Cutwork and pearls part 1

I am a bully. A costuming bully. I have been known to force sewing on friends on more than one occasion. My friend Fiametta was in need of some new clothes for Solstice Court but was in the middle of making a wool coat for His Majesty as well as being in the middle of life. I told her I'd make her something. She said she had to sew for her kids and niece. I volleyed back that I'd sew for them too. She returned with the fact that there was only two weeks until the event. I rather forcefully rejoined "just tell me what you want." She dithered. I muscled my way into her house and grabbed the fabric and then proceeded to make what I felt like she should wear. Sometimes being my friend comes with a bit of peril.

She had been thinking about doing the Bella Nani with this fabric. It is a gorgeous, gorgeous painting, but she didn't have fabric for the sheer overlay or ideas on building the large jewelry pieces. She had some lion heads that she wanted to use, but we needed to layer them with something and I was fresh out of ideas. Without the outer layer, that dress really loses something. I wanted to do something a bit more blatantly ostentatious. I had fallen in love with Carol Salhoum's IRCC I dress and the inspiration portrait of Clarice Ridolfi Altoviti

by Christofan dell'Altissimo. The cutwork on the bodice is just scrumptious. And there are beads. It is much more decorative than your standard Italian dress. Since Fiametta is anything but understated, I felt like it was a perfect match.

The fabric I was working with had gorgeous drape and incredible color, but was not a natural fabric and wanted to fray, so I felt no compunctions whatsoever in just deciding to interface the entirety of the pieces. Even with the interfacing, the cut edges still have that lovely fuzzy halo that cutwork can bring. Rather than doing the petal cuts of Clarice's gown, I decided to do hearts. Fiametta's emblem is a flaming heart and I wanted to use a lot of heraldic ideas in this gown. I made up a small stencil of the graduating panels and used that to draw out the entire pattern piece on brown paper.

I used an exacto knife to cut out the pattern and then laid on the reverse of the bodice. I just traced the openings in the pattern with a regular pencil directly onto the interfacing. Then it was just a matter of cutting, and cutting, and cutting out hearts. The pattern is pretty much identical on both front and back of the bodice. The picture at the head of the post is of the back.

I knew this project was going to use a whole lot of trim. As we all know, trim can eat up a budget like nothing else and often costs several times what the fabric cost. This wasn't one of those circumstances where that was going to be okay, so I took a day off sewing and made trim. Once again, this is one of those moments where I use non-historically accurate methods and my tool of choice, a crochet hook. I didn't have the time to do lucet cord because I needed close to 100 yards to do this dress and the outfits for her kids, so I chose to do a crochet version of the square braid. Ingunn Santini has a free tutorial. Or there are several youtube videos of 2 loop i-cord for crochet that all work out to be about the same stuff. It isn't actually crocheting since it doesn't involve crochet stitches, but using the hook to work with your loops makes for a fast trim. I managed to make about 50 yards in the time I had allocated and then ended up using plain interlooped chain to fill in the trim gaps. I used Kuka Bright in Gold by Ice Yarns. It doesn't look like it is available any more, but I laid in a large supply. It's a light metallic yarn about the thickness of a size 10 bedspread weight crochet thread.

I treated the cutwork layer and an underlayer of a bronzy gold as a single layer. The beads and trim are attached to both and keep them together. I've got a large pearl in the center of each square heart motif, a smaller pearl in the center of the diamond cut, and two smaller pearls flanking that. I've also got gold rocaille beads tacking the gold trim down to the underlayer. The small pearls in the center of each heart are only on the underlayer, but I liked the look. Yup, I took the nice beaded look of the portrait and went more than a little over the top.

 

I knew this dress was going to be a bit fantasy with some weirdnesses (as heralds are wont to call steps from period practice.) I didn't want to blow right through the line, but it certainly isn't comfortably accurate.Ah well, it is fun. And beautiful. And full of sparkle.

I still need to babble on about sleeves and construction, so we'll get around to those in a different post.

"Stained glass" at Toys For Tots

Even though I was the feast steward for my Province's annual Toys For Tots event this year, I had my fingers in a few other parts of the event. Several of us tend to hang out at the IHOP after fighter practice and some good ideas get mixed into the weird ones that pop up at 1 AM when all carbed up on pancakes. I'd been reading some of the earliest printed examples of fairy tales (because they are Italian and smack dab in the middle of my persona) and thought it would make a great theme for a kid centered event. We use one of the local Senior Centers pretty regularly for our events and I'd been trying to come up with ways to add to the decor. When I wrote up the bid for the event, I casually included that there would be stained glass windows as part of the decor with fairy tale themes.

Yeah, I always get myself into the best messes. But this one did at least have a giant tote of stained glass paints I got on super duper clearance behind the impulse. Thing is, they are formulated for use on glass. And I certainly didn't have the time to go in and put stained glass paint on the Senior Center's windows. I don't think they would have appreciated that particularly much either.  So I tried a few alternatives and settled on a thin clear vinyl to paint on.

The next issue is the fact that I've never painted any stained glass and I'm not much of an artist. I had grand plans of doing full panels involving the various fairy tales, but became disabused of that idea pretty quickly. I scaled back and decided to try doing one design that I'd use as a frame for all the windows. I then left a center medallion to put the stories in. Since stained glass was often painted, I took markers and drew the tales. Not remotely accurate, but nothing about this project is. There is also the great thing that the marker on vinyl is removable with some alcohol and we can use the painted frames for other themes by wiping off the marker.

So here's Jack and the beanstalk, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty. I tried to introduce a swirling element into each panel to tie random items from the story together. Cinderella's pumpkin vine curls around the mouse and the shoe.

 The briars of Sleeping Beauty pull together the spindle, the bed  and the prince's sword.

Jack's beanstalk holds the singing harp and the goose who lays golden egg's nest. Jack's old cow is a bit more chipper than usual since the autocrat's device is a dancing cow and I put it in to make her laugh.

Rapunzel's hair tumbles from her tower and covers her comb, brush and a rampion or two.

I had some help from my friend's KyneWynn, Marguerite, and Eidou with the leading and then I spent a few evenings painting.

We attached the vinyl to the doors of the building with some electrical tape and called it good, but I'm hoping to improve on the idea for next time. I hope they were well received, but I was in the kitchen, so what went on at the rest of the event wasn't something I was much in touch with. Tabitha was kind enough to take pictures of the windows for me and well as keep an eye on my kids so they could enjoy the day. I can't express how grateful I am for that. I feel like it was at least a step in the right direction in decorating the site.

Regardless of anything else, however, as the expression on my little boys face says-- it was a fun event.

Lots done-- none of it posted

I got rather swamped with the feast I was preparing in November and then with crazy Solstice sewing and just kept working and never got around to pictures and posting. Since I've got some more big projects coming up in January with The Realm of Venus' Fabulously Fashionable Fur mini-challenge and The Harpy's Needle and Thread Grudge Match going from January-March, I figured I'd better start playing catch-up.

I don't have all that many pictures, so what gets described is contingent on what pictures I get. First up is a gown I made for my daughter's best fried/my best friend's niece. She's 11 and looking so grown up in her first sottana.Her aunt told me she needed a dress the week before and I had several other outfits going at the same time, so this was an afternoon project and I took all the shortcuts I could.

I love doing Italian for little girls. Doing side back lacing is basically like making a modern jumper. Because I used a heavy weight upholstery fabric, I didn't add support layers to the bodice, it is just the upholstery and a broadcloth lining with lacing rings. The baragoni are scrap from my cappotto with a simple interlooped trim. I cut tabs and stacked them and then whipstitched them to the shoulder. I used the same blue for her skirt guard.  Her girdle is just beads strung on a length of beading wire (tigertail) with an extra large lobster clasp so it can adjust as she grows older and changes shape.  She loves horses, so I found a set of carved stone ones and stung them on wire for her.

I got asked about the reta a couple of times. As I said earlier. I was taking shortcuts all over the place with this one. An accurate reta would have been netted. My netting skills are minimal and very labored. I have, however, been crocheting since I was 5, so that is fast for me. Totally inaccurate since crocheting didn't come around until the Victorian age, but fast and pretty. 

I did, however, want it to be a step above the cheap snoods from overseas, so I took care to make this shaped more like an Italian one and there is no elastic involved. It hugs closer to the head than the mass market snoods and has a thick fitted band that I jeweled and pearled and that is pinned in place.

If anyone else needs a fast (totally innacurate) project, here's my crocheted Italian reta recipe. (I am terrible at patterns and this is probably totally incomprehensible, but basically you are increasing 9 each round, and then decreasing on your final 2 rounds followed by a dense single crochet band of 5 rows.)  You can also make something more decorative by using the center from your favorite doily pattern and then decreasing the final rows and adding the band.  You will want to use a hook that is at least 3 sizes too big for your yarn so you get a very loose chain/stitch. I used about a size 10 bedspread crochet thread and a size G hook.

Round 1: chain 3. slipstitch together. sc 9 times in ring.
Round 2: hdc twice in each sc around
Round 3: chain 4. hdc in first stitch. *Chain 2, skip next stitch, hdc in next stitch. repeat from * around.
Round 4: chain 5. hdc in first stitch. *chain 3, work hdc into chain 2 space of previous row, repeat from * around.
Round 5: chain 4. hdc in first stitch. chain 1,* hdc in chain 3 space of previous row. chain 1. hdc in same chain 3 space, chain 1. repeat from * around
.Round 6: chain 4. * hdc in first chain 1 space, chain one, skip next stitch, hdc in chain one space. repeat around
Repeat rounds 3-6.

Round 10. chain 3. hdc in frst chain 1 space, skip next chain 1 space. hdc in next chain 1 space. repeat around.
Round 11. Chain 3. hdc in first stitch. skip next stitch, hdc in next stitch. repeat around.
Round 12. sc in each stitch around
Round 13-16. sc in each stitch around. Finish off

As I said, I am terrible at patterns and I did this on the fly, but if you want to give it a go, I'm happy to help  you figure out what was going on in my brain.

Heraldic applique

My evening in front of the tv project has been appliqueing my local area's device onto a banner. Our old banner is fine, but doesn't get used that often since we are a Province. That means we don't have ceremonial representation, but have all the responsibilities of a Barony in the SCA. It also means that there isn't a specific individual to display the arms. They get put up at our own events and at one or two events a year where we have a large local encampment, but don't get flown on a particularly regular basis since it is more usual for us to have one or two or five members at any event and it is a pain in the butt to go to the storage shed and get out the banner for smaller groups. I thought it would be nice to have an extra to carry with me or lend out so we could have symbolic representation at more events.

This is just basic period style applique. Unlike modern quilt applique where the edges are turned under, period style is to couch gold cord or gilded leather over the edges. I was a bit worried about the edges of the green's tendency to shred, so I ran a small machine zigzag down first before couching over the top. I wish I hadn't, because it isn't as well hidden as I'd hoped. Not to mention the fact that the green is still a bit precarious. I got the idea and bought cheap materials and I'm paying for it. This thing won't last long. Oh well, I'm chalking it up up to practice, and if it gets used and demonstrates a need, I'll make another one from better materials.

Starting to think about Solstice

Yes, I am in the middle of prepping a feast, not to mention trying to get garb made for my kids. They only go to a few events a year and they always grow in between so I have to start from scratch every time. I decided to take a break from all of the required stuff and took a break and played with some beads. It probably wasn't great for my schedule, but I certainly feel refreshed. After I got about half way into it I decided that it would be perfect to go with the red fabric I picked out for making my Solstice dress. Rather nice when playing around accidentally accomplishes something useful.

I grabbed a bunch of randomness from my bead box, but I'm rather pleased with how it worked out. I had bought the silver plated plaques to decorate a Rus hat several years back and they have been staring at me ever since. I very rarely use silver, so I didn't have any great ideas, but it also meant that I wasn't saving them for any reason and didn't have to dither about whether this was the best use of them. Often taking things from my stash can be a negotiation with myself and I'm afraid to use the good stuff in case some better use comes along. Anyone else have that problem? I hadn't planned on having silver with this dress either, but I very much like the girdle, so I'm reconsidering the color scheme for the dress. Besides the silver plaques, which are Jill MacKay that I got on something like 90% off clearance, there are two shapes of flame jasper, some silverish beadspacers that I'd sorted out of a bulk lot that was supposed to be gold but didn't have good plating, some magnetic hematite rounds, glass pearls in both white and grey that I got for 70 cents a strand, and freshwater pearls dyed an iridescent blue/green/black that I got on an 80% off clearance. It's wonderful when all the super cheap clearance purchases come together and actually justify themselves and the fact that I have a stash. As I need about twice the beads for a girdle that a non-plus sized person needs, making a girdle is normally a significant outlay of money. This one wasn't so I'm rather proud of it for that reason alone.

Now, on to the fabric in the background. That's going to be the dress for Solstice. I've settled on doing a veste over a sottana, like this portrait of a lady and her little girl from the school of Veronese. I had considered doing the more common style with a doublet under the veste, but to be frank, I'm afraid of trying to fit the doublet. I've already got a sideback laced pattern that I love and fits, so this way I can concentrate on the veste. I'm going with the red for the outer dress. Now I just have to decide on what color I'm making the underdress. Black and steel grey are not my normal choices, but I'm sort of drifting that direction. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any.

Via

Making chardequince

A few years ago, I was sitting at fighter practice when a friend mentioned the fuzzy, hard, mystery fruit that one of their trees was growing. I just so happened to have been reading C. Anne Wilson's The Book of Marmalade, and thus could easily identify it as a quince. Before marmalade was made from oranges, it was made from the rather magical quince. The friends were kind enough to let me have the produce from their tree that year and since. I've had a lot of fun trying out some older recipes. They are moving next month though, so this will be the last year I get to play. That thought has made me sad enough that I've decided to plant my own quince tree. I'll have to wait a few years, but I know it will be worth it.

Quince aren't a popular fruit today, but medievally, they were known as the Queen of Fruit. They've been cultivated longer than apples. There are even legends that quince was the fruit that tempted Adam and Eve.
Full of tannins and pectin, quince don't get soft and juicy. They do get a beautiful floral aroma, however, and they smell amazing. They are a late fruit, not ripening until October and the first frosts. Cooking them is easy. Cutting them is not.

It takes a rather sharp paring knife. Much sharper than the poor neglected knives in my kitchen. I did have a sharpener in the back of the drawer, however, so that was easily remedied. The recipes I have for chadequince, the sweet and spicy quince paste I am making, calls for quartering the quince and then boiling them. I decided to do a finer chop, hoping it would make putting them through the sieve later easier.

The fruit in the picture has been cooking a few hours and is nice and soft. I'll put it through a fine sieve (and cheat a bit and put it through the food processor as well.) Then it goes back on the stove with equal amounts of sugar to fruit by weight.

There are a variety of recipes. I found several in the marmalade book I mentioned earlier, as well as here. There seem to be at least one in all my late historic cookbooks as well. I figured I'd try out a few options since I has quite a few quince. The first batch was sugar with heavy spices (clove, allspice, cinnamon.) I love the flavor, but was disappointed by the color. The spices turned the paste much more brown than I would have preferred. One of the best things about cooking quince is watching the magic of it turning color from the warm yellow gold of the fruit to a beautiful pink/orange/rose as it cooks longer.

For the second batch, I did something much more like Portugese membrillo. This form of quince paste is still popular for eating with salty cheese. It is the quince, sugar, and a bit of lemon juice and vanilla. I love the color, but the flavor isn't quite as exciting. Really nice though (at least from the spoonful I snuck as I filled the molds.

Chardequince was put into decorative boxes/molds in the Elizabethan period. Since I don't have any of those hanging around, I decided to try out some of my jelly molds. They are much larger and deeper than those made for quince, but I had them on hand. I'm hoping they'll look nice on my dessert table for the Fairytale Feast I am cooking for Toys for Tots in November. I've got them in drying out and setting now, so we'll see how it goes.

In the mean time, I made a small version shaped with a large cookie cutter to try. Not as decorative, but it is nice and thin and I put it in a warm oven to speed it up a little so it was set and ready to eat this morning after I made it yesterday. Here's the picture before I cut into it. It lasted about 5 seconds once my son tried it and shouted "Come on guys, it's CANDY!"

Gonfalon

I've been sewing a bunch, just not finishing much, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to show something I finished. My husband and I worked up the heraldry for the house we belong to in the SCA. Basically that means I told him what I wanted after I researched it and conflict checked, and he tweaked it so it looked better. We're in the process of registering this, so this isn't the officially official blazon, but I THINK this works up to something similar to: Azure, on a pile rayony throughout issuant from dexter chief Or a serpent glissant sable. I'm a bit iffy on where the throughout and the rayony go in the heraldic sentence to be honest. Yes, I know, making banners and such is jumping the gun with an unregistered device, since the College of Heralds could want changes and this could end up being a bunch of junk that looks nothing like the final device, but I had fun anyway. Having to make another one of the officially official device won't be the end of the world.

No, the right steamer is not curved-- it just decided to turn and this was a bizarre angle in the first place. I was utilizing hooks on my front porch and trying to dodge my lilac bushes to get a picture. Picture notwithstanding, I'm pretty pleased by it.

Since, as previously stated, this might not end up being official, I took the opportunity to be a little crazy and made a parade banner. Our house has a large number of late Italian personae, and I've always wanted to make a gonfalon. They are modernly used for ecclesiastical purposes. but this type of flag with streamers hanging from a crossbar was originally used by medieval Italian communes and guilds. The name comes from confalone, a meeting held in Florentine neighborhoods where each neighborhood had its own flag. Eventually the flags took on the name of the meeting. At least that is the scoop according to Wikipedia. I didn't feel like doing real research, I just liked the excuse to make a velvety, sparkly, fringy banner with tassels.

The base is an uncut blue corduroy and I appliqued scraps of the gold brocade from my IRCC 2 dress on to make the pale. The snake is black linen canvas. I did use an accurate form of medieval applique with gold interlooped cord I made couched down along the edges of the applique. This 14th century banner with the arms of the Dukes of Savoy uses the same technique. As does this 16th century heraldic applique from the Museo Lasaro Galdiano

Applique was very popular for heraldic use because of its speed. Being able to quickly produce hangings and trappings for parades, festivals, and other uses was important since these things were often not intended to be permanent and there was not enough lead time to embroider or weave. Paint was often used as well, but applique seems to be a step up since it takes just a little longer and requires more materials.

This should have its maiden voyage at Crown Tourney next weekend and I will try to get someone to take some pictures of it in use.