Everything worked out in the end, and Thomas looked awfully handsome at our 16th-century feast in Blo Norton, England! He added some bling from his renfaire days and wore black creepers because he’s just that cool.
Posted in 16th Century 
Tags: Blo Norton, costumes for Thomas, finished costume, Thomas' 16th-century suit 
No Comments »No, I shouldn’t have been cocky about those sleeves — they don’t fit! I sewed rings and lacing in, and Thomas tried the doublet with sleeves on over his fancy puffy black Renaissance shirt. No dice. The sleeves were waaaaay too tight. Phooey. A little too short also, and I didn’t like the way they fit in the armscye either. WTF?
He tried it on over his less-puffy 18th-century black shirt, which fit better, but just did not look great. The collar wasn’t right and the sleeves still weren’t ideal. *shakes fist in sky*
So we unfastened the sleeves and ditched ‘em. Doublet becomes a fancy jerkin. I don’t have enough of the fabric left to make new sleeves right now (though it’s a home dec material from Jo-Ann’s that I might be able to find again). Could make black wool sleeves, if that fails. Grumble grumble. Sleevil strikes again!
Finished Thomas’ doublet! Sewed on the hook-and-eye tape on the plane — one side per trip. Massive thanks to Rhonda for mailing me a couple feet of black tape in time!!! A friend, indeed. Thomas was especially touched and said, “wow, you have great friends.”
I’m 90% done with Thomas’ doublet, heck, his whole 16th-century suit, really. I need to retrieve the lacing strip from my mom and install that, make a flat cap (which I just patterned but can’t test on him because he’s out playing hockey), and oh yeah, hope and pray that the hook-and-eye tape I ordered arrives in time! Unless someone in SJ has about 2 feet of hook-and-eye tape (preferably black, but I can make white work) they can both sell to me and deliver on a late weeknight, since I don’t drive, and Thomas and I have a bunch of errands this week right after work. Yeah, didn’t think so ;-)
Anyway, it’s moving along. If I have to sew the closures on in Scotland, so be it. Hmph.
The whole thing is trimmed out nicely though. I may even have coordinating feathers for his cap. Should go curl them right now.
Later that night…
I think I just sewed half of a flat cap together entirely wrong. I mean, really, a flat cap? That’s, what, RenFaire Sewing 101? I must have made a dozen in my first year working faire (because as soon as you say “sure, I made this one,” people ask for ones and you realize an easier $10-$20 can’t be had). And let’s not forget faxing Irina a flat cap pattern! Those were the days.
But I must be tired because after cutting out the layers and interlining, I started randomly sewing things together, and the result looks wrong. There’s a nicely turned and ironed brim, but a top that I can’t see how to attach. Huh?
Brain fried. Go to bed, go to work tomorrow, start over!
Posted in 16th Century Tags: costumes for Thomas, hats, Thomas' 16th-century suit, trim trim trim No Comments »But sleeves really are easy, even boy sleeves.
Just drafted up the Tudor Tailor sleeves for Thomas’ doublet. Took about 15 minutes and two measurements (bicep and length, both of which were in the ballpark of what the book pattern scaled to, luckily; OK, so that *did* make it easier :-). Muslin took 10 more minutes to cut and sew. Tried it on, 5 minutes, including time to walk out back to the studio and find and interrupt boy.
Fit fine over the slightly bulky knit longsleeve shirt he was wearing, so it’ll be perfect over his renaissance puffy shirt.
Pattern DONE. Have to cut out the real fabric and lining, maybe after dinner. Should be able to sew them up tomorrow, whilst he makes dinner for me.
In further boy-clothes news, I set in all the doublet tabs yesterday, so, aside from the sleeves, everything else is hand-sewing (ew). Tacking the lining down over the back of the tabs, adding closures, then trim, trim, trim.
Also, Mom emailed to say she finished the eyelets on the pants and the lacing strip. Ended up making hand-sewn eyelets on the pants because she didn’t like the look of the machine-made ones there (I did not inherit her perfectionist gene). So pants are totally done, and I can tack in the lacing strip to the doublet too.
Spent yesterday patterning Thomas’ doublet. FAIL. Scaled up the Tudor Tailor version using the very last scraps of my tracing paper.
When I could finally try the muslin on the ever-resistant Thomas, omg did it not fit. UGH. Somehow I was able to scale up and resize the pants pattern with no issues, but totally could not replicate that success with the doublet. Hah, and I thought the doublet would be the easier of the two! Back to the drawing board, literally.
This morning, I re-drafted the doublet pattern. I’ll sew up the muslin, but I realized I won’t be able to fit Thomas till, geez, don’t know when. Today is the Olympics gold-medal hockey game, then he plays hockey, then it’s the closing ceremony — too many distractions. He works very late on Monday due to a filming gig (in fact, I need to figure out a ride home from work!). I think he has another gig on Tuesday, not sure, and then he plays hockey Wednesday night. Thursday night, we have a date planned. Geez, uh, Friday fitting?
At least sewing them! There are only 5 pieces in this pattern, how hard can it be? The muslin went together pretty easy — of course, I could draw on the muslin and mark stuff easier than on the nice black wool.
Sewed up the legs, both the wool and the linen lining. Go to attach the legs at the crotch — wherein I realize I’ve sewn the fronts to the fronts and the backs to the backs, instead of the front to the back as it’s supposed to be. *headdesk*
Before I spend the next hour unpicking endless seams of black thread from black fabric, I need a stiff drink.
Boy clothes suck!
Later that evening…
10:29 PM! PANTS! DONE!
Ok, not totally, but now it’s all-but-fiddly-handwork + trim. OMG, how many things can one have to unpick on one garment? First it was all the major seams as previously noted. Then it was putting in one pocket backwards. Then it was having sewn up the fly instead of leaving it open. Sweet baby jeebuz. My seam ripper is worn out and tired tonight.
But I did it. 16th-century Venetian hose iz mostly done. Just have to do stuff like tack down the inside of the waistband, make buttonholes for the fly, hand-sew eyelets for lacing to doublet (that I won’t do until, y’know, there’s a doublet), hem the leg openings and put a loop and button there. They look like pants now though.
Not that I have any proof of this, you just have to trust me on it. Being that the model is truculent, pix won’t be forthcoming until an actual event where he wears the entire ensemble.
In addition to taking apart the bathroom sink to clean it, getting groceries, making coffee for Thomas and giving him an unexpected Valentine’s Day card (as we’ve pretty much sworn off this holiday, being cranky old married people), I *also* patterned and mocked up 16th-century pants for him! Whew. Tired now.
I scaled up the Venetian hose from The Tudor Tailor with some mods from Janet Arnold (from whence that pattern originally comes). Had to make quite a few adjustments to get the pattern fit closer to Thomas’ size, as even TT uses some mythical “average” model size that’s nowhere near modern American shapes. Then I sewed a muslin and made him try it on (rather like pulling teeth, that is). My muslin fit was pretty damn fabulous, I must admit. I changed some things to better suit my vision of how he should look in these pants (he doesn’t care and, of course, fidgeted and insisted the original muslin was fine as-is). With the boy out of the way and out of the muslin, I transferred the changes to the paper pattern.
Don’t think I’ll do a second muslin because the changes are fairly cosmetic. Also see: trouble of getting boy into muslin. It’s *much* easier to get Thomas into actual costumes!
Not sure if I’ll cut actual fabric tonight, though Thomas just arrived with Starbucks so if I catch a buzz, more work could happen tonight as it’s like a second Saturday with the holiday tomorrow…
Posted in 16th Century Tags: costumes for Thomas, makin' a muslin, Thomas' 16th-century suit No Comments »My dear husband needs a new Elizabethan outfit. He’s been wearing the same great kilt to renfaires since, well, since a million years ago when we first met and worked at renfaires! While this is a ruggedly handsome look on him, it would be nice if he had something a bit more formal (not to mention something slightly more historically accurate ;-). Before we met, he wore proper Tudor and late Elizabethan garb, but he’s long since tossed that out (or it no longer fits). Now, with the Blo Norton trip coming up in 2010, we both have an impetus for him to get a new 16th-century suit!
He’s open to pretty much anything I want to make, thus the limits are more on my skills and time and what I want to see him in. Frankly, I’m not a fan of poufy trunkhose and I think they’re unflattering on all but certain scrawny male physiques (like some of the gents painted by Moroni). Also, PITA to make, heh. I prefer something sleeker on my man.
Of course, the later Elizabethan pants are alllll big and pouf-butted in paintings, but that doesn’t mean I can’t slim them down a bit, IRL. At least the longer line of the portraits below is more balanced in proportion. (Images from Wikipedia.)
Thomas' waistcoat
Mom and I hit Jo-Ann’s Fabric in the morning and did really well at the Black Friday sale! She found two lovely, coordinating black and gold brocades. One will be the forepart for her Carnivale gown (she’s reworking a 17th-century-ish piece bought at a GBACG garage sale ages ago — made by local luminaries Victorian Ridenour and Adrian Butterfield :-). The other will be a 18th-century waistcoat for my stepdad. She also got a bunch of antiquey gold buttons for that. He’ll probably wear this waistcoat, a poufy shirt in black (that she’ll make from a Simplicity pattern I had in The Stash), black pants, and a black cape (from another Simplicity pattern in my stash).
I got a yard of black velveteen for the cuffs and pockets contrast of Thomas’ Carnivale coat and a black tone-on-tone musical print cotton for his coat’s lining (I think he’ll enjoy that touch; it’s more subtle than a gothy print like I’d do for myself, yet also interesting. Besides I couldn’t find anything that was pseudo-period). Those fabrics were on sale too.
Next day, Mom called at 10:30am and asked if I wanted to go to the Jo-Ann Superstore in Fremont today. I was still in my PJs and had only had coffee, but sure, I said yes. The Jo-Ann near us didn’t have enough velvet for my stepdad’s cape, so she thought it’d be worth visiting the big store we’d never tried. Wow. It was massive and had all kinds of goodies. Wasn’t as crowded as the local store had been on Friday either. She found plenty of velvet.
And now my stepdad wants to wear breeches too, not long pants. So I’m going to send him a link to Jas. Townsend’s fall-front breeches, since Mom has enough to do. Though I also told her about my trick of cutting down thrift-store trousers, which she thought was really cool and a distinct possibility. I love how they’re both totally into this!
One note: I think we’ll ditch the idea of embroidering Thomas’ waistcoat. Might not be enough time (especially since I haven’t done squat as far as researching a design), and besides, he has a practically new waistcoat that will go with this coat. I made him a new one for the Lumieres Dinner in September, and this waistcoat is of a silver satin flocked with black — very elegant and one less thing to do.
