In Which There Is Inner Turmoil

this would be a metaphor

In the wake of my Hey Kids Let's Put On A Class commitment, I set aside the day for starting work on it--partially because wouldn't it be so novel if I got something done before the last minute for a change, but chiefly because sometimes these things evolve a little under the handling and I wanted to make sure that the description in the Pennsic classes handbook will actually reflect what is going to come out of my piehole.  

I anticipated that there would be some amount of brain bees in the course of this; my process, insofar as I have one, usually looks not unlike this:

1. X=0
2. Suck up vast quantities of information
3. Attempt to distill this down into something the mind can encompass.  
4. Freak out
5. X=X+1
6. IF X<2 GOTO 3; ELSE GOTO 7
7. Profit!

I did not expect the freakout phase to happen quite this quickly.  Let me see if I can capture it adequately for the edifications of Future Me as well as other benighted pilgrims on the Path--

As I may have mentioned previously, I made my dashing consort a black linen suit (i.e., doublet and Venetian hose) for last Pennsic.  I was killing several birds with one stone in this project; first, the linen was good quality but I got it for a relative song, so--this being my first effort in the technology--if I made a complete fuckup of it I hadn't wasted expensive material; second, being linen inside and out, it should be quite light and comfortable even in hot weather; and third, since it hasn't any interlining, it would be machine-washable, so he could grub around in it for camp work (or even just the sweat of day-to-day hot Pennsic) and that would be OK.  And indeed, this is the kernel of idea that has germinated into this class plan. 

So, what is problem?  Problem was that the feedback my dashing consort expressed was:

• he was still awfully warm when wearing it
• he felt a little uncomfortable with how the shirt was bunched under the doublet
• he felt rather insecure, like his pants would fall down
• ...which we fixed by lacing the Venetians to the doublet, like they're supposed to be, BUT...
• then, every time he lifted his arms more than halfway, he felt like the doublet was going to rip from the hose.

Which is fine; it was a first effort and mistakes were likely to have been made; but I wanted to try and puzzle them out to know what I should make as an exemplar for this class.  Is the shirt too generous in its fabric?  Did I cut the doublet wrong, or the Venetians, or both?  And so forth.  

This is after having him move around
a bunch. There are clues here for the
observant consulting detective.

One of the elements strongly in my mind at present comes from a recent thread on the Elizabethan Costume FB group, which dovetailed in with both my 19th century project and my previous pants rant; the question of natural vs. modern waist.  Here's a link to the full thread, which I think you can view without being a group member; but if you can't, or if it's TL;DR, the takeaway is that for most of the Period of Pants (and indeed, up until sometime in the 1960s), gents' trousers sat at the natural waist or close to it; not at all where you see them today.  (And I had this flagged as a "gotcha" to mention in the class.)  But it made me wonder: is this where I screwed up on the linen suit?  So, I had Himself put it on, and I did my best to make a critical analysis of the situation.

First I got mentally stuck on the shirt.  That is a lot of fabric.  Too much fabric?  I could take some out of the sides.  And the side slits should prob'ly be further up to his hips, so he has full range of motion, so the torso could be more snug.  I nodded, satisfied that I had solved the problem--and then realized that would make the sleeves way too short.  Maybe I could release some of the fabric from the neck gathers?  Maybe the neck shouldn't be gathered at all?  But it has to be gathered.  Back and forth and back and forth...

I left that for a bit and had him put on the suit, lacing just a couple of points for convenience.  It looks right, they're meeting--but that's too low?  It's on his hips?  That's not right!  Pull them up?  Now it's bisecting his special place!  What if I do this?  What about that?  Where did I really fit it to?   How could I be this wrong?  

The last straw was going back to the Tudor Tailor pattern I used, and trying to parse out between it and the example images where I went off the rails.  Now, there aren't, unfortunately, any images of a gent wearing just his shirt & Venetians or trunk hose, so it was hard to tell; but I got it in my head, based on the fully-dressed photos, that they had cut the hose to the modern waist, not the natural waist.  I can't tell you why this, in particular, was the cause of my soul being crushed into the approximate dimensions of a small six-sided die, but so it was.

here's me

At this point there was nothing for it but a crying jag, in which were barely-perceptible self-excoriations about my incompetence and failures and how much better at all this I should be by this point in my career.  This was nobly borne by Himself, who made every possible effort to reassure and support me; finally I pulled out of the nosedive, gritted my teeth, and started to work the problem.

First, I found his natural waist.  Then I had him put on the Venetians, sans shirt, for better visibility.  I had him hold them up at the highest point where it was not impacting his marital prospects, and compared.  OK!  It's a tad lower than his natural waist, but only about a half inch; that's within acceptable tolerances.  Now, the doublet: the lacing strip still meets up with the waistband of the Venetians (if somewhat unevenly front-to-back); this is a result!  Standing still, he said there was no discomfort!  Therefore: why problem?

Um, no.

Ignoring the hose for the moment, I had him move around, stretch his arms above his head, bend over and back, and so on.  This caused the doublet to move halfway up his chest and the sleeve to move halfway up his lower arm.  Clearly, though the shirt may not be perfect, it's not the primary trouble spot.  No: the problem here is that I've made a doublet of a fashionable cut out of a (relatively) base material.  Much like you wouldn't chop wood in a bespoke suit (particularly in the too-tight way they like 'em these days), you would not be particularly physically active in a doublet fitted this closely.  

I cannot properly express the unbounded relief I felt from this realization.  I didn't do anything (too) wrong; I had faithfully interpreted the pattern I was working from (and the pattern was what it ought to have been), I had simply not understood its ramifications.  The path forward is clear: I will put some shiny trim on this suit, and treat it as a dressy outfit, but of a very summer weight (like for opening ceremonies, or if we actually have to go to royal court, *gurk*); and I will cut him a much more loose and generously-fitting workaday doublet that will be appropriate for bending and lifting and all.

I still need a better understanding of the elements that go into permitting or restricting range of motion.  It's moments like this that make me think I really should go take a couple of the basic FIT courses, as I'm pretty sure I'd learn it better in a class environment than by trying to read up on it.

and then I saw Judi Dench in a doublet and paned hose and they were set to her natural waist and everything will always be OK.

More Odds & Ends

there's that job jobbed

The first thing I did with the aforementioned free will was to finish, believe it or not, another daisy.  There's a comedic backstory to this (which, to anyone who knows our atelier, is 100% par for the course), but long story short, the Actual Laurel Cloak™ hasn't been done yet (the candidate was robed with a substitute cape-let [that we stayed up all night making {and was still pretty stylin', I must say}]).  It will still happen, and it will still have lots of people's embroidered daisies on it, and mine had been hanging about since August, so I finally got off my arse and finished it.  ONE. MORE. CHECKBOX!

I'd done about 1/3 of the petals in the previous push (see previous post for context re: what I was trying to accomplish), which took me maybe 6 hours in total..whereas it took me somewhat less than that to do the entire rest of the motif, so I think we may safely say that Learning Has Occurred.  There's clearly a lot of room for improvement, technique-wise; when I look at the stitches closely, I am bothered by their unevenness, and I'd like the shading to be more graceful; but I feel it's not bad for a first attempt.  I certainly do understand now why they recommend you actually color in the design with colored pencils before stitching, though.

Once the petals were done, I just did the stem in stem stitch (duh), and the center as well.  Mostly because I was kind of on a roll with it, but also I wanted to experiment with using it as a filling stitch.  I'm not sure about the two colors of yellow--I had a vague thought it would give a kind of textured effect, which I don't think it did exactly, but it's a little more visually interesting than plain yellow all the way in?  Maybe?  Or maybe the spiraling pattern of the stitch would've been enough.  It's not bad, I just don't know if it would have been better.

I'm in a wait state on the possible commission, so I backgrounded that process and spent some cycles on what classes to teach at Pennsic.  I figured to do the hands-on tablet weaving class (mem: buy C-clamps), but I wasn't sure what else; I've taught the class on  linings (or not) in Gothic fitted dresses for the past three years running and maybe I should give it a break, and the pouch class is all well and good but it doesn't have a lot of practical application for most people.  It occurred to me that it might be useful to put something together on working-class Elizabethan clothes for Pennsic (I have a possible title: "No, I'm Not Putting The Tent Up In A Farthingale"), since that's a topic I'm currently struggling with.  It means I have to spend the next couple months making working-class Elizabethan clothes, for myself as well as my dashing consort.  I questioned whether this would be useful in a world where we have resources like The Modern Maker and The Tudor Tailor and Stuart Peachey's series and Drea Leed's site, but the feedback from my Facebook Greek Chorus was overwhelmingly positive.  I do feel a little bit hinky teaching other people's stuff (even with complete transparency and citation), but it was pointed out to me that a lot of fellow-travelers a) don't know or have access to these sources, and b) don't have time or capacity to trawl through it all to get actionable information, so a well-done distillation (especially including the results of field testing) would be valuable to that population.  So, all righty then.

Coping With Free Will

I couldn't find a good image of Buridan's ass, so
you get infinity instead.

I have alluded previously to the struggles of prioritization, and now that all the hot deadlines have been passed, this is a matter that's bubbled back up to the top.  I have a little bit of breathing room at the moment: no displays, competitions, peerage regalia, or other shenanigans are in the offing, and although I have been contacted about a commission (eep!) that's still in the discussion phase.  So I'm an unusual state of complete liberty to pursue whatever I want, a state I have not seen in ... over two years, I think.

Regrettably, that often leads to hitting reload on Facebook a ridiculous number of times and/or falling down the black hole of TV Tropes. 

For to prevent the effusion of blood precious free time, I had already created several itemized lists of Things I Could Be Doing.  There's a mending list, there's a household-goods-to-make list (e.g., banners [PAINTED THIS TIME]; heraldic butt-cushions for the X-chairs), there's a new-clothes-and-accessories list, und so weiter.  This helps a little bit--just pick something off a list!  Anything!  They're all Approved Projects!--but I realized that many of the line items require some amount of prep work: materials I don't have on hand, or learning a new skill, or greater pre-planning.  Additionally, weekday evenings are limited enough in time and brain capacity that they are usually not suited to starting a new undertaking.

I'd already evolved the idea of having a couple of works-in-progress available in the Sewing Crap Cart that sits next to the couch; things that I can just pick up and work on with minimal brain intervention.  (Right now, for instance, there's that darn winter sock I haven't finished {though I have finally gotten to the heel flap!}; a half-done embroidered daisy; a slow-moving Celtic-interlace embroidery I've been working on for about five years now; and what should be a box o' mending but it has suffered scope creep and I need to put actual mending in it.)   This has worked moderately well and I've spent some evenings nibbling away at the backlog.  But I've also made an effort to pre-source materials for things I know I want to get to at some point. I have a bunch of tablets and I've borrowed a proper loom for when I'm ready to take a crack at a tablet-woven fillet; this weekend, I picked up a variety pack of plain wooden beads to try making those thread-wrapped buttons the Elizabethans were fond of; and I'm going to make a shopping list for a GIANT BANNER-PAINTING FEST that will take place this summer.  (The heraldic cushions may be delayed while we wait for my dashing consort's arms to pass {or not}.)

Tangentially, I've felt a little strange about the fact that I haven't made a new dress for myself in a couple of years (and the most recent one is, in fact, too small for me at my present fighting weight, ahem).  But let's take a look at my wardrobe unlock'd (links are to photos of me in said garment):

• six chemises (plus one that can only be worn for 16th century)
• three 14th c. restrictive layers (red linen, brown linen, red wool)
• three 14th c. versatile layers (green wool, brown stippled wool, blue silk)
• three 15th c. gamurra (blue wool, minty wool, purple silk)
• one 16th c. gown (super fancy)

(And this isn't even counting tunics and bog shmatas and the like.)  There are people who go to three times as many events as I do, who have half the number of clothes! I do have a couple of dresses in the pipeline I'd like to get to, but these are all in pretty good shape and look pretty good on me, so I want to concentrate my efforts on doing better by my dashing consort.  Or, if I need to make something for myself, it should be filling an actual gap; a second pair of hose, a better hood with proper gores, the aforementioned fillet, etc.  That said, I will absolutely permit mending time on these: last night, for instance, I did repairs on the red linen, and I redid some of the eyelets on the red wool--they were too small to begin with and shredding open due to cheap-ass thread, leading to vast annoyance whenever I try to lace it up. 

I do have a couple remaining items to get off my conscience (the banner lining is staring threateningly at me), but now I want to prioritize getting Himself properly set up for Pennsic.  Now that he's actually been to war, I think we both have a clearer notion of what his comfort requires.  (He's also expressed some discomfort in his range of arm motion, so I will need to explore some better tailoring in that department.)  But at the very least, here's my aspirational list:

• Make the flat cap I cut out last year (!)
• One or two more shirts are probably in order.
• Refit the jerkin and Venetians my lovely & talented apprentice sister made up for him--not her fault, the pattern I sent her was too big--and possibly add sleeves to make it a doublet.  Also lacing holes.
• Add lacing holes to the linen suit I made for him last year.
• All these lacing holes mean I need to make a metric assload of lacing points, with aglets.  *sob* (I wonder if I can justify dropping 46 quid on a dozen pre-made ones from the Tudor Tailor.  On the one hand, fuuuuuuuuuck that's expensive.  On the other hand, I am provably incompetent at agleting.)
• It'd be nice to throw in a warm over-tunic for late night potty runs or whatever.
• I'm super tempted to make him a 14th-century outfit.  I mean, I always intended to; but the aforementioned possible commission is for a Charles de Blois pourpoint, so if I gotta learn the technology anyways...
• though this means not just the tunic, but also braies, hose, and probably a hood.  OH LOOK SCOPE CREEP

All that, and paint a bunch of banners, and make myself a headband with fake braids, in four months, along with all my other commitments?

Quick and Virtuous: Queen's Favors

Straightforward.  We like that.

It is the custom in the SCA (particularly in the East Kingdom, but I think it's pretty universal?) for a queen to have a tangible object with a particular design or badge specific to her that she can give to people who she wants to recognize outside the formalized awards framework.  Her Champions will have them, of course, but they can be given out for any other reason she sees fit.  These usually take the form of a "belt favor"*--a rectangle of fabric that folds over (or has a loop to be threaded upon) one's belt--and her chosen design will be on the front of it; most often in embroidery.  And since each reigning queen will need a lot of them, and since they're often embroidery, we usually end up pitching in as time permits.

I wanted some work that could be purely execution (as opposed to thinky-planny) as I came down off the banner project and some other stresses, and conveniently about that time the favor specs for Her Incoming Majesty got posted, so I reckoned as how that might fit the bill, as well as being a Generally Neighborly Thing To Do.  And, even more conveniently, I realized I had some leftover golden-yellow linen that was really too small to do anything else with, so I ran off as many "blanks" as I could fit out of the fabric (16, as it happened), and spent an evening tracing the pattern onto them all.  Not that I figure to do that many of them, gaah!  But I can take them to a local group meeting and give them out to others as a pre-made package, which--having been on the recipient end of similar efforts--I can vouch for as a good way to increase production.  

The specs, as you see above, are pretty blissfully simple: outline the design in black on a gold background.  One has the option of filling in the keys in a golden-yellow color as well, but a) I didn't think I could find a color that wouldn't look weird in contrast to the background, and b) since the specs don't call for any kind of backing or lining I wanted to make the reverse side as un-messy as possible.  So, I stuck to outlining.

For stitch choice, I had a moment of thinking double-running stitch, because it looks the same on both sides, also an advantage when you don't have a lining; but I haven't done it before and it's a counted stitch, and I wasn't sure this design would work terribly well as a counted pattern.  The smart people can probably convert it, but that sort of gets away from the Not Thinky Planny objective, so I chose stem stitch instead.

Result:

Even though the silk thread I was using was incredibly catchy and annoying, this went amazingly fast.  I finished almost the entire design in one watching of The Mummy (now on Netflix!) (and part of that was just getting accustomed to the stitch).  Obviously I could use some more practice; the first Roman numeral isn't quite as crisp as I'd like, and there's clearly a knack to using stem as a filling stitch; but on the whole it was almost like a vacation.  I'll be OK with doing a couple more if I can't farm out all the blanks I've set up.  

This has also relaxed my brain enough that I can start clearing some other items in the Pending queue, several of which are owed to other people.  First priority is re-lining the Banner Of Doom and getting it back to its owner; then I have some curtains I promised to hem for someone, um, months ago; and I can buckle down for the Summer Sewing Season.



* For the clarification of non-medieval readers: this custom is 100% ahistorical.  There are some literary references to ladies giving sleeves, veils, or rings to their favored knights, but few references in the historical record, and no references at all to tokens of this ilk.

Banner Project I Redux: Well, That's Done (Mostly)

Outlining the petals does make a
huge difference, as you see

By dint of diligent (obsessive?) effort every night for the past oh god don't ask weeks, I managed to finish the last daisy petal about 11pm Friday night.  Whereupon I suddenly remembered I had some final clean-up on the documentation; so I packed my consort off to bed and finished that up too.  I figured that, since all I had to do was tidy up one small stretch of the cord along the bend and close up the sides of the banner, I could easily do that in the morning before we left for the event (particularly since it was only about 30-40min away, traffic depending).

ha ha ha where have we heard this kind of delusion before

In the cold hard light of retrospection, I know what I should have done: completely taken apart the lining from the banner (no matter how tidily I'd done the pole loop previously nor how proud of it I was) and just start from flat.  But!  That's so much more work, amirite?  Let's just sew back the seams I'd ripped, starting from right where they were.

Finished result, with bonus cat.  The
puckering is not due to him, though.

An hour and a half later, covered in thread bits after ripping them out twice more, we were already closing in on the You Absolutely Must Leave By Now Or Miss Everything hour and I still didn't have a lined banner.  I ripped the sides completely open, released the end parts of the pole loop, and worked from there; but I was still doing it on the fly, on the ironing board, and under stress (tears were happening by now). I got the sides closed, and then (after some clothing drama) got together and out the door, and I sewed the bottom closed and a few other cleaning-up bits in the car. As a result, when I hung it in the display*, the ground was puckered and not tidy, and the sides were even curling back slightly; didn't hang straight at all.  I'm not proud of that fact, but on the other hand, the work was good enough to tie me for first place in the Intermediate Division** of the competition.  So, there's that.

I'm going to step away from the project for a few days, but before I send it back to the owner, I'm going to take the lining off completely and Do It Right.  (Ideally I'll find some fringe trim so I can just sandwich-line it instead of bag-lining, which will make the job a little easier, too.)

NEVER. AGAIN.  until next time

* which I didn't get any pictures of, derp.  That said, groveling thanks to Beth and Briony for bringing poles & c. so I could hang it properly.
** disclaimer: there were only three entrants.