Two horses

I've finished the applique and decorative stitching for both of the horses. After that I ironed them out to roundels. Next step is to applique them onto the tunic!

Horse applique number one

My little guy requested decorations for his new tunic. When I asked him what kind he decided that he wanted some horses on his tunic. I needed the tunic finished for the event, but then got to work on his decorations. He has been checking with me every day to see my progress. Last night I finished the first horse and he really likes it. Hooray! The horse is white linen appliqued to a black linen ground fabric, which matches the collar and sleeves on his tunic. I hand appliqued the horse using needle turn and a button hole stitch. After I finished I wanted to add a bit more to the outline, so I just did a quick outline of chain stitch.

Kid's Tunic and Pouch

My little guy continues to grow rapidly, so it was time for new SCA clothes. He picked the linen out of my stash and I made him a new tunic. I decided that I was done making small collars with the sewing machine, so I did this one by hand. Sewing it in by hand is definitely easier for the tiny collars. I'm still working on my hand applique skills, but I do like the result. Little guy liked the tunic too and now I'm working on the decorations that he requested. Also, we had an SCA birthday party for this weekend, so I put together a felt pouch for the little girl. I added a bit of stitching and then appliqued a tiny heart. Cuteness achieved :)

C-belt finished

C-belt is finished! A few modifications made it feel more secure and fit better. The neatsfoot oil has darkened the brown leather that was attached, and after a week or so the new leather will probably darken too. The color contrast is still enough for a pretty pattern though. Here I am wearing it! Very comfortable and ready to hang some legs on.

New C-Belt

I've been pondering upgrading my armor for a while now and have a list of stuff I'd like to do. I've recently moved, which gave me the chance to inventory my collection of random craft stuff. This week I found enough leather bits to start putting some stuff together, so I decided to begin with a new c-belt. I've been working on design and planning with my randomly shaped scraps here and there most of the week. Here are the bits all nice and cut out. The black leather is a lighter weight leather and the brown is a bit heavier weight. I had to oil the black leather since it had been in various garages for quite some time. I have an old school metal sewing machine, so I can drop it down to a very low speed and sew leather. I've got some nice leather needles which look like tiny daggers. At first the sewing was a bit rough, but I rubbed some of the leather oil on the needle and then things went quite nicely. Appliqueing leather is fairly different than the work I've done with fabric and it was challenging. I managed to make it through without any catastrophes. No do overs with leather! Finally, I riveted in the buckles and finished them out. It's starting to look pretty nice. The screw rivets probably wouldn't have been my first choice for the project, but my theme for a while is going to be using stuff I already have and I had a handful of these left over. I am going to keep rummaging through things to see if I find some rivets I like better. Next on my agenda will be adding the leg harness mounts over the hips. I'm going to continue to strategically use the brown leather to reinforce the black leather and hope that it is strong enough. I used some older measurements and I think that I'm going to have to take in the front a little. I'm going to let it sit overnight and think a bit on what to do next.

Tiny Surcoat

I'm going to try to make Queen's Champion this weekend since it's down the street from me. I just realized yesterday that my little guy has grown 2 inches in the last month - so I needed some new garb for him before the weekend! He really likes the fighters and their clothes, so I made him a tiny little surcoat with some decorative spiral lacing on it. It's cute, but every time I look at it I keep thinking the measurements must be wrong - it's square! On second thought, little dude is kind of square, so I think it will fit. Hooray for random linen scraps!

Brown velveteen pouch

I'm playing around with some different purse patterns and am currently working on this one: http://wychwood.wikidot.com/kit-pouches . The first thing that is obvious about this pattern is that there are a lot of eyelets! Once I got the pieces sewn together and everything marked, I began to wonder if I had the fortitude for that many eyelets. However, the journey of a thousand eyelets starts with a single stitch. I couldn't believe that I managed to get all those eyelets done! At this point I was really hoping that this pattern worked and regretting not doing a mock-up like I usually do.

I was impatient so I used some shoelaces to string it together and make sure that the gathering worked correctly. It works! Hooray! It's kind of hard to see on this picture but the gathers lay nearly perfect with a graceful curve into a nice round bottom. The next step will be to cut and sew the top flap, which will be attached at the little tab sticking up. Also, I need to make some pretty drawstrings to replace those shoelaces.