A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

I sort of forgot that my youngest cousin's high school graduation was today - not completely, but enough that for this entire week I've been thinking of Saturday as a sewing day and thus being only somewhat motivated. (Sotto voce: It was not a sewing day.) Plus I went into school for a couple of half days to help the art teachers pack up their classrooms. Art teachers, they have a lot of stuff! I was overly efficient and they kind of ran out of stuff for me to do the last hour and a half on Thursday, but yay efficiency? Spent the rest of the time being chatty and ingratiating. (PLEASE LIKE ME I WANT A JOB HERE)

Anyway, packing up Art Stuff meant less time to devote to sewing! Especially when I wanted to do some of it on the machine...

So, short story long, I'm still sewing! Almost done: I'm just attaching the neck band & ruffle to the partlet body and that's done. I did make pin-on long sleeves, and I did not starch my veil. May see if we still have spray-on starch lurking in the laundry room after I'm done with the partlet; if not I'll just be droopy-veiled, NBD. This is very much a trial run for this part of the outfit! We'll see if the too-long waist on the kirtle drives me completely insane and I have to take it apart and shorten it...

Saturday: Made 12 eyelets in the kirtle, and despite having a little more time to sew, couldn't stand to make one single more eyelet, so made a rough mockup for a partlet and cut strips of chamois for binding for the green linen stays.

Sunday: Planned to spend the day with the Imaginary Boyfriend, as we're now both on retail schedules and it's rare to have a concurrent day off...but he has a man-cold, primary side effect being whining, so full day of sewing sounded better to me! Put in the other 12 eyelets in the kirtle, and tried it on, to see just how awful an unstiffened bodice is.
It's...not too bad, actually. I wore it around for about 40 minutes to see what wrinkles developed when it warmed up, and while there is of course some underbust crumple, it isn't awful-looking. Actually the most annoying thing is that there's some decided gaposis at the upper bust, and there's no easy way to take that out apart from a seam down the front, which I really don't want with the front-lacing gown over top. I may end up taking a wedge out of the corner where bodice/shoulder strap meet, which won't fit the gaposis as neatly as taking the width out of the CF, but I'm really disinclined to do that!
Other than that the fit is pretty decent. I compensated for my tendency to make bodices a little too short by making this one a little too long, oops...if I could easily shorten it I'd probably trim a half-inch off the bottom, but since eyelets are already made...it's not a big enough deal that I want to cut off my handmade eyelets! I nipped the front edge up a bit more and I'll just deal with the length as-is.
So I figured I'd stitch the bodice lining in where I could, and attach the skirt, rather than making a final decision on the bodice gaposis (avoidance is always an excellent tactic, what?). So I got the skirt all pleated and sewn on last night.

Today I'm at the "really need to try this thing on again before I go any further" and I dunwanna! Posting on here is a much more effective use of my time. *nods*

I'm too lazy to take off the green thread that's on my machine right now for the stays, wind a bobbin and rethread in the pinkish color I need for  the kirtle, and then rethread with the green to finish off the machine sewing for the stays...so I decided to bone the fronts and sew the stays together this afternoon, so I don't need the green thread in the machine any more!





Not pictured: the shoulder straps that I temporarily forgot were a thing. They are also sewn now, so I really am good to get rid of the green! (I'm hardly a neurotic thread-matcher, but the idea of that shade of green on a pinkish-red was a bit much for me...)

Kirtle progress: I'm getting close to done? ish? the pad-stitching on the kirtle bodice, and I finally remembered to pick up cotton Gutermann from work that matches it, so I don't have to use the only-sort-of-matching pink all-purpose poly thread for topstitching and hems and things! Really I should have waited for the matching thread before doing all the pad-stitching, especially on the front of the bodice...as this particular length of linen has weird irregularities in the weight of the thread that makes it up, so it's slightly see-through in some places. Also a few really excessively large slubs. Which is mildly annoying but I'll live. None of the rest of the linen is like that, and if I had a lot of time I would have considered sending it back...but my time is limited and I really wanted that color! So, big weird slubs and irregularities it is.

There's still a week and a half left in school, but since finals are next week, I don't anticipate too many sub jobs coming my way before they let out for summer! Which is fine, because I do want to have a wearable outfit for this event next weekend. ;)

(This would probably be helped by not also working on other projects at the same time, but....shhhh.)

Found the lightweight linen-cotton blend for the hood/veil/whatever you want to call it, cut it out, hemmed approximately 3" of it, and then went out to lunch with my sister and mama. Busy today, busy tomorrow!

I did get the green stays fronts prepped to bring to school tomorrow though, so I should be able to get some eyelets done. Woo?

Current ETA is Monday for the linen order, which is fine: I don't think I have a good solid chunk of a couple hours to cut stuff out this weekend anyway!

And speaking of linen...the linen at your local Joann's is currently on sale for $7.99, which is Really Not Too Bad. (Yes, I came home with three almost-full bolts of linen. No, only one of them is going to live here. I was being a fabric mule for the locals...)

Made a coif to go with the Flemish outfit today. Woo, progress! Also ordered the linen for the outfit, with delivery estimate 4-8 days. Hoping for more like 4...but even if I don't get it for over a week, I still don't anticipate trouble finishing at least the kirtle!

The nice thing about Flemish working-class women's fashion in the 16thc is that you have a yuuuuge amount of options as to what to do with your head. (The stuffed donut is still wrong, though.) I love the look of the taped braids, but I love only having to do bare minimum with my hair even more. So I'm opting for a combination of ye olde standard coif with a hood on top. I like both the shapes of the picture below and the one in my icon, at least in theory, so we'll see what I like in practice with mockups tomorrow.


I went through three mockups of the coif today: I had a basic pattern cut out from a million years ago that I'd never actually successfully fitted - didn't need it, why bother. It needed...some size increasing. Mockup #1's on top, and each one got successively bigger!
( cut for peektures )

So tomorrow I'll get the hood mocked up, if not completely sewn, and after that I need to fix the sleeves on my 16thc smock. I made a new basic one with square neck and plain sleeves after my Venetian one made in my first year of college got just too nasty...but I got a little over-enthusiastic with the size of the sleeves, so once I put them in with the gussets, the lower point of the gusset is at my waist. That's...a little too roomy, even for underwear, LOL. The pieces are all nicely hemmed and butted together, so rather than cut them down and re-hem, I'm just going to take the sleeves off and gather them up at the shoulder so they aren't so stupidly wide. Not quite as correct, I think, as a completely plain sleeve, but it's definitely the path of least resistance!

ETA for own reference: link to helpful Pinterest board

robinsnest  joined me for the annual "skirmish" at the Indian King Tavern on Saturday. She was a good sport to do so, as they ended up sticking us inside the tavern for the whole day, on the ground floor where the windows don't open and it was hot as ballz. And stuffy. Low-80s outside and breezy, but...yeah, inside. Every year before this I'd been able to sit outside on the porch til after the skirmish, which is when most people come through for a tour.

I didn't quite get my stays to an easy-to-transport-and-sew place by skirmish time, but since we were inside in dim light, it didn't matter, as I didn't do much sewing at all! Oh well. I got to spend the day with my wifey, that's overall better than sewing anyway. ;)

I made precisely zero new things for the skirmish, so I didn't get any pictures of me! I did make a new cap and a new apron in school over the past week or so (just to have something to do, not because I need more 18thc accessories, lordy), which Robin was happy to display. She, on the other hand, made a new linen stripey dress for the occasion, and is going to post about it soon (RIGHT??). Good thing we were both in linen...and were quite polite to people who kept asking us if we were hot in that, LOL.

(Not nearly as hot as you are in that polyester joann's brocade simplicity colonial dress, you poor teenager! It's nice you dressed up for the occasion, sincerely, but lordy you must be melting.)

Shenanigans were got up to:


...and we both agreed that we really need new stays.


And we ended up being basically negative images of each other (although with the same loud plaid kerchief), not really on purpose, which we found both hugely amusing and were offended that nobody else commented on it.


And there was much CADD! In between yesterday and today I've added two outfits to my to-sew list for the summer, now how did that happen?

( Nattering )

Are my new green stays going to be neglected horribly very shortly? Ummmmmm maaaaaaaybe? But, being mostly hand-sewing from this point, they can easily go to school with me, so they will still get done eventually. Also getting poked by a broken escaping reed all day on Saturday is a pretty good incentive...
 

I love when I type out a nice long entry, and when I try to post it, my internet connection shuts off. That's just so awesome. And that's what happened last night. *grump* Better hurry up before it does it again.

I'm dragging my mom and sister to the PA ren faire, as they've never been, on August 11. And naturally, you can't go to the ren faire with me if you're not dressed up. So, my sister's wearing an old, slightly awful red costume of mine (amazing how much one's skill and snobbery can grow in 2 short years), and I'm making my mom a flemish(ish) peasant-y costume. I say "ish" because I'm not taking the time to do all the research I normally would, I'm just taking what I remember from the Elizabethan Costuming Page and going with it. Also because almost every single thing on this costume is/will be machine sewn, which is not like me. Usually I'll use my machine only on seams that will absolutely not be seen, but heck with that. I don't have time for it.

Especially as I really want a new costume of my own for the faire if I can possibly scrape enough time together to make it. I dyed some velveteen for it yesterday actually, and now my hands are kind of brownish. Yes I could(should) have used gloves, but know what? There weren't any in the house and I don't really care if my hands turn strange colors.