two new scrolls

Well, I am actually proud of myself for remembering to take pictures of the last two scrolls I made. The first one was made for a friend of mine who is seriously into music. I chose to make an antiphone with a puzzle letter for the capital. After I had begun this one, I was given the assignment for the other one. The second was also for a good friend of mine. I chose to do both of them simultaneously. The only thing I did not like about that is that I did not spend the time to write an actual song for the first one. The music was just random notes. She, of course, immediately tried to play it. Parts are playable, but part aren't. What I mean by playable is that they sound ok. The rest of it just sounds like a string of random notes. Mind you, some of the modern music kind of sounds that way too, but I was not going for modern music anyway.

The second scroll was filled with specific requests. Years ago when the recipient of this scroll saw a picture of a nun picking penises off a phallus tree, he asked me to put that image in any scroll I ever made for him. Therefore, in it went.

This one is a tygre combatant, given to members of the East Kingdom of the SCa who show prowess in fighting heavy arms competition. He is also the man who asked me to be his consort in Crown Tourney. That means that if he ever wins I will be Princess to his Prince. He is a very good friend of mine while his wife is one of my apprentices. altogether, I wanted to make a scroll he would be glad to hang on his wall. These are scrolls # 39 and #40 for the A&S 50 challenge.

gold thread embroidery sampler

I have been taking an online class on gold thread embroidery for the last couple years. Tonight I have finished the sampler that was the main part of the class. I will admit the class ended a few months ago, but I am pretty happy with getting it done this quickly.

There are about 26 different gold thread patterns in the sampler. The colored parts are mostly done in queen stitch.

I also finished another piece of lace for the Elizabethan smock. I have been on a kick for finishing up projects the last couple of weeks. Sometimes I get slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of unfinished projects I have kicking around. There are so many other projects that I want to start, but I feel that I need to finish some once in a while. I am likely to start a project on the spur of the moment. I also am not afraid to start projects that I expect to take years to finish. So many people these days want something they can finish in one weekend. While that kind of project can be satisfying in a way, I really get a charge out of finishing something that has taken me months or years to complete.

Anyway to get back to the current state. The latest piece of lace is from Onder le Loep. I especially liked it because the pattern is very reminiscent of the kind used in the original smock.

So now I have to decide how close to finished I am. I could either do 3 more pieces like this one and then call the lace done, and start assembly, or I could do those 3 pieces and 3 more complex. The real question is how close to the original do I want to get. The collar of the 16th C smock is much more ornate than the lace I have made for it. My orginal plan was to make another piece and attach it to the points I alreay made. But... I will admit to getting a little tired of this project. I am getting to the point where I really want to be done with it. Adding those 3 more complex pieces with probably add another year to the project. I am going to make a small trial piece to see how difficult the new pieces would be. The have tallies in them. Up to this point I have been avoiding tallies. I have heard that they are the real test of a lace maker, and that makes me apprehensive. I will try the sample and then make a decision. This is piece number 34 for the A&S challenge.

Scroll #37

I was recently given the opportunity to make a scroll for a dear friend of mine. She was being awarded a court baroncy for service to the current reign, and many previous reigns. It seemed to me to be the best bet to make a Book of Kells stule scroll. This piece took quite a bit of time. There is a great deal of very tiny details which are not very visible in this picture. This was also the first time I attempted to use watercolor as a wash over the goauche I usually use. In the Book of Kells there are indications that they used a wash of tranperant color over a more matte color. Some of the pages of the original book have water damage which shows how the wash was applied. I was extremely happy to be given the priviledge to make this piece.

Lace update

It has been a while since I last posted my progress on the bobbin lace for the 16th C smock. I have just finished the longest piece, the one which will go around the collar. At this point I have 11 pieces done out of the 20 that the project needs.

When I finished the 2 pieces which will run down the top of the arms, I determined I did not like that pattern all that much and wanted to do something else for the other pieces on the arms. The second and third pieces from the top are the ones that will go on the top of the arms. I decided to try making a piece of lace directly from one of the patterns in Le Pompe, the pattern book drawn in the 16th century. This is my first attempt at doing something that did not have a modern interpretation of the pattern. you can just see the pattern from the book under the threads. The piece on the left that is loose was my first attempt. I decided quite quickly that the threads were too thin. They were 90/2. The second piece uses 60/2 thread, which I think looks much better. The first one just looked too spidery and light. I am a little worried about how a piece of lace using such coarse thread will look next to the other pieces I have made for this project. They all use considerably finer thread.

Now I have also found a new book; Seventeenth Century Women's Dress Patterns by Susan North and Jenny Tiramani. This book shows the bobbinlace from the original smock that I am trying to replicate in much higher magnification. They also have patterns for the bobbinlace. Though they are fairly simplistic. The one I looked at in detail did not seem to have quite enough lines to show the paths of all the bobbins, but I have not tried it yet so I may be wrong. Anyway, I should be able to replicate the pattern for the pieces of lace they have on the arms. I am very excited about this. I have been trying to find a pattern which had a similar overall appearance. Now I will be able to replicate the original much more accurately. The book also shows a pattern for the smock itself. I had not even started to think about how I was going to put this all together yet. The smock they show is the one which is also in Janet ARnold's book that has a chevron pattern on bobbinlace. When I started this project, I decided I wanted to make a smock with teh bobbinlace applied in a straight instead of slanted pattern. It is more a combination of the two laced smocks in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 4 on page 60. Now with the combination of the two books, it has become much easier.

Greenland dress: first trial

Way back in October of 2009 I wrote about a dress from Herjolfnes that I want to try recreating. the dress is not in great condition and a fair amount of guesswork is going to be necessary. the original picture shows the pleats on the front extending down well past the waist, but the fragment from the chest does not go that far. There is a second piece which looks to be a part of a skirt with pleats. the upper edge perpendicular to the pleats has remains of a seam. I surmise that the bodice and skirt were made separately then, and sew together at the waist. the bodice is V necked with small gores under the arms which are also pleated. the back of the gown shows no pleating.

I attempted to make a couple of pleats to see how they were constructed. the original archeologists remark that the pleats are sew together on the back but otherwise not supported with any other stitches. The upper row of pleats is about 10 mm deep, while the lower row is only 5 mm deep. the pleats on the original gown were about 4 mm. The shear amount of fabric that will be needed to achieve a panel wide enough to cover my chest is going to be prodigious. I am not sure at this point how to adjust the cut of the fabric to take into consideration all the pleats.

Next step: Trying to cut a neckline which will become the shape of the gown when the pleating is completed.

bunch o' scrolls

I have been very very bad lately. I have done 3 scrolls lately, and have forgotten to take pictures of any of them. One of them went to a friend so I can go back and get a picture of that one, but the others went.....away. I am not really upset about not archiving them, but really should get better about it. I might want to look back at some point, and if I have not taken pictures I will not be able to. Anyway those were #31, 32 and 33 for the A&S 50 challenge. At least I think they are. I suffered a massive computer meltdown fairly recently, and I had to rebuild my A&S list. I keep track of all the A&S projects I am working on and when I get finished with the various parts of them. For example, I am working on an Elizabethan smock that needs something like 20 pieces of lace incorporated into it. As I finish each piece of lace I record it on the A&S list. That way when I am done, I will know how long the entire project took and how long the individual pieces of lace took to make. So there it is. A very short post with no pictures. I will have to do better next time. I should get the pictures of the trials of wool pleats for the iceland dress up, and I have finished more pieces of lace for the smock. I have been very lazy about updating my blog.

Apprentices

So I now have an apprentice. What shall I do to...I mean with her? Really she is pretty driven anyway so keeping her nose to the grindstone is not going to be an issue. She also has projects galore, so giving her projects seems like a waste of time. This is my first one of these so I am still not totally locked into how I want to run my end of this relationship.

She just finished running K&Q A&S championships so making her get more involved in A&S competitions just seems silly. She is also the current champion of archery in our barony. Hmm....period archery shoots? She does have to run our championships this year. Am I even planning on asking her to do specific things?

Keeping her focused on one thing so far has been the theme of our working relationship. She does get a bit distrac.......oh shiney. Oh wait, that is me, not her. Currently she has been working on netting, and been doing it for quite a while with some nice headway.

Oh yeah, she is about 8 months pregnant. Period birth....ooh ick...no. Lets stick with the modern age for anything to do with medical baby issues. I am actually looking forward to making adorable cute little clothing. Wait, here I am doing stuff for her. Isn't she supposed to be doing stuff for me. No, that is not too likely to happen much with any apprentices I take. I view the apprentice-laurel relationship as more a guiding hand on my part, not the dictatorial despot (aww shucks)

I am fairly firm about wanting to do things in a "period" manner, but again she is already leaning (or frolicing gaily) in that direction. If she cannot find instructions in a book contemporary to the age, then she is not happy. That is actually ahead of me, but then I do lace and embroidery, neither of which seem to have much in the way of instructions, just patterns. She is more into making gun powder, fingerloop cords and netting.

I am really glad she "gets it" when it comes to the authenticity side of the hobby. One of the hardest things is to instill a love for doing things the old fashioned way in people in our society. For some reason some people (often the most outspoken) seem to take any discussion of authenticity as a direct attack against them. I have never really understood why you would join a medieval recreation group if you did not want to do medieval recreation.

So if she is already interested in authenticity, and talented, and fairly firm in her likes, what is my job here? Hmm. I might have to think on this a bit. Low maintenance apprentices, just what I was aiming for. This might be easier than I thought. All I have to do is walk around saying "Yup, thats my apprentice" like the proud mama.

Go Alys.