The Tudor Revolution
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Pockets in the 16th Century?
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Anotber Glow Up... 16th Italian Workshop
Monday, June 22, 2020
Stays: Its ok to Grow & Change
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Pass the Mug: An SCA Glow Up
Monday, June 15, 2020
Durer's Venetian Lady 1505- A Necklace
- Cut 2 lengths of beading cable and attach to one side of closure with 1 crimping bead per cable and your pliers.
- Thread 4 seed pearls on to each cable, using bead reamer to widen holes of pearls if necessary. These pearls should enclose the tails of your cables being attached to the closure.
- Thread both cables through 1 bi-cone bead, and then 4 seed pearls onto each cable separately. Repeat this process until necklace is desired length.
- Once necklace is the correct length, add 1 crimp bead per strand and secure stand to closure using crimp beads and pliers. Sometimes it is easier to threat the cable back through beads before closing crimping bead.
- Trim away an excess beading cable with wire cutters.
- Go enjoy your necklace!
Monday, June 8, 2020
Moving in the SCA
Friday, June 5, 2020
What is in my Sewing Box?
Monday, June 1, 2020
The American Duchess Cape Cult: Modern Monday
As a creative person, I do live in the modern world, and maintaining blogs for multiple time frames is exhausting at best. Going forward the first Monday of the month will be "Modern Monday" and I will post about a project from after the 16th century.
Our first project is my American Duchess Patreon Cape ca 1910. To help fight the covid 19 boredom the awesome folks at American Duchess made the cape pattern free on their Patreon page (link at bottom). Their Patreon members have access to other awesome patterns so it is worth checking out. I fell in love with this pattern and decided I was going to whip our up to fight the patriarchy as the pattern is contemporary to the United States Suffragette movement.
I made a mock up after scaling out the pattern to realize while it is a very adjustable pattern, it was scaled for a 38 inch bust and I am a 45 inch. The pattern thankfully is fairly simple to adjust for a larger bust.This is a great example of why we should always make a mock up.
Below are some of my notes if you too have a larger bust & want to hack the pattern:
-I added 1 inch along all pattern piece edges to give me some ease for the velvet I decided to make my cape in, and it gave me 1/2 inch seam allowances. Remember that the original pattern is drafted without seam allowance!
- The front wrap pieces needed to be lengthened to accommodate my 45 inch bust . I added 8 inches to each front panel giving me an overlap in the back to secure the panels with a button and button hole behind my back.
-As I lengthened the strap, I also adjusted the point of the darts 3 inches lower so they would stop around my bust point, not in my armpits.
-Another adjustment I would make on my front panels would be to widen them by 2 inches. I decided this after wearing my completed cape around for a few days since it wasn't as noticeable in the mock up fabric. As is, the straps did not fully reach under the bust as it does on several of the models and other makers who have played with the pattern.
-Because I think collars should be dramatic, I wanted mine to flair out a bit more. I achieved this by pad stitching some wool felt into the underside of the collar to help keep the dramatic curve.
- My cape is made from 2 cotton velvet curtains I found in the "as is" section of Ikea which I decided to up-cycle. If you are working with velvet, make sure you baste your seams rather than trusting pins. All of these curved construction seams like to crawl when working with velvet.
I underestimated the time this cape would take. At first I thought it would be done in a day, maybe 2. The cape actually took double that to do all of the hand finishing and detail work I wanted to. 2 days to work on the pattern and mock ups, 2 days to do some machine sewing and hand finishing. Hopefully this will help speed up your own sewing adventures and to resize the pattern for a larger but with minimal headache.
Edits: Took down to fix some formatting issues and typos. Republished 1 hour later.
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Easy Cartridge Pleating Videos
Friday, May 8, 2020
Italian Lace Apron
hundreds of years, and were popular with Italian women during the 16th century. Italians
seem to have viewed this as much more utilitarian than other places in Europe where
women were sitting in formal portraits with them. Italian women of the upper class only
seem to wear them in private. These aprons have lovely embroidery or expensive lace
worked into them. My goal in making mine was to continue to expand on my 16th century
woman’s toilet, where women wore them to help keep clothing clean while dressing hair
and applying cosmetics.
Working class women would wear aprons as a staple of their wardrobes, but seem to have
favored sturdier embroidery of red or black silk to decorate their aprons rather than lace.
As a design choice I have chosen to use a lace apron for Belle to keep with the white one
she wears in the first scenes of the movie, rather than going strictly by the social class the
rest of this outfit will be inspired by.
Maria Novella, Gaddi chapel.
Materials
1. I used my scissors to even up my linen pieces. My apron was a stash busting project
made with scrap leftover from making underwear over the last few years. I picked a
lightweight linen to compliment the fine lace I was going to be using. My strips average 6
inches by 28 inches. There were 2 panels I left wider in the middle for added coverage while
applying powder, but all could be the same size as is in the original. I also cut off 2 strips
of linen to become apron strings 2 inches by 48 inches.
Accessed 1 April 2020