Cloak and Hood

Now that I've got my sewing area a bit more functional, I've been working on a cloak and hood for my friend Rachel. This is another project off a to-do list that we made about 4 years ago, but hey, who's counting? Here is a picture of her modeling progress. I've gotten all the sewing done except the hem on the cloak! Hooray! Below is Rachel modeling her cloak with her best goofy face.

The cloak and hood are made out of gray and blue cotton flannel for extra warmth. This is the first cloak I've made where the drape is really good and the lining doesn't sag. Acheivement unlocked! This is my first hood and I like it. Now that the sewing is done, I've started with the decoration. We had a demo last night and Giant Sparkly banner was on display... so I had a handy excuse to start other handwork! Ha!

I may have gone a little nuts with the lucet a while back, since I like to answer questions like "What does a skein of yarn look like luceted?" The answer is shown above. I am stitching the lucet cord over the seams and it squares things up very nicely. The trim actually seems to be making the dagging more well-behaved, which is a pleasant surprise. I know in my brain that adding decorations always really changes a project, but the picture above really demonstrates how wonderful that change is! I am loving the lucet cord trim - Thanks to Elen for the great idea :)

Fun!

I took my children's "mouse battle" hats to the Jagermeister event this weekend at Ffynnon Gath and I won the A&S competition! Wow! Above is my lovely scroll which was painted by Grishka. I had a great time at the event and received a lovely gift basket that included a gorgeous lucet!

I've been fiddling around with the lucet and now that I've got the hang of it there is a string pile starting to accumulate. It's the perfect nervous fiddle for truly lazy days! I also thought I'd post a picture so that you would know that I haven't forgotten the giant sparkly banner. Most of the update pictures have been more of the same, so I haven't written much about them, but today's is a happy update - I am almost finished with the letter fill! Yes, that really is the last two letters of "Society for Creative Anachronism"

Mantle and torse

I've been doing some research on helm decorations (torse, mantle, and crest) so I thought I'd start testing and drafting patterns before I haul out the nice fabric. This pattern was drafted from a torse and mantle that was loaned to me a while back. I grabbed some scrap fabric out of the hoard and gave it a try. Big shout out to the folks over at Armour Archive who posted their stuff and got me moving quickly on sewing and research!

I got the dagging just the way I liked it with a serious iron and copious amounts of starch. This wouldn't work well for more delicate fabrics, so I'm thinking that I will probably need to hand finish for silks and such. There are a lot of different patters than can be used for the dagging and I'd love to play around with that a little bit. Some of the dagging patterns have to be hand finished because of their intricacy and I've even seen some examples that have multiple layers for the mantle. If you want to get fancy, you can go with fur and tassles!

I've started a Pinterest board to keep things organized, so you can check it out and see what's on my mind here. The torse shown above is from Sweden and you can see what got me all giddy about helm decorations - Goldwork embroidery! This torse is one of a pair that were given as victory wreaths to tournament winners by Queen Maria Eleonaora of Sweden. They are on display at the Historiska Museet in Stockholm. The exhibit flier has a picture of both of the wreaths.

Giant Banner Progress Pics

I was out sick last week, so I missed quite a few days of stitching. Bah! Anyway, I started feeling better this weekend and have resumed stitching. One row down, two to go! I fear that the pictures really don't do it justice - the couched gold is very, very sparkly.

I was chatting about the banner this weekend and this project has been really interesting for a couple of reasons. The first big surprise was the depth you get from just one piece of paper for the letters. The first layer of each letter is laid green thread (just DMC cotton floss). The single layer of paper adds a surprising amount of dimensionality to the stitching. I suppose it makes sense when you look at the perspective of the actual thickness of the thread. I just hadn't really realized how much you could get out of so little.

The second layer is the laid criss-cross of gold thread. I am using a gold Gutterman machine embroidery thread for durability/washability/cost/etc. It's a very smooth thread and very nice to work with. Finally, I couch down the criss-cross at the intersections, which adds the texture and sparkle. It's very satisfying to finish a letter and see it glitter.

Giant banner

We have a demo coming up soon that will be hosted at a local museum, so I wanted to make a Really Nice banner. I've been futzing around with the design for a while now and finally called it good this weekend. Due to a slight clerical error said banner is the size of my couch. Ahh, re-size by height or width - does it really matter? (Yes) Anyway, I got it all laid out and the design transferred and took a minute to bask in my success. All the letters in a tidy row. I was itching to get started, but only had just a few minutes after dinner last night to actually start on the stitching. Below is a picture of the first stitching - laid green thread with gold couching. It sparkles! I love the fill, now I have to figure out what I'm going to outline with. Somewhere in the fussy planning over the last couple of weeks I have this hazy idea of a fringe and that the outline will match the fringe. Ahh well, I have a lot of fill stitching ahead, so it's not an immediate crisis.

The spear mice advance!

The archers are all in place and the spears are advancing towards battle.

Dissertation and thesis joy!

I just had to share this post from "a stitch in time" blog. The British Library hosts a database of electronic copies of dissertations and thesis documents! Hooray! This is awesome on both recreational and professional levels :)