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.

Did I get your attention?

Here are Caleb’s braies.  I did them in the “quick and dirty” style – a wide center panel with legs attached, as pictured here.  This is how I did braies when I first started making them – they give the right impression, ESPECIALLY when worn with hosen, but are pretty fast to make and don’t require draping them on the wearer.  I leave a small portion of the front seams open for access to the drawstring; it’s left open on both sides so that we can attach points directly to the drawstring and leave them there for the duration.

I haven’t seen them on him yet, but he tells me that the fit very well.  If Alicia can make it to textile guild next week, we’re going to drape his hosen pattern.

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!

I’m making a set of 13th century gowns for HRH Liadain and took today (while watching the inauguration) to do the bulk of the construction on the underdress.  It’s all together now… I’m a little concerned about the fit of the sleeves, but we’ll know for sure how they’re fitting on Thursday.

The whole thing, inside out and not hemmed or anything.

These garments really don’t read well on the dress form, but what can you do? I’m definitely going to do center gores on the gown itself – HRH wants a keyhole neckline, too, so I’ll just do seams up the center front & back to facilitate the placement of those gores.

Sleeves… the top one is right side out; the bottom one is inside out.

Details of the gussets & gore tops, one of each side.  As I work to make the silhouette of these gowns more true to the contemporary illustrations, I’m putting more and more of the fullness of the top into the gussets – because otherwise you end up with VERY droopy shoulders, which just doesn’t look (or seem like it would feel) right to me.

So it’s hanging on the form to let the bias stretch out before I hand-fell the seams and hem it.  Once I know how well it’s fitting, I’ll be able to settle on the sizes of the various pieces of the gown (which will be done in a navy blue 85% wool blend) and get going on that.  Like the underdress, I’ll be doing the structural seams of that garment on the machine and the finishing by hand.

I finally got a picture of Shoshanna in her striped woolen cyclas that she’s had for several months.  That plus a brief description are here.