Supercon

Or how I threw together outfits for an SCA demo.

The Shire to the south of us, aptly named Southkeep held a Viking themed demo at Supercon last weekend. John and I were planning to do our research and make some nifty Norse garb. John is the local tablet weaving savant and is currently working on a Halstatt band, but other than that, I had no clue about Norse garb.

Unfortunately, school, illness, and two friends wanting help with their cosplay sort of got in the way. The clay I was going to use to make fake tortoise brooches also went towards said cosplay.

John and I sewed his tunic and had enough fabric to make a slit apron dress. Both were sewn the night before and morning of. The straps of the apron dress were cut from an already completed inkle band that John was not satisfied with. (He wouldn’t let me use any of the others.)

I hope to add some nice woven trim to the apron dress and tunic and purchase some Tortoise brooches before attending Coronation in August.

Tunic Dress Complete!

Yellow T-Tunic, Feb 2014, Tourney of the Three Ships, Southkeep

Here’s the Tunic dress I’ve been blogging about. I didn’t have any scrap linen or muslin to make headgear, but I’m still working on that. The belt was inkle woven by John, my SO. The things attached to my belt are the Tourney of the Three Ships Site Tokens and two fibulae made by John and I during a class there.

T-Tunic Update

I always seem to injure myself while sewing. In November a ruler of all things fell and split open my toe. Today one of my cats pushed the scissors off the sewing table and it cut my foot.

Also, I hate sewing with linen. It slides everywhere (then again other fabrics slip around everywhere for me, I have shaky hands.) Even if I use pinking shears it frays horribly. In hindsight, I probably should have read up on the fabric more, but I tend to learn by making mistakes (when it comes to crafts) because I am lazy and stubborn. Luckily, the garment I am making right now (a long t-tunic dress) with gores was meant to be a learning piece (I’m new to sewing) and is going to be my 90+ degree garment/dirty work garment. I have many more years of linen sewing to go. So I just need to learn.

Overall, I’m really proud of myself right now. I sewed in another gore and the sleeves. Things were really rolling in November, then after the holidays everything really came to a complete stop. Depression does that. Granted, I’m on meds so I can still go to work full-time and school part-time, but by the end of the day or even the weekends I had no extra energy for anything other than sleep and homework. I’m slowly getting my motivation back, and I’m partially looking forward to the mildly hypo-manic days where even if I don’t get a ton of sleep I’ll be just peachy.

Too Lazy to finish #1

I’ve been working on a gored linen T-tunic to wear around in the hot Florida  weather since last November. I’ve only managed one gore since cutting it out.
The original plan was to hand sew the entire thing, but I’ve been a rut lately. So I’m going to machine sew the tunic and hand stitch the detail bits. I’ll go back later and add some embroidery to the collar.
Hopefully I can finish by Three Ships.