I wish I could give you a blow-by-blow account of making this tunic, but I can’t. I constructed the garment with the assistance of the good Livia von Baden… (10+ pictures below the cut) Continue reading “Lavender Viking Tunic”
I am not made of rectangles.
Realization I had yesterday: I am not made of rectangles.
Wait, hear me out. “Rectangular construction conserves fabric” is the best thing I’ve ever heard about this technique. And it is not true.
No, seriously, hear me out. Rectangular construction results in very little waste fabric — meaning the stuff that gets left on the cutting room floor. The “cabbage.” But if there’s extra room in a garment — room you don’t need, that you’d love to cut away to reduce the bulk of bunchy fabric under the arms, or the bulk of the tent-like structure all around your body that hides your figure in a really unflattering way — there is still wasted fabric in your clothes. It’s just not on the cutting room floor. It’s on you.
My First Camisa, sort of
I have officially begun work on my first (sort of) camisa.
Camisa – (Spanish) Chemise, smock, undertunic, shift. Modern: slip, camisole. The white garment that goes under all the other garments in a medieval outfit, protecting the visible garments from sweat and body oils so that they last longer. Generally made with undyed white linen. Wealthy people’s under-linens would be white, because they could afford to have someone spread them out on the grass or over shrubbery and then spend the day watching them instead of doing some sort of active labor; less well-off people simply took their cloth straight from the weaver and made it up into skivvies, though over time these too might become bleached by hanging out to dry in the sun after a washing.
Technically, I have two others, but they don’t really count.
Preparing to SCA
Originally posted to my Facebook page.
Someone I’ve come to think of as a friend is interested in joining the SCA. Naturally, I’m thrilled, because I love sharing my hobby like some people love sharing their religion. But this friend is very smart, which means that she rightly sees that going to school full time plus holding two jobs may be already as much as she can handle. The SCA is something that returns about as much as you put into it, so if you truly only have a spare half-hour a week to think about SCA pursuits, you probably won’t enjoy the SCA all that much, because that’s definitely not enough time to really dig into anything.
Or… is it?
Continue reading “Preparing to SCA”
“I didn’t fail! I found a way that doesn’t work!”
The following was originally posted to my Facebook page, and I’ve decided it needs to be here instead. Probably a lot of things originally posted there will be moved over here.
“I didn’t fail! I merely discovered a way that doesn’t work!” ‘Maura Isles’, Rizzoli & Isles.
There are a lot of ways to think of it, but I’m going with the above. There are many ways to do a given thing. Some ways work, and some ways don’t. If you try something and it doesn’t work, you did not fail. You simply scratched off one possibility on the mental list of methods to try. Continue reading ““I didn’t fail! I found a way that doesn’t work!””
Fabric Stash Organization
A form of this post was first published on my Facebook page. This is its edited form.
I decided to be the best beginner ever, with loads of organization and loads of willingness to learn. I figure this will help my wonderful, patient teachers to remain patient with me even after they’ve experienced my learning disability and basic ineptitude, enough to maybe guide me past both. Another thing that will help: being organized. Continue reading “Fabric Stash Organization”