Sunday, July 29, 2012

Fabric choices, sleeves and front seams

Continuing Magna Faire Project,

I considered buying linen for the bliaut but it is so expensive, then as I lay awake contemplating what to do I remembered I have a pile of red silk that I've been dragging around for the last 10 years or so, not knowing what to do with it. Light bulb!!!

So now I have light blue cotton for the under dress and red silk for the bliaut. In the Waterhouse painting, Ophilia is wearing a dark blue bliaut with a red under dress. Close enough for me.

Unfortunately I have lost part of my pattern in the mess that is my sewing room, so I had to pattern off of the last under dress I made. That mostly worked ok.

I decided to start with the sleeves. I was debating about how to hem them and what trim I could use when I laid out the fabric, well actually, it is a very nice Egyptian cotton sheet, when I notice the top hem. It has two bands of what looks like woven trim and it it looks totally period. So I decided to leave that on and use it for the sleeve finish. I just need to make sure in my documentation that I note that as a deviation and why.

So I put the gusset on the sleeves first, the wrong way of course. I had one sleeve almost done before I realized the gore was in backwards and I had to pick it all out. It seemed to take me several hours just to get that one sleeve done. I was also having some issues with the needle not going through the fabric as I would have liked. I changed needles for the second sleeve and once I got the gore on it went pretty quick.

Today I tried putting the body together...during an autocrat meeting. Maybe that is where I went wrong. Once I got home and was able to try it on I found that the back top bunched up funny and the front neckline was incredibly low. I took the back off, recut it and went to sew it back to the front when I realized I had sewn the two side seams together as the center front. No wonder it was so low, that was an arm hole not the neckline! Sheesh, you'd think I'd never made garb before with all the trouble I'm having.

Once I took the front apart and put it back together the right way, I pinned the shoulders and side so I could fit it again and now it fit right with only a few adjustments

The way I'm going so far its a good thing I have until Dec to get this done...




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