It's been a hot minute, ain't it?

It's been quite some time since I journaled anything about my sewing (not that I've been doing much, really, aside from a few embroidery projects, a dress, a skirt...oh, I suppose I have been doing a bit, haven't I? But they're not medieval. Mostly.) and it's high time I revived my dress diaries.

Things I've made over the year since I last posted: An embroidery titled Hic Artur Rex, done in the style of the Bayeux tapestry.

 Here's Arthur, kneeling before the Lady of the Lake. I was using Appleton crewel wool, in various shades (I actually do have a document on it that may end up in this post...), and you can see some of his gown hasn't been couched down yet. But his cloak...! I was so proud of that. Done in red, outlined in blue.

Here's our boy again, but now you can see the Lady of the Lake. I'm not as happy with her as I could've been, but she still came out fairly lovely. The wording is HIC ARTUR REX ACCEPIT CALIBURNUM, Latin for "Here, King Arthur accepts Caliburn (Excalibur)." Those Latin classes I took finally came in handy for something.

And of course, the finished embroidery, framed. Trying to find a frame that 1) fit the piece, 2) didn't look silly, and 3) had enough room between the backing and the glass for the embroidery to comfortably sit was rather difficult. I ended up with an 8" square shadowbox from Riot. Not the prettiest of frames, honestly, but it's still quite nice. I stretched the embroidery over a bit of foamcore with silk thread and jammed it right on in there.

The embroidery itself was actually done for the Arts and Sciences competition (that wasn't) at College War last year. I got special mention from Bjorn for actually doing something and just about cried because of it. I'm hoping to enter it in the kingdom A&S competition...soon. I need to look up which theme it fits again.

Speaking of College War....here's yours truly, in full Saxon glory. The cloak probably isn't period, but it was cold and so I do not care. The green dress was 100% hand-sewn, of course, as was the apron. What you can't see is the underdress and I can't remember what it was anymore. But I've got a woolen scarf for a headrail and a bit of tablet weaving as my fillet holding it in place. I actually ended up on a town run wearing this and got asked if I was Padme. 

(....No, no I am not.)

My wonderful, amazing fiance got me an eSpinner (the Electric Eel Wheel Nano) as a slightly belated birthday gift and I promptly spun up some wool. The center skein is a Masham/Targhee cable-plied yarn, with pure merino either side of it. Targhee spins up lovely and I think I've got a new favorite wool. Merino is too felty for my liking, and the targhee was so bouncy and fun.

 At Rowany, I took part in Mistress Rowan Perigrynne's (OL, OP, and a bunch of other awards) Tudor Tailoring Techniques class and I had a ball. She said my pad stitching was good! One side is a linen canvas interlining with a finer linen covering it, and the other side is melton pad-stitched to hair canvas, and it should be covered at least in part by the same fine linen, but I was not one of the lucky ones who'd signed up for a kit, so I was working with scraps. The bottom binding was done well after the fact, using a bit of the green wool from my dress.

I made a honeybee embroidery for my sister-in-law for Christmas. It was much more annoying than I thought it would be (heh) but it turned out beautifully and it's displayed with pride. I think. I picked a few of the major molecules in honey and laid them over a honeycomb pattern, and added in a little bee, whose wings are made of silk organza. Beautiful.

And of course, I made a mundane dress. I used a Vintage Vogue pattern (V8811) and I can already think of about half a dozen changes I made or want to make. First off, pockets. I inserted some, but they're too small and need fixing at the very least. I did the snaps up the side rather than a zip (definitely need to fix that before summer comes 'round again). I don't particularly like the skirt, and I think if I cut another dress I'll cut the skirt on the bias rather than lining one side up with the grain line. It doesn't look quite right in the stripes. I also had to move the waist up (a lot, wow) and I think it needs a bit of crinoline or something to give the skirt a bit more *foomf,* if you know what I mean. The facings aren't great. I don't know what's up with them but I do not like them. And the thread button at the back needs adjusting.


But overall it's a pretty good dress, and I finished it just in time for one of the hottest days we've had since I moved here. Yes, that's right: 110 degrees Fahrenheit at quarter past five in the afternoon. It was miserable. I was so happy to have a linen dress on. Just drip a bit of water on me and I'll be cool for about fifteen minutes, 'til it evaporates completely.

The next few screenshots on my phone are from the bushfires over Christmas. It was kind of terrifying, I'm not going to lie, and I wasn't even anywhere near the fires.

And last, but most certainly not least....

My skirt! It's the Everly pattern from Seamwork, which did not turn out how I planned it because my Grand Idea of piecing things together just...didn't work. It was a silly idea to begin with but yeah. Didn't work. So I had to do a second layer with the top fabric (luckily I had more than enough) and line it with a cotton I was planning to use for a veil or a chemise. Ah, well....

Up next (for sure this time) is gonna be a post on the needlebook I'm currently working on. This is definitely going to become more of a general dress diary than a medieval-specific one, I think. I really want to have somewhere I can put everything.
I did a couple of posts on Dreamwidth that I'll copy over (and of course, change the dates to match their Dreamwidth post times, so they'll appear earlier than this one) and add in the pictures I wanted to but couldn't be arsed to figure out how to do it there.