Gulf Wars Preparations

I haven't had a lot of time for SCA stuff, but the time I've used has been on preparations for Gulf War. Rachel and I have made a garb generation plan, divided up fabric piles, taken measurements, picked patterns, and even begun making stuff. A whole week is a lot of garb!

We need to get Rachel's coat of plates finished, so I've been working on that. Its going to be just like mine, only shorter and in brown. This weekend, I finished cutting a pile of plastic plates for it and marked all the drill holes and grinding points. I handed them off to Rachel and she's going to do the next bit.

Cutting out the rest of Rachel's plates pretty much finished off our second plastic barrel. I picked up two more for a friend who is also trying to get her armor going. I've gotten a couple of questions about the plastic barrels, so here's the scoop. They are trash for the local car wash, so they let me pick them up for free. This picture below shows one of the barrels with a 6 inch x 24 inch quilting ruler, so you can see that they are quite big. Always check the labels on your barrel and make sure you don't pick up one that held anything toxic, and clean them out well just to be safe. We cut ours up with a jig saw, and the plastic sands and drills nicely. As the barrel gets cut down it starts to vibrate with the saw. I solved this problem by nailing it to the workbench, which worked really well. The curve to the barrel works well for the coat of plates (but you do end up looking a little barrel-like).



With all the busy at work and armor projects, I haven't stopped making pretty things, I've just slowed the rate. The picture below shows some German white work that is currently on my frame. Its a yummy linen thread on linen that I picked up on an impulse at Christmas. The texture on the white work is turning out very nice, but the linen thread is a bit temperamental. I have to use short lengths of it because it tires easily and ends up fuzzy. The pattern is Pattern #14.