The plan for textile guild this month was for Irene to talk about patterning garments out of Patterns of Fashion and for me to talk about making late 12th – early 14th century clothes. When we asked for head counts it looked like there were going to be a bunch of people for her and just one or two for me… The reality was just the opposite! Through a combination of weather, family stuff, and other things, we ended up with somewhere between three and five people kneeling in the middle of my dining room (because we have no dining room furniture) paging through the entire Maciejowski Bible and pointing out stuff that we thought was cool or interesting. So much fun… I also chatted with Edith a bit about “what next” – she’s been making her tunics using an accurate cut and is about to make the switch into natural fibers, so we also talked about headwear and footwear as making a big difference in presentation.

The textile guild of the Barony of the Rhydderich Hael inherited several huge boxes of fabric and sewing equipment from THL Caitlin Dierdre, who lost her fight with breast cancer late last year. Last night at guild meeting we did a preliminary sorting through the boxes and found yards and yards and yards of fabric – enough to supply us as we endeavor to flesh out the baronial gold key, to set up a textile guild sewing box, and the seeds of a textile guild library.

Our plan for next month is to get a better idea of what’s in there – inventory, burn test, etc., and then decide what’s going to be used for loaner garb and what’s going to be used for other purposes. In the meantime, there’s a hell of a lot of fabric in my sewing room. ;^)