starting dress...

Well officially I have started a part of the actual dress. I cut up linen strips, ironed them and marked up one half inch markers for the box pleats. It was fussy trying to get these things to lay right, and I tried ironing each individual piece, then pinning them down as I went. I wound up matching the marks and placing holding stitches. I will put reinforcement stitches once I am done with each strip and then iron down and starch. I will have to put a reinforcement band on it as well cause the linen is pulling apart quickly, so I need to work fast and then do a whip stitch around the edges to keep things together.

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.

Body Double

One of the hard things about doing period garb that is close to the body, and you have an unusual body type or size it getting it to fit right without bunches, pulls, or openings in weird places. So to work on my meyer dress and get it pretty darn close to fit correctly I have made a body double out of duct tape and suran wrap. Then I put it over a fat girl sewing dummy and stuffed it with fluf so it can be used to size me. I might put a piece of knit fabric over it so I can pin things to it, but I have to go get said fabric first.

Here is me and my twin...yes ooohhh shock I have a photo of myself in here instead of just my craft. Scary aren't I. :D

crochet for fun!

Here is baby chuthulu, he will come with me to all future events and hangs out in my stitching bag.




Here is daddy chuthulu who hangs out in my boyfriends bathroom.

up to 01.05.08

Here is four of six lines of blackwork on the first upper arm lower band.

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. :)

I was busy in October doing a aoa in embroidery. Here is the award as it was presented. I wished the royals had signed the back! But I can't say much about it, though other royals signed the back of such works of art. But I won't get into that.

Have not given up...but was busy

Hello!!!

I have not given up, I was simply busy with work and a whole heck of a lot of overtime. Also, did a lot of work for crown (did the heraldry signs and sewed 8 reversible tabards for the lists).

I had to finish an aoa scroll...which they wanted something original that I have never seen....so I stitched it! Though I have seen a stitched scroll before, but it was for a munche for an embroiderer. I will try to post the aoa scroll soon. I have a photo of it on my computer, but it is at home.

I have gotten a few books off ebay, including the Janet Arnold 1560 - ? book, The Turdor Tailor and a few embroidery books. So my period collection is growing.

But this is just a quicky post to say I am alive and am still stitching. I am working on the prizes for St. Nick's games right now, cause somehow I got selected to run them...they were despirate that is all I have to say. :)

And I have a new aoa scroll that will be stitched as well. I kind of like the look of them when they are presented. This one is for 12th night. See ya there.

And the Shitith Hits the Fan...

One book.

All it took was one book.

My entire Meyer dress to date, is wrong. (Yes, I whept a little at this - and swore a lot)

I got the $5 book from ebay I ordered Holbein - The Paintings - Complete Edition by Paul Ganz.

It has a couple of close ups of the dress in true size.

The blackwork is all counted and jagged, not smooth so all my patterns are wrong.

The collar, the most painful part, is on green fabric with only, only yellow bias stitching and outlined in blackwork with little blackwork hashes in the green sections.

Well, at least I got it now, and not later.

I am putting it all aside until after the November conference. Cause this sucks.

Break from project...

Ok, so I need to take a break from the Meyer Dress project, for much of the month of October. I work friday and saturday nights at a local haunted hayride as a witch and that takes up some time.

The boyfriend is also home until Sunday night so no work happening until then anyway. ;)

I am working on an aoa for Crown Tourney on Nov. 3 and I am stitching it. Though it isn't the project it is on the linen I had on hand and thank god I used some of it, cause it sucks and I am going to get a different kind for the blackwork for the dress. That should be finished sometime next week.

I also volunteered to help with the heraldry for crown so I will need to work on that the next two weeks.

Then work kicks in for our big conference November 12-15. After that I can start on my dress again. I was told I couldn't bring stitching to the conference this year. Which sucks. I get up at the butt crack of dawn work my ass off, be nice to people and then don't get to take a 15 and stitch a little? F%*#!$% bs I tell ya!

Also I am doing the favors for Wars of Roses this year! I am so excited! I have a couple of plans. We will see. :D

I do have some more updates on the dress. I will post some of the stuff I already did on here shortly.

Now it is time to get back to work...busy...busy...busy

My future self

http://www.extremecostuming.com/home.html

I think this lady is great. She is funny, creative, talented and absolutly nuts! I want to be her someday. :)

Started the dress :)

Ok so I am moving along on this...

The bag is done, except the drawstring is not attached. That is kind of tricky so I am waiting to see if I even want to put it on. It requires some fancy braiding once it is installed and I need to be relaxed and calm before I do it. Right now is not the time.

I laid out the ground on the new fabric for the collar and neckline (did that Saturday) and on Sunday I started the stitching...I am a few inches in the collar at this point.

I figured I don't have to buy the fabric for the dress until november when I get back from my show. That is how long it will take to get the embroidery done anyway.

Tassles

Well I made the tassles and attached two of three already to the bag. You have to weave the ends into the fabric itself. They look cute. I also attached the silk overlap on the top of the bag, this was tough, but it happened. The silk was really light and whenI folded under the edge to sew on and then wrap the silk over the top it created this dense color edge, I hated it. Luckily I had intended on the top linen flap to double over to give more strength to the pull string area so instead I flipped it forward instead of backward and covered up the line with the linen fabric, and it looks nice.

I sewed up one side of the bag aready to make sure I can get it lined up ok.I originally made both sides of the bag the exact same, in forsight I probably could have made the pattern continue from one side to the other, but I wasn't sure if it would have come out right once I joined all the pieces and stuff, so it is nice the way it is.

I will have the bag finished -- most likely tomorrow -- and I picked up the fabric for the collar yesterday half off at ac moore, I love the email coupons!!!! They send you a new one every week. It is nice. And hopefully I will remember about knitters this week, I wanted to hear the lecture too.

Embroidery is done

Well the embroidery for the bag is all done...yeah!!!! I finished it on Saturday, while I should have been at Crossroads, but finances prohibited me from going. The good thing after this paycheck I will be caught up totally and working toward a new laptop and some savings hopefully. Again...yeah!!!!

I was reviewing how the bag was put together in period, and found I needed a silk ribbon for the top edge...I had silk fabric but no ribbon. So instead of going to the store, I got creative. I took a section of the silk fabric and some Yellow Chrome pigment from my illumination kit and some distilled water...and bam! Instant yellow silk for the top edge and the inside liner. I also don't feel so bad about the hand dyed threads not being so even, cause the silk piece matches the mango thread almost perfectly and that makes me happy. :) So I have silk hanging in my shower drying on a pant hanger with another hanger attached to the bottom to give it weight and straighten it out. It looks pretty I will photograph it before I take it down. So now I can claim to have hand dyed something. And actually in the future instead of paying a fortune for hand dyed silks I will just do that again. It was kind of fun, and I can claim I did it myself as well. :)

I got my graphite paper and traced out the patter for the blackwork band again, it is still really light and hard to see...so we will see if it works. If not. the last ditch effort will be to make up a small light table type thing and do a direct tracing...we will see.

I will also be making a body double of myself with my big girl manequin. I will shape it and size it to my size specifications so I can use it to start making the dress. Plus later I can use it to show the dress not on me at northern lights for judging and stuff.

I will also be picking up fabric for the collar and neckline this weekend to do the actually embroidery on that. So things are going along well.

Above is the current bag status as of five minutes ago. As you can see the right side is lighter on the bottom than the left side. You can see on the right where the first skeins of silk ran out and the new ones began in the upper right corner. I have a couple little fixes to do (missed a thread in the satin stitching or crossed it over, there are three, can you find them?

Other than that, it should be finished this weekend, if not tonight if I get really into it, but I doubt it I have to fix the zipper on my boyfriends carhart jacket before he leaves on Monday for a very long trip for work. So that must get done this weekend too. Plus that means I may be able to come to Denny's this Thursday...yeah! Depends on finances at that point.

Setback Number Two

Well, I gave up on the blackwork for a while and went back to the color.

I ordered the silks and they came in, and all was fine at first, but I noticed there were darker variations on the new mango than the previous, and the green is really dark compared to the previous.

It is good that I got them all at the same time so the collar will be the same colors, but the colors are not as nice as I originally picked out, and the bag is now lighter and darker in areas which is really noticable.

I still can't find the charger for my camera so photos will be coming soon. I will have the bag finished by the initial October 20 deadline for the a&s competition in CT, but I don't know if I want to submit it with the color changes...we will see. Actually the embroidery will be finished this weekend, then I have to put it together, and make the pull cord. I already made the hanging cord with silk I had.

Books from Vacation

Someone wanted to know the books I got while on vacation...well here they are:

British Embroidery Curious Works From the Seventeenth Century - Kathleen Epstein

and

Eighteenth-Century Clothing at Williamsburg - Linda Baumgarten

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.

So far so good...

Here is one skein or 5 meter of silk floss of the two colors of the Cresent Colors, Belle Soie in Shepard's Pasture and Mango.



With this I can determine how much floss I will need for the rest of the german bag and the collar and neckline of the underchemise of the Meyer Dress. I am estimating 7 skeins of the green adn 10 of the yellow because the yellow has to buttonhole all the way around as well. At $5.50 a skein, and $7.50 shipping it will be $101 for just the collar and neckline, and I still have to get the ground fabric. Time to go shopping (online is the only place I can get that much of the two colors). I will be ordering on Wednesday, we will see how long it takes to get in.

Vacation

Yes, I was on a two week vacation this month. Which, is why I haven't posted as often as I should have. I kind of boycotted all electronics I didn't need to deal with while on vacation, but now I am catching up.

We went down to Virginia (Steve and myself) taking grandma in tow for the first week. We really just lounged by the pool, but one day we went ot Colonial Williamsburg.

Steve wanted to see the gunsmith, I wanted to see the printer and bindery. I missed the printer, it closes at 1, but I got to see the bindery, but there was a group of little kids inthere when we stopped and I couldn't ask the questions I wanted too, which sucked, but it was nice hearing what he did have to say.

Steve saw the gunsmith, but it was not as impressive and he remembered, and a whole section was not accessible like it used to be when he went as a kid. In fact, a lot of Williamsburg was not as nice as I remember. Lots of things were closed or closed off and not available to the public any longer. I remember it was also a lot more informative and characters used to have to stay in persona and I remember many of the costumes used to be nicer.

I looked through all the exhibits, and I was very saddened to find only two examples of embroidery in the whole place. I found both in the Governor's Palace (and once photobucket starts working again -- cause it isn't this morning I will post the two objects up).

Though I did find a lovely book on british embroidery in the bookstore onsite and also a new book on costuming for Williamsburg. There was another book but it was $65, out of my budget for this trip (gas alone was about $350 for the 1st week alone).

And needless to say I didn not get much embroidery done, but I did work a little on my german bag for the Meyer dress.

Silk to Linen...

Well as of Wednesday, I have been slowly working on the sample bag I am doing of the german geometrical pattern from the collar of the Meyer dress. I wanted to see how well I work with actual silk on linen and make sure I am skilled enough at that kind of bias stitching that I don't totally mess it up.

I purchased silk from the local Homespun Heart, but they did not have enough for my project or my sample...which sucks...but I found the silks I want and the colors...Bella Soir hand dyed in Shepard's Pasture and Mango look very pretty and are muted soft colors...so it is looking really nice. Plus it gave me a chance to try the pattern out for the right size gauge of linen to use...I am using 28 tea linen, it is looking very pretty. I will use white with the actual project but the tea is easier to see on to start.

So when I get done I will have a matching bag...woo hoo :)

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:

This blog....

I found out I had not enabled some things with this blog (like comments). This has been corrected. I always encourage any comments or suggestions at any time (even criticisim -- but please if you say it isn't period or it wasn't done that way, give a reference source so I can look it). Thanks! :)