There's Planning, And Then There's Planning Ganging Aft Agley

The vaguely-nauseous and anxious feeling I got when looking at my kanban board the last two weeks made it clear that I had to do some clearing of the mental decks before putting serious needle to cloth.  (And also some physical clearing, as I hadn't absorbed the, cough, 25 yards of fabric I brought home last weekend.) So I spent some time on that yesterday.  The first step was to make a card (i.e., Post-It) for every item that a) I might want for Pennsic or b) wanted to make out of the new fabric--these are overlapping but by no means congruent sets. The purpose of this step was twofold: to get all the ideas out of my head and on record, so they would stop floating around taking up skull space[1]; and also, to know what fabric to keep out and which to stash.  I also flagged some blockers and linked them where appropriate (those are the smaller ones in the center, and the colored tags on some items). 

Why did I do it physically instead of in my Trello board, you may well ask?  First, because it's easier when you're going back and forth between fabric piles to just scribble on a scrap of paper than it is to go through the steps of making an electronic asset--particularly since some get crumpled up & thrown away; and second, because my board is presently full of stuff that's not immediate as well, and I'd need a much bigger monitor to see it all, and this made for more & better instant visualization.  All of these Post-Its will now get turned into items on the Trello board, certainly.

As you see, this resulted in a pile of projects that will keep me going into the next decade; but I resolutely refused to sweat about it, and after consultation with my dashing consort[2], selected/prioritized the items that are Minimum Viable Product for his 14th century Pennsic, to wit:
1. Linen shirt (white) 
2. Linen braies (white)
3. Linen hose (heavy ochre)
4. Wool Bocksten tunic (tropical-weight; I have several fabrics for him to choose from)
5. Linen Bocksten tunic (blue)

(The bonus rounds are, in order, a light wool hood; a fitted cote--pourpoint pattern sans padding--; and wool hose.)

Now, my BFF and I have a play-date in two weeks for a Bocksten production line, since we volunteered to make some Pennsic tunics for His new Highness; so my intent is to slip #4 and #5 into that process.  Therefore the immediate priorities, other than washing the linen that hasn't been washed yet, is to get cracking on the undies.  And lo! I had cut out a shirt two weeks ago! so let's just assemble it!  HAW HAW HAW

First, my sewing machine started playing silly buggers.  I am not going to weary you with a detailed account of my two hours of shrieking frustration; suffice it to say now I know a lot more about timing, timing errors, and troubleshooting, and also I had done something stupid that should have been obvious if I'd approached the problem with logic instead of rage. But! Finally I was ready to roll.

I spent the next couple hours assembling the shirt with French seams (dont @-me; I know perfectly well they aren't period; but they are a good way to keep underwear linen together under heavy use) and, mirabile scriptu, I did not do a single one of them backwards or any other fashion of fuckup.  That may in fact be a new record.  I was feeling pretty damn smug about myself, as it was wholly assembled other than finalizing the neckline and doing the side seams from the gusset down, and it was only about 9pm; and I put it on Himself to decide for sure whether I wanted to just make the sides straight or add gores[4].  And then the screaming started.

- The sleeves are too long.
- The sleeves are too wide.
- I thiiiiiink the underarm gussets are too big too?
- The body is correctly wide around his midsection but bunches up like whoa under the arms (though that might resolve itself if the first three points are addressed).
- The neckhole is wider than I meant it to be, in spite of stringent and intentional efforts to Not Do That.

What makes this doubleplus frustrating is, I spent hours mumbling over a notebook and taking measurements of other garments he wears to get to the dimensions I used; and I basted various parts together and tested them on him before sewing; so to be this wildly wrong after all that work makes me feel like a complete loser. It also is rubbing my nose in the fact that, yes, I am pretty darn OK at draping and fitting at this point; but the true skill of the master, to look at a person or even just their measurements and intuitively turn that into a list of garment piece proportions, is still way beyond me. 

So I can fix this, yes.  I can cut down the sleeves and possibly the gussets and see where that gets us, and then it'll be another quick job to reassemble; and the neckline is within acceptable tolerances (just not what I had in mind).  Possibly I can even do it today, depending on how long it takes us to deal with clearing our stuff out of the communal storage room (thanks, landlord). But this has wasted time, fabric, and spoons, and I hate that.

I am also not looking forward to braies.  At all.


[1] I cannot overstate the importance of this step. 
[2] I'm not getting a new dress this year; my own goals are just to fix last year's new dresses so they fit.  The only thing I'm hoping for myself is a snuggly tunic for colder mornings, and maybe a shift with a more U-shaped neckline--most of mine are more boat-necked-ish and it just ain't right[3].
[3] I can get away with them under my GFDs but it starts being more obviously fail with the new kirtle.
[4] Yes, I know the St Louis shirt has gores.  But it's a century earlier and I'm not convinced something worn under a tight-fitting men's cote would, because you don't want a ton of undies fabric mushed under your body-con upper garment.

The Pourpoint Commission: Two Steps Forward, You'll Never Believe What Happens Next

I AM DOING CRAZY THINGS AND
MAKING A GIANT MESS WOOOOO

The last several days have been something of a roller-coaster ride. As previously alluded-to, on Sunday I was kindly lent a bow by a fellow artisan, and had a go at bowing cotton. What, you may well ask, is bowing cotton? It's exactly what it sounds like; but to answer the actual question, what you're doing here is taking the cleaned but still very clumpy raw cotton and breaking up the fibers; it is kiiiiind of like combing or carding wool, except that part of those processes is also geared towards aligning fibers to make yarn, and we are not doing that here; the sole object is to make the cotton evenly foofy and no longer clumpy. Why twanging the fiber against a bowstring is a great way to do this, and who thought of it first as a clearly obvious solution, are matters of complete opacity to me.

But it sure as heck works. 

Two portions of cotton, each 30g, pre- and post-bowing.

...Eventually. For the first half-hour or so, I was just sort of holding the bow casually at waist height and kind of twanging a little bit; this was working slightly, but very slowly and ineffectually, and I was getting a blister on my thumb from holding it strangely.  As well, the bow was strung upside down (this is a bow where that matters).  Once we re-strung it, over my protests of "it's fine really I am sure it doesn't matter", and I held it like an actual bow (as seen, in, ya know, the video I was attempting to follow), suddenly it started working like gangbusters; thus leading to the immortal battle-cry of "Things work SO MUCH BETTER when you do them right!!"   I think I need to have that translated and use it as my motto.   But, in any case, after about three hours I had a mighty chunk of bowed cotton, where "mighty" equates to 30 grams.[1]  (This was not an arbitrary number; I had calculated that as the weight of cotton batting I'd used in the first swatch.)  

I still thought it best to baste the border around my swatch so that the cotton would not come oozing out, so I did that thing[2], and then figured to lace it into my Big-Ass Quilting Frame™ as you would into a slate frame.  That was a glorious plan, oh yes it was.

The ultimate visual representation of *sad trombone*

Physics was clearly not on my side here and I realized I was going to need a different solution. My first kludge was to try sticking it in my biggest embroidery hoop, but the stuffing proved way too thick for that. The next fallback option is to get a frame of a more reasonable size. Well, I had meant to get one for embroidery projects anyways...but this is not the kind of thing you can usually rock up to your corner store and grab, or even get on Amazon; and I have blithered away far more time than I can comfortably spare already; I really need to be cracking on this. I have a couple irons in the fire and hope to have some kind of solution by Sunday, but AAAAAAAA.

Even putting the swatch aside, this has caused me to have some deep and uffish thought about how to do the actual bloody garment. I'm used to making garments in what I guess you'd call a piecework kind of way: cut out the pieces, make up the pieces (for however much or little that calls for), join the pieces. The more I chew it over, the more I'm thinking that's not how you can approach this work; I think it has to be done in the same way as the "3-D shapes on a flat ground" method, where the lining/base layer is stretched on a frame and the padding & fashion fabric are built on top of it. (Of course, less engineered than that technique, so simpler. Yay? I think?) I don't see any other way to make it work. If any of my illustrious readers has insight here, I shall be eternally grateful. And will bow lots of cotton for you.

[1] Also some quite sore shoulder and arm muscles that would be much worse the next day.  If only this was an easy motion to do with the off-hand as well, it could be a great workout--and it would produce something useful for your time, which is the core problem with a lot of exercise routines.

[2] Another Learning Experience: draw the quilting lines on the fabric before you stuff the piece, you numpty.

The Pourpoint Commission: Padding Your Answers

AAAAAA[3]

For once, I thought, I had a plan and a schedule and everything was going to proceed at a dignified, adulting sort of pace.

ha ha ha no

Operations began well enough; I went to a well-known quilting shop[1] downtown to pick up cotton batting, that being the stuffing substance recommended in the pattern for ordinary mortals; and the next night, I began making up my test swatch.

Here began quandaries.  First, how many layers of batting to use?  On the one hand, there needs to be a palpable amount, otherwise there's no percentage in bothering.  On the other, this is (again) a courtly garment, not military; it doesn't need the functionality of full-on padding; and though you'd want to look butch, you would not want to be so padded to look like the kid from A Christmas Story.  And, of course, the padding's missing from CdB, so we haven't much of a notion of how poofy it really was; and although (as seen in last week's manuscript image) the gentlemen of the time were often illustrated as having some serious chest padding going on, how much of that is artistic license[2]?

Le swatch

I thought I'd get around this problem by putting different amounts in half the swatch and seeing what I thought.  I started with two layers of batting on one side, and three on the other, which I found kinda...flat.  So I unpicked the two-layer side and added two more layers there, so I had a four-layer side and a three-layer side (that's what's in the photo).  And they both had a fair amount of body...but I really wasn't happy.  It was both too thick and too flat.  How can that be a thing?  Dither, dither, dither.

I posted this photo two posts ago but
now it's relevant

And then I started to think (a dangerous pastime).  It is known that they did not use cotton batting for this purpose medievally; I don't even know if they had anything similar to cotton batting.  If you look at the stuffing coming out of the Black Prince's jupon, you can see it more looks like an explosion of compressed cotton balls, or something; which makes sense as it's stuffed with cotton tow (basically, cotton that has been only minimally processed)--it has sure never been flattened and treated into sheets.  Shit gonna behave different, yo.  And yes, this is a military garment (if a fancy one); it may have been made differently than a court garment; but I'm inclined to think that if "this is how we stuff", then the difference is more likely to be in degree rather than in material.  

Naturally, the next question was "how's everyone else doing this?"  I spent an hour or so on the Googles, and based on the appearance of the pourpoints and jupons people are making (with one big exception, ahem), it looks like they've all stuck with cotton batting as well; they all have that flattened-out feel that my swatch does.  So, I could make at least the linen test version with my cotton batting; it's the Current Tech; but the more I thought about doing that, the more unhappy I became, because it just feels wrong.  Wrongity wrong wrong.  I don't want to make more wrong in the world.  And if I make the test garment out of wrong and go to make the real one out of right, then it isn't bloody much of a test garment, is it?  But I hadn't a clue where to get cotton tow; the big exception above was facilitated by a one-time gift of a bunch of it to FIT, which the school didn't want, and was fortuitously regifted by our international conspiracy.

I spent a day or two dithering, panicking, and freaking out on Facebook; thought maybe I could use wool roving or stuffing or something, and ordered a couple of swatches of the latter; contemplated making a surgical strike on Rhinebeck, which is this weekend, to buy vats of dirty sheep product; but was happily directed to a place (ironically, where I'd gotten wool swatches from) that sells raw cotton fiber by the sack.  Well OK then!  And 2nd-day delivery!  So that should show up at work tomorrow or the next day, and although I don't know I'll be ready to fit the client next Saturday (not even just the body pieces), I will be in a better position to make a better piece.

And then my iron melted.


[1] which is, very sadly, going out of business.  Go quickly and get some truly wonderful cotton prints.  I have 3.5 yds of a print of the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal, thank you very much. 
[2] I'm having some mental go-rounds on that same question regarding women's dresses and boob support.
[3] I found that image in a random Googling, and it's from the blog of a guy studying cotton production in China.  I feel like we all ought to go read it at some point. 

A Little Flat Cap Fail

Immediately after my previous update, I took action on my determination stated therein to make something tangible as a break from trying to digest vast quantities of information.  So, I dug out the flat cap pieces I cut out A YEAR AGO ahem and looked to see where I was at: which was, I had the fashion fabric (black wool) pieces and nothing else.  And indeed, now I think on it, where I'd gotten stuck previously was over-thinking what I should line it with.  Hello, own worst enemy.

It seems that silk linings for flat caps go pretty far down the social scale, so I dug out some scraps from my Extremely Purple Gamurra to use.  (This is not really an appropriate period choice, as the silk is a slubby dupione and the purple is way too optically bright, but I don't have any more appropriate scraps and I'm not cutting into virgin silk for a first-try project.  Also, S. likes purple.)  I cut out the matching lining pieces and started assembling.  The Tudor Tailor pattern is pretty straightforward and by the end of that day I had the crown basted and gathered and the hatband & lining attached on their appropriate sides.

Gathered crown, sitting on top of the unattached
brim.  Did I mention the lining was VERY PURPLE?

The next step is to attach the brim, but I wasn't feeling happy about it.  The wool is a very light, loose twill, and the silk is stiff for its weight but is also very light, and it all felt like it was going to be super-floppy even by flat cap standards.  I thought it best to reinforce that a little, so I dug out more scraps--dark brown cotton canvas that was part of the interlining for my 16th c. gown--and interlined the brim.  

Protip:  Do not try and retro-fit this into a brim & lining you have already sewn together.  Just fucking unpick it and do it right.  It will take a fraction of the time.  ASK ME HOW I KNOW.  

Looks great, doesn't it? 

Finally all the hurdles were overcome and everything was attached and I had something that, by gum, rather looked like a flat cap!  I did my victory lap around the living room and then had the recipient try it on--whereupon it perched on top of his head like an oversized fascinator.  Somehow, in spite of careful measurements, it came out about 2.5" too small for his head.  This is far too typical in my life.

I put the thing aside in disgust for about a week and dove into some pourpoint research (more about which later) before finally gritting my teeth and unpicking the pieces to see what had gone wrong.  Upon extracting the hatband and ironing it out, I measured it and it actually is the right size for his head. I guess what's happening here is that the extra volume caused by the gathers turns the perfect-sized hatband into a too-small one.  I think I don't have any choice but to cut a larger hatband & lining; I hope I don't have to cut out a new brim as well.  

I had even more antipathy for the whole thing after this realization so I put it to the side again, and I've just been knitting for the past week (at least the damn sock is nearly done; just in time for summer, as anticipated).  My attention's also been sucked away by Pennsic work (I'm the land agent/general factotum for a camp of about 70 people) and for an event I'm helping run next month where I volunteered to teach yet another class I haven't actually prepared for.  And I'm about to go on vacation, which is full of yay!, but I'm feeling time slipping away and I'm not feeling good about that at all.

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.

The Pouch of Damocles: Livin' On The Edge

S'up.

(Disclaimer: this post has rather a lot of turgid weaving detail.)

When last we left off, I was dithering about how precisely to do the edges, cords, etc. on the pouch.  Rather than trying to solve everything in one swell foop, I thought it as well to do a test weaving, both to get myself back in the tablet-weaving swing and also to see if I could replicate the cord on the Polish purse.  So I pulled out Crockett and Collingwood and started flipping through patterns.  (Why did I not already have a sense of patterning?  Because the couple of tablet-woven edges I've done thus far were for strength, not decoration; I wasn't working any kind of pattern--just two or four tablets threaded the same direction, turning in the same direction until I had to reverse because the warp twist was getting onerous.)  

After a deal of flipping and mumbling, I reckoned as how I needed four tablets with four threads each, alternating S and Z-threading from tablet to tablet.  The original cord only had one color, though, and I wanted to do two; after some more flipping and mumbling, I figured that the two bottom holes of the two center tablets needed to be threaded in the contrasting color.  So I set up my warp an' all, using scrap fabric and DMC floss, and astonishingly it worked out exactly as it looked in my head:

Gentlemen, BEHOLD!

Heartened by this success, I felt mentally ready to tackle the topography portion of the question.  I mumbled and scribbled and looked at photos and evolved some theories:

• Option 1: start on pouch lower corner, go up the side; when you run out of side, convert to normal weaving to make the hanging cord; when you have 50% of as much hanging cord you want, wrap around a post and come back the other way; rejoin the other side of the pouch & go the rest of the way down, finishing at the other lower corner. (I think the V&A pelican purse and the Met's oak tree purse are both done this way)
• Option 2: start on pouch lower corner, go up the side; when you reach the top, split your weave into two separate paths, each of which will go along a top half of the pouch; rejoin when you get to the other side; then go back down the other side.  Hanging cord is then a separate entity, either tablet-woven or finger-looped. (Polish purse, definitely; maybe the Patient Griselda purse)

(As a side note, some purses have tablet-weaving across the bottom as well, but I think that mostly happens if the front and back are separate pieces--for instance, if they're both heavily embroidered--rather than the purse being a piece of fabric folded in half.) 

Anyways, both of these options make good sense because, in tablet-weaving, setting up the warp is a laborious, time-consuming, and annoying task, so you want to do as much weaving as possible in one continuous run.  I decided to go with #1 because I wasn't confident in my ability to split and rejoin the weaving, and I wasn't going to have time to set up another practice run.  Also, believe it or not, I hadn't had a go yet at doing regular tablet-weaving (the kind where you are making a flat band, rather than attaching it directly to a piece of fabric), and this would give me a nice long opportunity to do that.

Here's a previous version, when
I was doing an edge on a gown

The work begun

So I set up my warp and plunged in.  The first segment was more or less old-hat, and both the technique and the pattern came along nicely.  I should note that I don't have a proper loom or even the standard kludge of the modern tablet-weaver, which is two C-clamps attached to a table or a board or some such; I usually tie one end of the weaving to a table leg and the other end to a chair or something else that can be moved closer as the weaving progresses, and I sit on the floor to weave.  This is un-ergonomic and back-breaking in the extreme, but it works OK, and I hadn't felt like I'd committed to the technique enough to go out and actually buy (or construct) better technology.  However, this project illuminated several major flaws in settling for "good enough".  

First of all, as I started coming back around the other side, keeping the tension firm became more and more of an issue (though this was more due to the furniture items I was anchoring to, i.e. a not-heavy-enough lamp and a cart on wheels).  If your tension isn't at the right point, your weaving may start looking untidy and uneven, but worse, the tablets can flop around and then your pattern will get screwed up.

The tablets are starting to wobble.
This is not good.

 But more importantly, you must choose very very carefully what you are going to use as the pivot point to reverse directions if you are weaving a contiguous loop.

Very very oops.

Oops.

RÅSKOG has been a wonderful asset to my sewing life, as a modern and flexible replacement for the traditional mending basket, but the frame is cast out of a single piece of metal and it simply could not be taken apart in such a way to free up my knitting.  After the requisite amount of fiddling and thorax-thumping, I saw there was no choice but to cut the Gordian knot, as it were.  However, several pouches with extant hanging cords have a decorative bead at the top, so I dug one out of my collection of random findings and jammed the ends through.

#thereifixedit

The next step was to finish the top edges, front and back.  I considered whether to just do the same pattern, but I thought it would be too heavy (as I was only binding two layers of fabric instead of four), so I reduced the pattern to two tablets--in essence just using the two center tablets from the side pattern.  That was fine, but I ran into tension problems of epic proportions, because the "turn" was so tight; I was doing this bizarro mess of pinning the pouch to the fabric of the couch, which only barely worked, and the tablets got twisted and turned and botched the pattern and argh. 

Never do this.

I also ran into problems trying to finish the end of each piece of weaving.  You might think that at least the bottom corners could (with some help) be turned into tassels, but in most cases the tassels appear to be completely separate entities (more on tassels next post).  I ended up just kind of binding them off any ol' way with extra needle and thread, but it's not very tidy and I think there has got to be a better way.  It probably involves planning.

95th Rifles Uniform: Panic At The Disco

One of those is my right brain, one's my left brain.  I leave it to you to determine which is which

This week, October started.  That means I'm down to T-30 days, and shit be gettin' real, as the kids say; and as of bedtime Monday I still had not put scissors to a single piece of fashion fabric.  Monday evening was slated for admin tasks: go through fabric swatches that had arrived in the mail, work out what bones I really needed for the corset (the ones calculated by the pattern size were unsurprisingly too long, since I am short and squat), order the 65 buttons to sew on the uniform coatee, etc.  However, what actually happened is that I fell down a rabbit hole of Too Much Information, which was both a) very helpful and b) incredibly daunting.

Because Sharpe's coat didn't have ENOUGH
buttons.  D:

Said rabbit hole was a forum for the 2/95th Rifles re-enactors in Britain, who (like most military re-enactors) are some pretty serious cats.  Specifically it was a thread in which one of their chief tailors set out on a commission to make a full outfit for a new officer recruit; he continued to blog his progress via thread updates, culminating in photos of the finished product (which looked pretty darn amazing, at that).  If you are curious, you can check out the thread here, but for the TL;DR contingent, let me just sum up by saying the project took him about six months.  six.  SIX.  In vain did I console myself that it wasn't the only project he was working on; in vain did I reason that he was making the entire outfit, not just coatee and trousers.  All I could hear was SIX MONTHS.  Though, on the bright side, the thread also supplied me with some details and descriptions of both the only surviving officer's coat of the era (which is in the Royal Green Jackets museum, but not pictured anywhere on their website, grr) and some other details they had painstakingly exacted from other primary sources.   Long story short, here are my takeaways, as they used to say in meetings:

- Sharpe's trim is soutache (or Russia braid).  The originals used silk twisted cord. Soutache being thicker, that's probably why they just made Sharpe's buttonholes as loops made out of the trim, rather than for-realsies buttonholes.  I'm having an impossible time finding wide enough soutache (usually what you see is 1/4" or smaller), and also soutache is harder to sew. On the other hand, since the cord is narrower, they fit a lot more buttons.
RESULT: I will use twisted cord, but space it all out more like Sharpe's.  Might use wider cord, too.

- The odd three-tab bottom on the back of Sharpe's coat is a misunderstanding of the vestigial cornered tails on the back of the original. 
RESULT: I will make the pointed tails like in the original, which will also avoid the "I can see your shirt peeking out" problem.

This is Walter Clarke's actual jacket.
Note the bottom center.

see the tabs there?  Someone didn't grok what he
was looking at.

- There's still something weird going on with the cuffs between this one and Sharpe's.  They look the same, but somehow the buttons come out different?  
RESULT: handwave the shit out of it.

- [Extended dither about fabric goes here.]
RESULT: use the excellent wool twill; and when I have the buttons in hand, give them a good heft, figure out if I'm going to need to interline, and do the job.

Anyways, all of these results are well and good now, when I've thought them through and come to decisions; but in the moment I went to bed with a teeming brain...and then woke up in the wee hours with my heart thundering as if it was going to burst out of me like a baby Alien.  Pulse up from my usual ~70 to a good 95 beats per minute. It took about an hour and a half to calm down and get back to sleep.

And then I was adrenalized, twitchy, and on edge during the day.

And then it happened again the next night; und so weiter.

I have, at the earnest representation of my friends, taken medical advice, and it would appear that this is some sort of anxiety or panic attack.  Just knowing that has helped somewhat; and I've taken more positive action, and I've written everything (!) up into a work breakdown structure, and I feel like the physical symptoms are in abeyance.  But I'm really torked about having to waste cycles on this.  OBEY, MEATSACK PARTS.

(In the words of one of my sewing circle: "Have you considered taking on projects with fewer bees in them, which will reduce your chances of becoming Covered in Bees?")

Banner Project I: Why We Baste

No, not that kind.  Though it's equally important.

It's not particularly usual for me to come home from work & be ready to sew without a fair amount of dithering, futzing, yak-shaving and other avoidance; so to have had that situation, work steadily for two hours (with a break for delicious caldo verde brought to me on the couch by my loving and nurturing sweetie), only to have to unpick everything that I did, is particularly galling.

As is often the case, this lamentable state of affairs is nobody's fault but mine.  I have been slowly growing a visceral understanding of how important (and how much easier it makes your life) to baste when you are making clothing; and I knew that it's critical to have pieces on a banner lie flat, or it will be stupidly obvious; and I even knew that the materials + technique I was working with were not forgiving in this category.  But I was worried about time, and I thought "oh, if I get it all flat on the ironing board and pin carefully it will be fine".

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA no.

It is, I am coming to believe, axiomatic that any time I cut a corner to save myself time or trouble, I am in fact shooting myself in the foot and will end up worse off than had I just done it properly in the first place.  Indeed, in this case I am particularly desirous to smack Past Me upside the head because, after unpicking the work, re-flattening it, and pinning it again, it took me less than ten minutes to baste it down.  And lo! everything lies flat as I attach it!  Quelle surprise!  :-/

Lesson learned.  Back to production.  

Anyways, it's probably a judgment on me for watching Starship Troopers while sewing.

"Recruit-Trainee Rico, you are sentenced to ten lashes for being a damfool.  Everyone else, beefcake for dinner tonight."