Perugia Style Turban

Last year at Ymir (a Viking themed SCA event held in North Carolina every February) I displayed my Perugia style towel for the first time.  One of my fellow spinners was so excited about it that she commissioned me to weave her a similar turban for her Italian kit.  What with one thing and another, it took a full year to get the sucker done but I did and was able to deliver it to her at Ymir.

The basic idea was to produce something along the lines of the turban shown in The Adoration of the Magi by Gentile da Fabriano, 1423.  There are a couple of other similar paintings with simpler color work on the cloth but this one looks the most like a typical "Perugia" design to me.  As I found when weaving the original towel, the complex pickup pattern is a bit beyond my looms capabilities, especially when working with 40/2 linen at a fine set, so I opted to create a simplified pattern based on Rose Path twill.

The finished turban is 22 inches wide and about 80 inches long.  I've found that for me and other anatomically large-headed folks this works well for a nice turban wrap.  If you want to do something similar for yourself, I would suggest starting with the circumference of your head as the width and experimenting with the length you will need for the wrap style you want in purchased linen before you commit to a warp width and length.  Linen ain't cheep and everything about warping with fine linen is a huge pain.

Aside from measuring the warp, which was doubly miserable as I warped two projects at once (more on that later, I wove two head wraps on the same warp so make the best use of my time dressing the loom) the weaving was not too bad.  I need a warping mill.  6 1/2 yard lengths on a warping board suck and most of what I want to work on right now are long lengths of cloth for clothing.   I used boiled flax seed dressing, diluted and sprayed on with a spray bottle, and tried to keep the level of humidity around the loom as high as I could.  This helped with getting a clean shed and maintaining even tension, though was difficult as I did the bulk of the weaving in the dead of winter when the highest temperature we had was in the low 20s.  A humidifier might have helped.

I also started out the project with fishing line running along with my floating warp.  This made adding a bit of tension to those threads to keep them from getting lost in the selvages much easier and prevented them from abrading too much and breaking.  I still quite a few extra weights attached to the back of my loom (it looked like a Christmas tree back there) but overall it worked out very nicely.

Angel wings (brackets that hold the lease sticks in place and at a fixed width) were a HUGE help.  It was much easier to find broken ends and I was able to warp by myself with very little trouble.  Not only was I able to maintain the cross in the warp, but it helped to even out tension and spread the warp out properly behind the lease sticks.

The only major problems I still need to work out are some weird tension issues that developed when I got to the second project on the warp.  I started having a lot of breakage and tangling that I didn't run into on the turban.  I suspect I need to wind onto the back beam with help when working with linen.  Some of the problems might have been fixed had I used a warping mill.  I don't have any plans to weave linen in the near future, by the time I get around to it again I will hopefully have a mill.  

The turban came out beautifully in the end and my client was very happy with it.  I was a little sad to see it go, but I know it's gone to a good home and will be worn with pride and love.

Kira's Shawl and some leg wraps

My second Queens Shawl weaving project was to be presented to HRM Kira at Pennsic last year.  The weft was hand spun by members of the spinning guild, and I wove the finished piece in a herringbone variant using Brown Sheep's Nature Spun sport at the warp.

Overall I am very pleased with how the finished shawl turned out.  It could have been a little longer and maybe a touch wider, but that's pretty knit-picky.  There were some interesting variations in the hand spun weft skeins that I tried to spread out through the shawl to create subtle textural stripes.  I think this worked out pretty well, there are no wide runs of any one skein so the finished cloth is fairly consistent and even.  It's also quite soft and warm.  Working with the thicker yarn this time around did produce a heavier shawl but it still has a nice drape.

I love the way the white and purple combined together.  By itself the purple was really bright.  When woven together with the white. it toned down quite a bit, resulting in some nice depth of color and just enough shimmer to stand out when HRM wears it.

I also wove some leg wraps for my early period/iron age kit.  The original plan had been to do this on my warp weighted loom, however I discovered that the alpaca/wool blend I was using as warp was far to stretchy to stand up to this week.  Also the very narrow strips were difficult to stabilize on the loom so I moved the project over to my table loom.

Just for future reference, I do NOT recommend moving warp from one loom to another mid-project.  I got it to work out but it was sloppiest warping job I have ever seen.  I think I set this as something around 36 EPI, maybe a little looser, but I was working with a lace weight warp so it's fairly tight.  The west is Nature Spun fingering, which I love and gives a very nice pack at a surprising rage of sets.

The finished wraps feel amazing!  They are soft, light, warm, and the cloth has a beautiful hand.  It would make a lovely garment.  They took forever to weave, each wrap is 15 feet long, but the end result was worth the effort.  I'm looking forward to doing more cloth in fine wools, it's such a joy to work with and the results are worth the extra effort to warp up all of the threads.

So many changes!

Oz, the newest rescue.  He like to "help"
 with the handsewing.

The last year has been a wild ride, and I'm happy to say it's finally settling down.   I've moved into a new place that is mostly wonderful, I have a new little doggie, and I'm doing ok by myself for the most part.

Somehow in the midst of the chaos that was 2014 I managed to finish some projects, go to Pennsic, and two weeks ago was elevated to the Order of the Laurel at Ymir.  For those not in the SCA, this is a Big Deal.  It's the highest form of recognition an artisan can get in the Society.  I'm still kind of stunned that this happened, but it's slowly settling in and I'm getting really excited about working on my next projects without quite so much worry about documentation, display, and competing with them.  For me, it's a license to go deep into a thing without having to worry about tying it back to whatever my main art is and to explore new things.

Finished Queen's Shawl

Hurray for a finished  project!  I've been running through my list of Things To Do and getting a bit freaked out this week or so (ok, more than a bit freaked out, more like I look at the list and run away and hide) so it's super nice to have a Very Big Thing Indeed crossed off.  And with time to spare even!  I decided to buckle down this weekend and marathon watched Season 3 of Downton Abbey and the Olympics while I got it done.

I think warping the shawl took longer than actually weaving.  The weave is the same diamond twill used for the Preugia towel, set at 16 EPI.  There are a total of 524 warp ends.  This seemed like a paltry number of warps after the 1200+ I had to deal with for the linen towel, but still it took more than half the season of DA to thread them all.  Once that was done the weaving went very smoothly.  It was a lot of fun to see how the colors in the hand spun changed, and how the different skeins of hand spun varied since each spinner dealt with the color variation a little bit differently.  I am mostly pleased with my selvages, there are some places that are better than others but I think I have an idea of how to improve that next time.  I just need to figure out where to get fishing line.  Twisting the fringe took awhile but it's nice and mindless and I got a nifty little fringe twister from an etsy seller that made the processes a bit easier.  It's not hard to do this by hand but after awhile it's murder on the fingers and the tool helps with that.  Plus the twists are much more even where I used the tool.

The fabric was finished with a cold water and Eucalan soak to preserve the sheen of the hand spun wool.  HRM will need to hand wash or dryclean this going forward but I think she can manage that.  The sample I wove was lightly fulled and it looked ok but lost a lot of the beautiful shine that the mohair in the hand spun gave the piece, so I went with a simpler finishing.  If she does accidentally full it a bit it won't damage it any, the thing is pretty big and she's not a tall woman so it will still look nice on her.

Overall this was a really fun project.  Not being 100% sure what sort of yarn I was going to get from the spinners was both fun and stressful, but I really enjoyed the collaborative aspect of the project.  Now that I have a better idea of what to expect and how to plan, I am looking forward to doing this again in the future.  I've already got some ideas for future project percolating away in the back of my head!

Queens Shawl, full sized!

As much as I loathed worked on the linen for the faux-rugia towel, I think it improved my weaving by leaps and bounds.  Nightmare projects tend to do that, which always makes me grateful for them after the fact.  In looking at how my first Queens Shawl project is coming along, things are going much more smoothly, my selvages are looking much better (not perfect, but better), they are more symmetrical, and I am finding it easier to following the treadling order and see where I am when I walk away from the loom.  Plus I'm not finding as many funky floats.  So yay for getting better!  I'm not mistake-free yet, but I will not be in any way ashamed to present this to Important People.

The hand spun yarn is subtly variegated with purples and blues and a tiny bit of teal blue, all peacock colors to pull in the personal heraldry of our queen.  That color variation didn't show up well in the photos, but in person it adds a very pretty shimmer to the shot fabric.  Not a period shimmer, but a pretty one.  It will look really pretty out in the sun when we present the finished shawl (assuming of course that we have sun on the day, one can only hope!)

Pounce win!

Just a note to declare victory over the pounce!  After much gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair (and paper) I have won!  I can't post pictures yet, but I was able to transfer the Pelican design for the morse onto velvet beautifully with pounce and then paint over it perfectly.  Yay!

It turns out that my problem all along has been the paper I was using to make the transfer.  Silly me, I was using regular printer paper.  Somewhere (and I can't remember where) I read that I should be using vellum.  I don't have any vellum so I printed the design onto card stock, and what do you know the whole thing magically worked!  Happy day!  My paint is now drying and I will able to frame up the cloth this afternoon and finally get started on this thing.  I am very excited.

First attempt at overshot

How I am loving my little table loom!  Warping still takes forever, but it's so much easier to set up a short (ish) length of something to play around with for napkins of towels to try something out.

I've decided to finally give overshot a try as the technique is similar to what I suspect was used to weave Perugia towels, the main difference being that overshot is done on a ground of tabby whereas Perugia towels are done on ground of some sort of diamond twill.  To weave the Perugia designs (or at least the geometric ones) efficiently, you can set up a series of secondary heddles using what's called ophamta weaving.  I wasn't able to do this when I did my towel as I have small eyes on my heddles, and the secondary tie ups need extended eye heddles on the main shafts to work.  What we see in the Perugia towels are bands of patterns woven over a tabby ground separated by diamond twills.  Overshot basically works the same way, but with fewer shafts.  The pattern weave is threaded into usually 4 shafts and woven on a tabby ground.  Working with 2 shuttles, you then weave the pattern using a contrasting color that floats over the tabby.  The patterns used are different, as are the fibers, but the basic principals are not at all dissimilar.

Anyway, overshot is far easier than I thought it would be!  And fun!  I'm not 100% happy with how this first pattern section turned out, I think a heaver pattern thread would look better, but for a first attempt it's much better than I thought it would be.  The ground is 10/2 pearl cotton set at 24 epi.  Nothing fancy but it will make a nice, functional towel that people will be will to use.  The blue is cottolin.   I have enough warp to do 3 good sized towels, and I plan to do all 3 with different fibers for the bands.  One will be a heaver linen, and one will be cotton.  I can do at least 2 different patterns with the threading I have as well, so that should add some additional interest to the weaving.

Another elevation cloak

I've been asked to do the embroidery for another elevation cloak, this time for someone I know well.  It's a secret so no further details than that until after the fact, but I am planning on doing the order insignia on a morse rather than on the cloak itself, as this is more appropriate for the persona in question and will look less like a football jersey than a lot of the cloaks that are out there.  Plus I think the person will actually wear the blasted thing if we do it this way.

Anyway, the cloak will be wool.  I was thinking I would do the morse in velvet, partly so I can incorporate more of the personal heraldry and also it won't stretch as much.  Plus I won't need to do tons of underside couching to cover something ugly (yay for that!)  The thing I am wondering is how best to transfer a fairly intricate design onto the velvet?  The best suggestion (ok the only reasonable one really) is over at Needle'n'Thread and suggests using a combination prick-n-pounce and paint.  This seems like it would work but also sounds like a huge PITA.  Is there as easier way?  If not, that's what I'll do, it just seems like we would have come up with a magic pen or other transfer device that was simpler than this by now.

Shawl for a Queen

My kingdom's spinning guild makes a hand spun shawl for each new queen as a group project.  Sometime this means we do nothing for several reigns, but usually we end up making a shawl at least once a year.  The women who had been doing the weaving got her Laurel last year just before Pennsic when the last shawl was presented, and decided that she didn't feel it was right to continue doing the weaving, and as her first act as a Peer, volun-told me to weave the next one.  Eeep.  This will be presented at an event in February.

Things have been a little nuts for me the last couple of months.  In addition to the usual holiday madness of my little business and going home to visit, I've had the flu since New Years eve and have been dealing with some ongoing health issues that have been making getting anything done increasingly difficult.  My focus is not as good as it once was, I get confused easily, and I am in a lot of pain a lot of the time.  In the last week my neurologist diagnosed me with fibromyalgia.  Not great news, but at least we now have an idea of what the problem is (or really in this case isn't) and how to proceed with managing the symptoms.  Knowing you need to slow down and adjust your expectations from yourself and understanding why are two totally different things and for me at least the why turns out to be a key piece for my coping abilities and peace of mind.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is it's taken me longer to get started on the shawl project than I had planned.  But I finally got the Perugia towel off my loom, and have started doing the sampling for the shawl on my new table loom!  Yay for awesome Christmas presents that make sampling possible!  It's a 4-shaft 18 inch wide Dundas loom, which they do not make anymore, that we were able to pick up used, even though it had never been used by the previous owner.  The heddles were still tied together.  Warping it was so much easier than warping the floor loom, and weaving on it is fun though it's a bit of an adjustment going from tie-ups to manually controlling each shaft.  I'm using the same diamond twill pattern I used for the towel for the shawl, set at 16 EPI with a commercial warp and the hand spun weft.  We decided to use a high contrast for the warp to give the cloth a shot effect, which I think will look well when it's finished and should have a nice bit of shimmer.  So far I am happy with how the sample is working up.  I plan to weave a bit more and wash it before I warp the big loom, but I should have that done by the end of the weekend and be able to get the warping done this week.  The actual weaving won't take all that long.  With the larger yarns the whole project will go much more quickly than the linen did.

Finished Faux-rugia towel, finally

The faux-Perugia towel is finally, after long last and much swearing, gnashing of teeth, moving of the loom, and tearing of hair, done!  It's off the loom, washed, and I am actually pretty happy with how it turned out.  Yay!  This has been by far the most difficult and possibly overly ambitious weaving project I have done so far, but I have learned a lot.  I can't honestly say the result were quite worth all the agony, but adding in the educational piece and the fact that it's off the loom and I can now get on with my life it's all good.

The original plan had been to weave a length of plain

weave to do some embroidery with on the same warp, but somehow I ended up not having quite enough warp to do it or enough patience, so I have what you see.  The towel was 53 inches long and 29 inches wide before washing, and 50 inches long and 23 inches wide after washing.  This is right in the low to middling range of extant Perugia towels, and in looking at it a very useful size.  I will be able to use this as a small table covering, a large lap napkin (large napkins are really good for covering garments made of expensive, hard to wash fabrics), or for using while serving at table.  It also works nicely as a head covering.  The 40/2 linen was a huge PITA to work with (mostly warping), but the end result is a lovely fabric with a nice hand that drapes well and is thick enough to make a good napkin but still fine enough to look like real fabric and not a rug.  I'm a little sad about not being able to do proper pick-ups but the end result looks more like what you see in the art work actually being used by servants and more middle class people than what has survived in museums, most of which seem to be have been used as part of church vestments.

A couple of critical things I have learned about weaving with linen for next time -
1 - wet/damp linen is much easier to work with.
2 - sizing is your friend!  I used boiled flax seeds.  It's much easier to apply this diluted in a spay bottle than attempting to brush it onto the warp.
3 - For whatever reason my floating warps kept snapping.  I was able to fix this by soaking the warp thread in the sizing then reinforcing it with a thread of fine beading wire.  Fishing line would probably work better but I didn't have any on hand.  Next time I am working with a fine, inflexible warp, I will get some fishing line.
4 - I need a better cushion on my weaving bench.  Ouch.

Warp weighted weaving

Following up on my last post, I've finished setting up the warp weighted loom that has now taken over a not insignificant portion of my living room and have actually successfully woven a whole inch of leg wrap!

Knitting the heddles was by far the trickiest part of the whole business.  Finding clear instructions on how to do this was  not so easy, but I managed to work it out for myself after much google searching and watching YouTube videos on knitting heddles for barn looms (not the same sort of heddle at all but it managed to explain the idea).  I think the biggest thing left out of the instructions (if you can call them that) that I was able to find is that you really need to work with a small shuttle or netting shuttle, not the ball of yarn.  Once I figured this out and got out one of my small table weaving shuttles life was much easier.  Also, it was a lot easier (and I do mean A LOT easier, like I might actually do this again easier) to manage everything once I had the idea to pick up the shed I was trying to tie up with a pick up stick and hold it in the forward position with an extra leese stick I tied to my shed stick.  This arrangement might not be that clear in the picture, but the idea is to hold the threads in front of the stationary warps so you are not trying to knit the heddles through another set of warp threads.  The only problem with this plan is that you have to be extra careful not to twist your warps if you chained them together at the bottom.  I twisted a few of them the first time I knit the heddles and ended up having to un-do the heddles AND un-chain the back warp threads to fix the mess.  Not a big deal as this is a narrow warp but something to keep in mind time.  Knit first, chain second.


Anyway, once that was done (and it went much faster the second time around), the actual weaving has been pretty straight forward.  Beating upwards is a little awkward, but I'm actually having a harder time managing the shuttle stick and the sword beater all at the same time.  I feel like I need an extra hand.  Luckily with this particular yarn I can do most of my beating with the shuttle stick so I'm not having to use the sword much but it's a bit of a juggling act.  Overall the process is not any slower than weaving on a rigged heddle loom.  You can see we had some trouble with the table woven header on this piece, which has created a little unevenness in the warp spacing, but I think that will work itself out as I go and when I wash the finish piece.  Thinking on it, I think I didn't choose a very good yarn to use for the header, it's not quite the right thickness for such a fine warp.

I still can't quite get my head around tying the heddles for complex twills.  I know this can be done, all sort of patterned twills were woven on this type of loom, but with one set of warp threads being stationary I'm not quite sure how you would make something like a diamond twill happen.  This might be another example of walk-before-you-run, which I have never been very good at.  I'll figure it out.

Warping the Warp Weighted Loom

I got a warp weighted loom for my birthday (yay!) and what with it taking longer than expected to get here, fiber show season, crazy event season, and general life stuff it's taken until today to get started warping it.  Very shameful but at least it's getting done.  For now I'm just planning to weave some simple tabby legwraps for myself, as this will be relatively easy and I need some legwraps.  I'm using an alpaca blend laceweight yarn that was on sale at my local yarn shop.  The warp is a honey color and the weft will be a wine red.  They should be rather pretty when done.

I've got as far as tying the weights to the warp bundles and chaining the warps together.  I was not planning on doing the chaining, but because I ended up sing fewer weights than I had planned the chains are really helping to keep the warp spread evenly.  Plus I can anchor the bottom of the work to the sides to the loom which will help prevent draw in.  I still need to knit my heddles, once I get that done I can start weaving!

I do have to say, the 5 inch wide warp looks pretty silly on the 4 foot wide loom, but what are you gonna do?  Once I get the hang of this I plan to do a large piece of fabric, perhaps for a hood, and that should not look quite so silly.

Finished Mammen Coat

I am very pleased with how this coat turned out!  The embroidery was fun to do, and not that difficult.  It's all stem stitch, just like the original, done in silk.  I used a combination of filament and spun silks as that's what I had on hand, sticking fairly close to the original colors.  This is the second project where I've been able to use mainly filament and I must say I really do like it.  The difference in sheen is remarkable.  I did find that I needed to keep my nails in better order when working with the threads and that thread conditioner of some sort helped (no idea if they used this in period on silk or not).

The pattern for the coat is loosely based on the Eura gown.  It's sort of a mash-up of the standard Turkish coat and the Eura gown really.  I can't say how accurate this is, but it's a plausible way to cut this style of kaftan for a woman, as it would continue to fit as the body changed shape during pregnancy and it fits much better over layers of clothing than the loose standard t-tunic style method of cutting I had used for my last coat.  Both of those garments are men's shirts anyway, which I am beginning to think would not have been used for cutting women's garments but more on that latter.  The pattern is comfortable, has a nice drape to it, and uses only 2 and a half yards of fabric with no waste (I can get a full length gown out of just over 3 yards of fabric with no waste at all as well).

I fully lined the coat with a silk and linen blend herringbone twill, sewing the lining in as I made the coat itself, the same way many 18th century garments are made.  This made it a lot easier to ensure that the lining and the exterior fabric matched up and draped the same way and will keep everything in order as I wear the coat.  It also meant I only had to sew any given seam once rather than twice, making the sewing much faster.  The neck and cuff edges were then stab stitched closed and the hem will be turned and stitched.

The only tiny issue with how this project turned out is that the sleeves are perhaps an inch or so too long.  Really this isn't so bad, since I will be wearing the coat over other clothing and as a warm layer the extra length is probably a good thing, it just makes the thing looks like a monkey coat on the dress form.  I need to remember to make this adjustment next time I make a coat though, once I do the cuff embroidery it's very difficult to adjust the sleeve length.

This coat is part of my effort to re-do my Viking kit, since I have shrunk out of my old kit and it wasn't up to my current standards anyway.  I've now got two linen Eura gowns to wear under the coat, and will be cutting out a new apron gown based on the Kostrup find.  I got a warp-weighted loom for my birthday last month and will be weaving some leg wraps for myself on it as soon as I can get it warped.  I have lots of veils and headwraps, and got proper shoes at Pennsic this year, and will be done with my naalbound mittens shortly, so I should be in good shape by the end of the year, barring any major disasters or huge new distractions.  At some point I will need to make a new wool overgown as my old one, which I loved, had a laundry disaster and went to live with a teeny tiny friend who fits into it.  I have something that will serve in the meantime but it's a blend and if I am working over the fire it gets a bit uncomfortable.

War of Wings Feast

This year at War of the Wings (a kingdom war here in Atlantia that takes place every October) I decided to spend Friday cooking a period feast over the firepit using as many period cooking techniques as I could.  I only used one modern sauce pan and a single dutch oven (which isn't the worst concession to modernity as they had similar things, I just don't happen to own the period equivalent as of yet).

The meal turned out really well.  The biggest disaster turned out to be the guest list, we had some missing people and ended up with a lot more leftover than planned but that's not so bad.  People wandering by were pretty impressed that we had a high table set up in camp in such a primitive camp site.  The food turned out well, everyone enjoyed it, and no one got sick, so I count that as a win!  Here's what we ate -

Bread - I made a honey wheat bread in the dutch oven.  While not necessarily a period bread recipe, baking in the coals is a period method and it was a lot of fun.  The first loaf turned out beautifully except that it got charred on the crusts.  I ended up giving it to the rest of camp and they made quick work of the inside of the loaf, leaving a scary carbonized crust.  The second loaf sort of collapsed a bit in the middle but baked perfectly and was still tasty.  I think the over wasn't quite hot enough but as this was the first time I had baked in the dutch over on my own I think it went pretty well.

Birds on the Spit - I spit roasted 3 chickens on the spit my cousin made me for Christmas.  These turned out quite nicely and the spit worked great, though they didn't cook as evenly as I would have liked.  I think the spit was overloaded.  Next time I'll limit myself to 2 birds at a time.

Pumps - Medieval meatballs.  These are really tasty and were a big hit.  I've made these twice before and decided to double up the recipe this time, which turned out ok but if I do this again I will need a bigger pot as they didn't cook as evenly as I would like.  The balls need more room to float around in the broth.

Buttered Worts - I used spinach this time, though you can use a range of leafy greens for this dish.  Last time I did this I had spinach and mustard greens which was quite nice.  This time I simplified the cooking, sauteing the leeks in a large pan over the fire in butter, then adding the greens then a bit of the stock from the pumpes.  When the greens were done I dumped everything over the sopes.  Very good and much easier than all the boiling, though I suppose the boiling may be necessary for some greens.

Roasted Turnips - again simplified the preparation by turning this into a single-step baking process, baking it in the dutch oven.  Worked fine and was very tasty.

Lumdardy Tart (beet pie) - Yum!  People had no idea this was beets until I told them.  To be fair, there is some debate about whether the recipe refers to beet root or beet greens.  I used beet root, and more than called for than the redaction linked, and it was good.  I've seen other people use Swiss chard, which might be interesting to try some time, but this is a tasty version that people like.

Apple Muse - Basically applesauce, with a twist.  If you can't get saunders, I would suggest cutting back on the honey and being careful with the saffron, perhaps adding a bit more salt.  Do NOT use food coloring, the saunders is doing more than adding color (I found this out the hard way the last time I made it).  It was a very nice dish a good way to end the meal, and is REALLY nice with a bit of heavy cream and powder blanch on top.  Be sure to use the best apples you can get.

Pears in Syrup - I like to add cinnamon, galangal, mace and a bit of nutmeg to the spice mix and try to always use turbinado or demara sugar for the extra flavor.  The leftover are killer on french vanilla ice cream.  This makes for a nice, light-ish dessert and is very easy to cool over the fire, you can set it in the cooling coals and pretty well forget about it until you are ready to plate it.

Mammen coat progress

The embroidery for my Mammen coat is coming along very nicely.  I am looking forward to being able to wear this and show it off.  The colors look a bit Crayola-like, but that seems to be the aesthetic, and it is rather striking.  Much more so than a modern palate of colors would be.  Perhaps this means I'm developing a more refined period color sensibility.

Anyway, the neck is done and I am very pleased.  I had to improvise a bit with the back of the neck and the end of the face section and leaving them both plain didn't look quite right.  Keeping things simple seemed like the best plan.  I think it turned out well.  The sleeves are coming along really well.  I ended up changing the colors a little bit.  Both pieces are very close to the colors used in the original fragments, with a few variations to accommodate the silks I had available.

Mammen Masks

I had so much fun making the elevation coat/caftan that I decided to make one for me.  This time I am using motifs from the Mammen embroidery to decorate the neck and cuffs.  The small masks will go on the neck edges down to where the brooch will sit, I could (and probably should) go all the way down the front but (a) I find that rather heavy looking on the lighter colored wool and (b) I am lazy.  I'll be using the acanthus vine motif on the cuffs, changing the color scheme just a little bit to correspond with the silks I have available.

The threads are a combination of filament silk and spun silk.  The filament looks much nicer and seems to wear better, you really can barely tell the difference between the spun and regular DMC cotton, which is deeply annoying to me but this is all left overs from other projects so it's not so bad.  I'm really happy with how this is looking so far.  The stitching is also going fairly quickly which is a nice change from some of my recent projects.

Sadly I don't have a picture of the totally done elevation coat, but you can get a general idea of what I did from the pictures.  I'm very pleased with the design I came up with for the cuffs.  My original plan for the neck was more elaborate and I think would have been more effective but the lady who received the coat was thrilled with it as is, so it all worked out.  Trying to sew a garment without measurements is bad enough, but when it's for something like a Laurel elevation, when it's going to be seen by literally EVERYONE and you really do want the person to be happy with it, it's a little scary.  I'm very glad she was so happy and that it fit so well.

Stitching away

I should never ever bemoan not having enough to do!  I'm now back to hiding from the calendar.  In addition to a fiber show at the end of September (how is that only 2 days away?!) and co-teaching a class on tailoring and fitting for an SCA university on the 7th I'm also working on a Laurel elevation coat which needs to be done by the 14th.  I will post pictures after the elevation, as it's a surprise, but wow time is not my friend this week.  I'm really hoping that my doctors can figure out what is causing me to need a nap after a couple of hours of not very strenuous work because this is getting ridiculous.

The coat itself is a lot of fun and pretty straight forward.  The sewing isn't a big deal, it's getting the embroidery done that's a bit of a challenge.  I'm trying to keep it simple, just doing outlines for the design and a little bit of fill all in pretty filament silk on the nice wool I was given to use on the sleeve cuffs and at the neck.  So far it's looking really nice and I'm quite pleased.  As long as I don't get crazy with putting more elements on the coat, I should be fine.

I love working with the silk, the filament is so very much nicer than the spun stuff I had been working with.  It's a little trickier to work with but the end result is much nicer and actually looks different than regular DMC cotton, so it's the worth the little extra effort (mostly in making sure my nails and cuticles are snag-free).  Having to mail order sucks, but I did finally find a good color card for Soie de Paris on-line (it's part of the Soie D'Alger card, the number in bold are the Soie de paris) which makes mail-ordering a lot less stressful.

Some good resources

Here are a couple of great links that some of you may be interested in -

For the late-period enthusiast, Drea Leed has made her out of print book on 16th century Flemish working-class costume the Well Dress'd Peasant available in PDF format at http://www.elizabethancostume.net/welldressdpeasant.pdf.

If you are interested in Vikings, the best research summation I have seen thus far on apron dresses and under-gowns can be found here - http://urd.priv.no/viking/  She's got a lot of other great links and resources as well, all grounded in good archaeology.

Pennsic Project ADD

Second attempt at a sprang bag

I got back from Pennsic with so many project ideas and plans and thoughts that I almost don't know what to pick up first.  I learned to do sprang, bake bread over a fire pit, do underside couching, and got inspiration for a bunch of new sewing, embroidery and weaving projects.  I also picked up what I needed to do a blackwork coif I've been wanting to make for awhile and while I was at it decided I might as well weave the ties on my loom because I can and hey, why not make the needle lace for the trim as well?  Not that I know how to make needle lace but I can learn, right?  So I built a stool for my husband (not that he goes to many SCA events, but whatever), am trying to decided how I want to built a sprang frame, want to sprang all the yarn, am picking a place to dig a fire pit in the yard, and am darting back and forth between all of the other projects so often I need a nap.

My ghetto light-box - a desk lap under
my glass top desk.  Ugly, but fictional!

In a way this is wonderful, I've been in a bit of a creative slump for quite awhile now and I think I managed to push through it at Pennsic some how.  Having two whole weeks to do nothing but take classes and explore my crafts was a wonderful release that I desperately needed.  I need to make time for that kind of unfettered creativity; no worries about the dogs, feeding the DH, or helping other people with their projects. Of course, I also need to focus all that energy onto a manageable list of things instead of running around like an insane squirrel so that I can get something done, but for now I will enjoy this phase of creative madness for what it is, take lots of notes on all the ideas, and worry about the rest later.

Naked Underwater Linen Weaving

In one of my books, which I can't seem to put my hands on at the moment, there is a very silly picture of a guy sitting at loom in his drawers and nothing else weaving linen in a pool of water.  I now understand exactly why he is doing this.  I finally sat down this morning to work on the long-languishing Perugia towel and holy cow does weaving that blasted linen ever work better if it's damp!  Hurray for naked under water linen weaving!

It's also helping that I took a friends recommendation to use paperclips and small weights to keep the floating warp in place.  It was tending to get lost in the first few warp threads, making my selvages messy and ugly.  With the clips on I am getting a much neater edge.   I've decided to abandon the idea of doing a proper Perugia towel with the pick-up brocaded sections though, that's just not working well on this particular loom and I have other things I want to weave sometime in the next year, so I'm doing a faux-rugia instead.  I'll just be weaving in some stripes of the indigo dyed cotton at either end.  Given that my edges are still kind of funky looking, I am happy with this compromise.  Just getting this linen woven off will be a huge accomplishment.  It's still slow going but now that I have my handy spray bottle (and some flax seed sizing, that's a big help too) it's a whole lot easier to make progress.

Edited to add that I found the picture of the naked underwater linen weaver!  It's in the Textile Production at Coppergate book, plate 821, which you used to be able download here but seems to be currently unavailable.