Pooh Tunics are DONE.

Her Majesty’s Pooh Tunic: > 3/4 assembled (one side complete, the other not).

His Majesty’s Pooh Tunic: 1/2 to assembled.

TRM came by on Monday to check necklines (I’m soooo paranoid about necklines) and a good thing, too, because I need to put bigger gussets in His Majesty’s sleeves.

If I am a good little worker bee I should be able to have them done by the middle of next week.

This pile of “Pooh” colored linen (Shoshanna’s color-description, not mine) is destined to be tunics for TRM, to be worn either solo or under their Viking overlayers.  To be done by Pennsic (eep!).  Good thing I’m machine-sewing them!  :)

Several months ago I agreed to put front & back gores in an otherwise-finished tunic for HRM Maynard.  It’s something I’ve done lots of times but I had never been totally satisfied with how it came out.  I can DO it, I just don’t LIKE it.

Then Tasha posted her instructions for setting a gore in a slit.  Tasha, it must be said, is a lifesaver, because while this is not anything that I hadn’t seen before, she put it in a way that I could make sense of.  (And I think having the instructions to refer back to really helped, too.  Previously I’ve only been SHOWN how to do it.)  And the gores, they came out beautifully.  Sadly, I didn’t manage to get any good pictures of them but HRM wore the tunic for court at Pax and it looked great, at least from afar.

I counted this for my A&S 50 because, while I didn’t do the whole garment, the re-learning how to do center gores was a pretty big thing for me and definitely will have an impact on how I go about constructing 13th century clothing.

I entered Caleb’s armor into Baronial A&S Championships last weekend.  It’s done except for the hosen.

Read more here.

13th century shoe! In Germany!  (link)  Too bad it’s not a patten…

I did a quick drive-by at practice tonight to let Caleb try on his fencing undergarment and to deliver his braies.  The undertunic is put together pretty much the same way as Shoshanna’s coat – this was not my initial intention but I messed up the math on the gores so that they didn’t reach into the sleeves like I wanted them to.  I’ll correct this on the overtunic for sure.  The garment fits him perfectly – I just have to fix the neckline because M’s head is much smaller than Caleb’s.

I seem to have a huge pile of projects all in the works at once right now… not that I mind, it’s just a little crazy.

I’m sending an A&S display item to Crown even though we’re not going.  That will be Matatias’ brown riding tunic – I had to do some mending on it last night because the topstitching on the neckline had broken in one place, but it’s repaired & washed.  I need to check/update the docs for it, though.

I’m also working on Caleb’s rapier armor.  It’s going to be my usual 2-layer undergarment with a fashion layer overgarment.  He has chosen brown with black bands for the fashion layer and white for the undergarments.  His hosen will be black as well.  I cut a bunch of bias bands for the trim last night.  When we get to the point that I’m going to drape his hosen pattern, I think I’m going to turn it into a workshop – Alicia wants to see how I do them and at that point we might as well just have a bunch of people over.  It’s not like I don’t have the handouts for it!

Finally, I’m working on Catlin’s riding tunic.  I’m repeating the seaming technique I used on the first riding tunic, only without whip-stitching the fashion and lining fabrics together first.  So far I have done about 6″ of seam on one set of gores.  I couldn’t find my wax last night so it wasn’t going as fast as I would have liked.  My GOAL is to have that done by Pennsic so it can be displayed and then delivered to her there.

ETA:  Heh, I forgot that I also have a tunic of His Majesty’s to do some work on.  Thank goodness for my handy to-do list, eh?

… when I step away from a project for a while.

I got the mauve gown out to work on it during textile guild Tuesday night.  I’m in the process of attaching the side gores… so I merrily seamed the one that was pinned to the body panel and then moved on to sewing the two gores together, except… something wasn’t quite right.  I pulled out all the pieces and tried to figure out what goes where and it just didn’t make sense.  I kept coming out with an odd number of gores.  I was just about to decide to stick the extra gore in the back when I realized… two of the gores I had lying around were right triangles, not isosceles triangles!  Right triangle = half-gore.  Closer inspection revealed that the two gores that I had already attached to the body were also half gores.  AHA!  So… for my own record-keeping.  ;)  Each side seam gets one “full” gore and two “half” gores.  Now I will remember.

There is still one error – right now those two half-gores that are attached are attached bias-to-bias.  I’m just going to leave them and let it hang for an extra-long time to get the stretch out.  I’ll make sure to do the other set straight-to-bias, though.

I’m planning to display the dress in its current state at C3R this weekend, so come take a look!

Tall Child wants me to make her a 13th century riding tunic.  The fashion layer will be the purple wool in the middle of this picture; the lining will be either the periwinkle blue on the right or white.

C, what do you think?  What does the peanut gallery think?