Starting Anew

Starting new projects is always somewhat nerve-wracking. First, there's pressure to cut things out right. Wait, no. First, there's pressure to figure out what the fabric wants to be. And what holes are present in my wardrobe. I have a gorgeous grey wool found at Unique Fabrics in Brunswick. I don't have anything proper in wool (I have a brown wool sideless surcote but it's one of those pieces that's Generic Medieval, you know? It's all sorts of wrong, which I may detail later.) so I need a cote or surcote.

It's winter here in Australia, and I have an event (Inter-College War) I'm attending in less than a month up in Wollongong, which won't be nearly so cold as College War last year here in Melbourne, but still requires something a bit warmer than linen and cotton dresses, like the lavender cotton one I'm working on right now. It's also not Super Accurate as far as I can tell, again a Generic Medieval sort of thing, but it's a good exercise as I'm doing things on it I've never done before, like facing and buttonholes and adding a bit of my own hand-woven trim.

Goes nicely, don't you think? And my buttonholes are atrocious but they're my first ones!

It'll look nice under a surcote, at least, and the lavender shade is beautiful. Seems it would be doable with madder. I'm also putting in pockets because my modern desire for pockets sort of outweighs my desire for accuracy. What can I say? Pockets are love. Pockets are life. Pockets hold all my modern mundanities, like my phone and copious amounts of bobby pins.

Anyways.
When I was looking for a new bullet journal, I ended up going for the larger of the two options I was considering, because I figured hey -- I'm doing an honors degree, I'm going to need the space for note-taking! While not wrong, I also didn't realize that the size of the page was almost exactly 1/10th the size of this particular piece of fabric (that wasn't even in my stash at the time!), and thus perfect for drawing out cutting plans. I think it might end up being my "standard" cote pattern, but I'd like to do a bit more for it and make sure it's closer to what's right for my preferred time period. I usually draw out 2 or 3 plans, to make sure I can get everything I want out of the fabric. Sometimes, I even transfer the plan to a piece of printer paper and cut/tape it up to make a wee paper dress, even though paper and fabric don't behave nearly the same.

Cutting plans sketched out in my bullet journal. Note the slight differences between mine and Teffania's (below) -- my skirt gores don't extend all the way down the page on the left one, they're slimmer, and I didn't put in underarm gussets. There's also a large amount of "wastage" (it would get turned into SOMETHING) and I've also not sketched in the sleeves but they're that long rectangle in the bottom right. On the right, the body is along the short side of the fabric and again the gores are different.

So, here's the hard part. I like to aim for 11th-12th century English (specifically the century after the Norman invasion), and there's about as much documentation for that period as there is snow on the ground in an Alabama winter. Which is to say, not much, if any. Luckily, I live in the same area as Teffania (of Teffania's Stuff, a blog which I discovered long before I met the wonderful woman behind it) and I can pick her brain a bit and look through her library. I spent most of Congregatus Australis (held over the Easter weekend since the usual major event in Lochac was a bit later) chatting with her and trying to not follow her around like a lost puppy.

Teffania's cutting plan for her blue wool cote

She's actually got some cutting plans up on her blog, one of which I've put above. It's nearly the exact same size of the fabric I'm working with (mine is 250x163 vs her 156) which is AWESOME. I also have a plan already sketched out that's nearly identical to hers, so it confirms my thought that I'll be able to get what I want out of the fabric I've got. Looks like I'll need to rethink most of my plan, but it won't take long until I'm ready to go.

The only question is...machine or hand sewn? If not for the fact that ICW is less than a month away (eek!) I'd hand-sew the whole thing. Maybe I'll do what I did with the lavender one -- machine-baste it together, then redo the seams by hand. Except the sleeves and underarm gussets. Those always have to be set in manually. I can never quite get them right on a machine.

I've been interested in the more triangular gussets that also extend further down the side, sometimes as part of the skirt gores, but those of course need much more research on my part. Maybe someday, but I don't think this dress is that someday.