Dress pattern

Well I had finally found before Pennsic this year a patter close to what I needed for my Anne Meyer Dress. I bought the pattern at Pennsic from Pillage Village and took it home and cut it all out. Period Patterns are a great source for information and the patterns themselves. They give pages of photos and dates, countries and brief information on various dresses for the time. I used pattern 46.

Warning, it says patterns are size 20 on the outside, inside they have cuts up to size 24, the largest size is really about an 18. So you are really going to have to play with sizing and such.

I tried editing the pattern on my own, wasn't working. I tried on my body double, it just wasn't going there. I took it with me to a stitch and bitch at my friend Katie's house, and she helped me reshape the pattern to fit me and it looks great! I still have to cut out the pattern on good fabric, but she also taught me some sewing terms and ideas I didn't know and it was a nice session.

So actually I will be making a dress with the sewing machine this week out of some generic material to make sure it fits and I know how to put it together ok. Then I will cut it out of the good material and hand sew it.

I am still working on the second set of trim, and on Saturday I redesigned the chest trim because I had already done it before I moved in April, but couldn't find it to save my life. So I just redid it.

blackwork as of 01.11.08

Here is how it looked yesterday before I started working on it again. I actually now have five inches on each band and have rolled it over to have a blank work area again.

catching up...

ok, holidays are over and now is the time to catch up on things.

1) I have finished the collar for the undershirt to my meyer dress
2) I have finished the silk work of the neckline, but still need to add the gold to it for the undershirt to my meyer dress
3) I have completed a baby chuthulu and a full air freshiner chuthulu with crochet for my boyfriend - I am a freak :)
4) I have started the blackwork for the upper arm lower bands (longest arm bands) for the meyer dress. I don't have enough time to do all of them before Northern Lights on March 1. I will do the lower upper arm band and the band that goes across the chest by March 1. I will do the lower two arm bands by Mudthaw for the K&Q A&S comp.
5) I have ordered the fabric for the over dress. I changed it from white to green because this is not my wedding dress and I don't do well with white. It came in last Friday
6) I got irish linen for the undershirt and washed it.

I found the undershirt pattern in the Tudor Tailor, I just have to adjust it to my size and do a mock up. I think I will use one of the dresses from the Tudor Tailor as well and just drop the shoulder a little more, need to mock that up as well.

Blackwork takes forever! Each of the lower upper arm bands will take about 80 hours each. They are 16.5 inches long, and there are six rows of (three rows with two sub rows each) blackwork and so that is why I won't make my March 1 deadline. It took about a week to do five inches of one arm band.

Photos to come soon. :)

First Setback

Ok, ok, I started stitching the trim for the chest. I used tracing paper for the pattern and attached it to the top.

1) It works well to punch through it and stitch the pattern, but it tends to pull away from the fabric making the stitches really loose.

2) When you go to tear it away, it is too thick and pulls the stitches even loser and it looks really poorly done once you get the tracing paper off.

I am only on the third flower on one side, so it is good I tested. I would have been pissed if I got all done and then pulled it away.

I am going to stop at the dollar store and get some white tissue paper and try again. Hopefully this will work better.

I will also only attach one strip to the fabric at a time. Two tends to make things a little loose as well.

Also I ordered my silk and it is in. Yeah! I did the kumihimo braid for the outside of the bag on the round disk. I will do a flat braid for the pull tie on the square disk later next week.

Things are slowly coming along. I need to start writing up my research now or I will forget a lot of it by the end.

Well the chest trim is in production as I wait for the silk I ordered to arrive for the collar and the rest of the bag.



Above is all 60 inches of the chest trim already traced onto the paper.



Here is a close up of the pattern. I know it is a little larger than the original photo, but I am a bigger girl so it will help balance when it is done.



Here is the paper sewing the ground. I cheated on this one and used a machine, but it will all be ripped out once the blackwork is done.



Here is the start of the blackwork. I am using Cresent Colors - Old Crow for the blackwork on this piece.

Charts are done...

Ok, my tentative charts are done. Yeah!

I have charted the collar, chest band, upper arm, lower arm and wrist band. So ok, the embroidery charts are done...I still have to work on the dress pattern itself. If you are interested here are the charts so far ----

Here is my first chart the inital collar mockup:



Here is the Upper arm band:



Here is the lower arm band:



Here is the wrist band:



The chest band which for some reason was really hard to get a repeat on:

Here is the Meyer Dress...I hope

Meyer dress, blackwork

Well I was working on my blackwork project and downloaded some photos and browsed on the 3rd. I saw this one photo that intrigued me and by the 6th I was in love with it and had to "re-create it". And no, itis not in my time period or the country in which I tend to move toward in garb making and research. (Elizabethan England usually). It is a 1526 German dress with blackwork, counted work, smocking/pleats, and what appears to be a stumpwork headdress.

I call it the Meyer Dress since it is in an alter painting by Holbein the Younger of the Meyer family. So over the past week I have gone through and re-created the blackwork templates for the four different blackwork designs on the sleeves of her dress (which will also work well into my blackwork research project). And I did research on designing the geometrical counted work motif from the collar. I purchased silk threads, and will be doing a sweeties back trying out the geometrical design to see if it is working. If it works I will do the collar and the trim aroudn the neck first and applique them after. Then I will do the blackwork pieces and applique theym on.

I am doing this this way A) I don't have enough linen or funds to buy linen enough to make the entire dress at this time. B) I am going to make this all by hand, hand, hand that includes the emboirdery, sewing and such so I need to do research on how the gown was made, and create a mock-up and size it and then put it together. But if I work on the embroidery separately and then put it all together I might finish all the parts about the same time.

Photos are on their way!!! I created a photobucket account I just have to figure out how to create and link the urls. :) So we are working on that!

Was working on the Great Northeastern War scroll I have last night, have to finish it off tonight. I figure at this point it takes about three nights to do a scroll (low to middle end) and four to five nights (high end). So I can plan things out a little better in the future. I usually though have to come up with a mock up before even sitting down or it will take longer than the times listed above.

Queen's favors are going well. I hoped to have them all done by Wednesday, originally going to mail them in, but I am going to give to the baron/baroness to turn it since it is their frist Pennsic as landed baron(ess) it would look good for them to turn them in. All together I think I have about 110-120 favors to turn over. Some emboridered (about 23-25) the rest painted by moi.

The Domesday is nowhere near finished I only have 15 or so names, so I think it should be cancelled. We did it once, and most of the names in this one were in the old one. It is kind of stupid at this point. But we will see what happens.If anything I think it should be a suppliment to the old one, not a whole new one. But that ismy opinion.

I have started on my blackwork research project. The only problem is most of the online photos suck and you can't see the patterns to draw up new ones...but I will keep working on it.