'm trying something new with expensive materials like real gold thread. That's my other project :P

Busy!

I have been so busy! So much busy in my weeks that I haven't blogged about it :( So now I am blogging.

I went to St Basil training after work a few weeks ago. I pulled apart one sleeve of my red cote and sewed it back together all nice and neat. Then I decided that maybe I don't want t do it with the other one, maybe it can just stay the way it is. I dunno. It's just such a pain fiddling with sleeves. I also pulled the back seam in about half an inch, but I have yet to try it on to see how it fits. I intended to do that today because I want to look at pulling in my blue wool surcote, but then I didn't. My next fortnight off from work on thursday night I was asked to stay back, so I didn't make it to college training. I needs the monies for my Pennsic fund. Tomorrow is my next early Thursday so I'll go and try on the red cote, get some second opinions and hopefully get some help with pulling in the blue cote.

I have an idea for the wool cote. I think I'm going to unpick the lining completely, and cut off an inch or so from the front seams where the buttons are. It means doing my buttonholes all over again, but it also may give me a chance to straighten up the edge the whole way down, so hopefully I'll end up with a straight front seam. There's more crooked seams, but the front one is the one that bothers me the most. Anyway, I should only have to do that, adjust the neckline when I sew the lining back in, then reshape the back seam. And I need to make the sleeves a little shorter and slightly tighter. I've decided I want my wool cote to be wearable for Championship, which is in less than two weeks! I'm intending to wear my ginger cote almost the whole event, since I'll be spending most of it in the kitchen. Maybe my red cote too, depending on how I feel about it. But it can get cold at night and I'd rather throw on another layer than get out my thick cloak. We shall see.

Speaking of Championship, it's getting all exciting! I've been a busy bookings officer emailing people about Important Things. I've never sent so many emails in my life. I've also organised a constable for the event AND to hand over my baronial office to :D I've also been thinking about foods. Project eggs benny for breakfast is looking like a go, and we've even started thinkign about what we're feeding people for dinner. Mister Nathan also made me a TAM so I can run the archery stuff :) It's gonna be an awesome event!

Anyway, the main point of this post is to tell you all about what I've been doing today instead of trying on my red cote to see how it fits. I've been drawing! Last week my order of gold thread was finally confirmed and shipped, so as soon as it arrives I'll have all the tools to string up my loom and start weaving my awesome belt of awesome! Except a pattern, I needs to decide what I'm gonna weave with my fancy gold thread. I looked into a motto, and even though I know Mister Nathan was making a joke, I have decided on "Folium saltans in ventum" which translates as a "leaf dancing into the wind" because my main charge is an ivy leaf and I like dancing. It makes sense to me anyway. Anyway, here's a picture of my letters

Yeah I know, what a great picture. When I went to take it I discovered that my camera battery is flat, and my charger is at home. So I've been taking pictures with my phone and emailing them to myself, because the usb cable for my phone is also at home :P Anyway, here's my letters! I'm using the 48 card version of textura quadrata from Guntram. I've also been looking through other heraldic-y sort of patterns from Guntram, and looking at fitting my leaf in there somewhere. I used GTT to draw a leaf

Here's my leaf! Now, the grid in the program is a square grid, but when you weave, the pattern stretches along the band. GTT has a function that shows the pattern stretched how it would when you weave it, but I needed to have drawn my leaf sideways to use it. So I decided to just draw it out to see how it looks

My e didn't fit on the other page, so here he is looking like a little pacman trying to eat the other pretty pattern bit. I originally wanted to put my leaf inside the shield, but it's too small so I couldn't get anything looking like a leaf to fit. I still really like the design, so I might put a chevron inside the shield instead. Underneath is the leaf as a drew it in GTT. It's all stretched and funny looking, so next to it I drew another version that's slightly taller. I didn't count the grid in GTT, and ended up only making it 36 cards tall, so I had some extra room to make it taller. The second one looks better, but I'm not quite sure if it's there yet.

I also like the lions and some of the knotwork with quatrefoils which I might use as well. I might even draw up the little arrowheards on my device and see if I can put them in one of the frames.

So that's basically it from me today. Next week is study break, so I'm hoping I'll have some spare time to finish my blue wool cote whilst preparing for Championship. Once Championship is over I'm hoping my gold thread will have arrived and I can start weaving. I should also start looking at documentation too, I guess :P

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.

Semi-success

It turns out that supermarkets sell fabric dye. Well, black fabric dye. I went to four different shops on Friday before I found some bottles of Rit navy blue and dark green. I got up early on Saturday to go home and try again with a whole bottle of navy blue and half a bottle of green, and pick up my linen and silk. I found a couple of yards of pre-washed white linen that I'd totally forgotten about, and my wool ended up coming out of the machine a slightly darker colour. Still not really what I wanted, but useable. I've come to the conclusion that my wool has taken in as much dye as it possibly could, because that last dye bath was so dark it was almost black. I think that if I'd used that colour dye bath first, I would have really super dark fabric. None of the green came through either, but that's ok.

Yay! Finally some success! I raced home to do some chores before Spoh and Rosie came over. We had a lovely afternoon making a mess cutting out fabric and stuff. Rosie needed some help with a cotehardie sleeve pattern, so I gave her mine and she worked off that. I cut out my wool and my linen lining, and now I am going to start sewing it all up. Since I'm short on time, I think I'll machine sew the seams and hand finish them. It's an overdress so it won't be doing any supporting and (hopefully) will be looser so it won't matter so much if I'm not exact with the seams and seam allowance, which i won't be with the machine because I'm impatient and isn't the point of machine sewing to be quicker than hand sewing? :P

I also found that even though I'd hung the fabric out on a straight line, it still stretched on the edges, making them all wibbly and difficult to cut out. I also discovered that the house I'm staying in doesn't seem to have an iron. So I just did the best I could, and hopefully since wool is sort of stretchy anyway it'll end up all dropping into place.

This surcote will be eight panels, half lined with linen with some gold silk lining the sleeves and tippets. Progress photos to come!

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