Projects

I have a belt.  I am very proud of this belt.  I'll never use it to hold up my jeans, it's way too long.  It will, however do an admirable job of indicating my new, lowly status.  The belt is green, and was given to me by Mistress Ose Silverhair.

I am now her apprentice.  {Squeeee!!!!!} 

(Okay, I promise to be more dignified for the rest of the post.)

Mistress Ose is a fiber-arts/spinning Laurel, whereas I will be focusing on medieval pattern making, clothing design, and sewing techniques.  It will be an interesting journey as I set aside "modern" habits and thinking to learn how to parse paintings and duplicate drawings to recreate clothes of different places and times.  I already have two new projects to work on along with two older projects to finish.

My first major, long-term research project will be to recreate this 1170 German purse/bag:

It's silk thread on red linen, with some sort of buttons along the edges, a drawstring, and a separate cord for it to hang from a belt.  It's a whopping 10 x 13 cm, basically 3 x 5 inches, big enough to hold modern ID cards and some money, not big enough for my HTC One 8 cell phone though.  That's okay.  I'm working on minimizing how much weight hangs from my lovely green belt.

There will be a lot of research and learning of techniques involved with this project.  I'll be writing the museum (Alfred Bonno Museum in Chelles, France 

http://www.chelles.fr/Culture/Musee-Alfred-Bonno) to see if they can tell me more about the buttons, lining, embroidery stitches, cording, and more importantly, send me high-res photos to inspect details myself.  The embroidery looks like split-stitch at first glance.  I have to master that.  The cords are probably some form of handloop cords I don't know.  And those buttons... I have no idea what'll be involved in recreating them, but I'm quite certain it's not a skill I currently possess.

My second major project, which has a more immediate due date, is to create patterns for a 1470's Flanders outfit for Lady Ruth Baraskya.  I'll have more details as we progress on this project, but it will involve drafting patterns for a chemise, a lined kirtle, and an overdress.  Ruth will do the sewing once I come up with the patterns and an order of assembly for her.

The two hands-on sewing projects I'm finishing are my first completely hand-sewn dress and my cloak.  The dress is a basic 12th century rectangular dress with triangular gores in the skirt and gussets at the underarms.  I'm still unsure of the final sleeve design, large, swooping open sleeves versus tighter, arm-fitted sleeves.  In either case I'll be doing beaded embroidery around the neckline.  I'll show research and other pictures in a future post.  The cloak project is just adding more material to my half-circle cloak to make it a 3/4 circle to fit me better.  I'll also be lining it and appliqueing my device onto the back.  (For those who speak heraldese: Vert, in saltire two needles threaded, argent, and on a chief invected Or, three crosses bottony vert.)

I apologize for the overload of information on this first blog.  I'll write more often and in smaller bits in the future.

Thanks for listening,

~ Marjorie