Despite there being a "cutting diagram" of the St. Elizabeth of Thuringia Gown, actually figuring out the pattern for the body of the dress turned out to be much more complicated then I expected, despite it's deceptively simple lines:


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I've slowly been working on 13th century styles -- initially to experiment with different ways to cut the Maciejowski women's dresses (France, circa 1250) since my normal way of cutting a T-tunic (basically what Robin Netherton describes in her Tournaments Illuminated, Issue #141, Winter 2002 article "Where Did the Normans Get Their Sleeves?") ( Read more... )

I finally got my hands on a copy of Medieval Art Recent Perspectives. A Memorial Tribute to C.R. Dodwell. ed by Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Timothy Graham -- which contains the article "'Estroit vestu et menu costu': Evidence for the Construction of Twelfth-Century Dress" by Jennifer Harris. She puts together the best argument I've ever seen for side- ( Read more... )

So, I'm in the middle of a very tight deadline regarding painting silk banners for Her Highness for Coronation... So - what does that mean I find myself doing? Fanaticizing about NEW costuming projects I could be doing! (Quite silly I know!) Well, OK, it's not exactly a new idea -- I’m back to fanaticizing about a 12th century bliaut, which is an ( Read more... )

So I had more fittings for Calum's grande assiette cote today.

Here are pictures from the pattern I draped in my first attempt (the one I wasn't that happy with) -- I got it to fit reasonably well... but I still was not pleased... it did not have the characteristic shape to the front gore:


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For those of you who aren’t local SCA folks, Calum and I put our names in the hat to become the next Baron and Baroness of Cleftlands. We won’t actually know who’s selected until April, and the investiture will be April 14, so it behooves me to start on possible “stepping up” garb just in case. It feels incredibly presumptuous of me to do this, but ( Read more... )

So much for sticking with the 15th century this year: I’m back to playing with the bliaut thing (mainly because I’ve slowly been putting my project binder together for my unfinished/unstarted projects and the bliaut page with the associated fabric has really been inspiring me! :-) ) . So, I thought I’d do the easy stuff first: the embroidery.

Yes, I ( Read more... )

I meant to post this weeks ago... I found it!

I just got a yard of the wool that ismiseniamh  suggested (no swatches :-( -- obviously Amazon is not set up to handle fabric selling properly!) and it’s good! Not quite perfect - from the backside it’s obviously a machine-woven fabric, and it’s just a tad heavier then I had hoped for - but the color is a really ( Read more... )

I really admire those people who can stick to one time-and-place for multiple projects (reasie , bauhausfrau  I am talking to you!) Usually I can’t manage that kind of concerted long-term focus. Instead I have to rely on the fact that I’ve been obsessing over costumes for 20 years or more... However, this year might be an exception - all of the projects I’m ( Read more... )

I collect new projects at a rate at least ten times the rate at which I finish them…. as soon as I got close to finishing the Duc de Berry-style peasant dress I decided I needed to do a multi-layer fancy dress in the style of the Trés Riche Heures . So I flipped though Trés Riche Heures looking for instances of a blue under-dress, there was one ( ( Read more... )