16th Century Cream Linen Kirtle

Hello!

A short time ago I blogged about my Blue Linen Kirtle and I finished that post with a lament about how I am lacking in awls. I haven’t got an awl yet so I haven’t continued work on the Blue Kirtle. However, I’ve still been sewing a lot and I’ve made good progress with my next kirtle.

UPDATE: Since writing this post I have, in fact, received my awl, but I've been sewing much slower so this post is basically still up-to-date.

Kirtle #2 is made using the same pattern that Rosie helped me with. However, it has a very different structure from the Blue Kirtle because it is front-lacing instead of side-lacing. It’s also cream-coloured. The top fabric is from Fabrics-store.com and it’s IL019 5.3 oz/yd² in a colour called Krista. For the lining I used the same white linen that I used in my Blue Kirtle. The Cream Kirtle is also entirely hand-sewn using linen thread, except for the basting stitch where I used the same cheap cotton.

My process for the Cream Kirtle started in the same way that the process for the Blue Kirtle started. I cut out the pieces in interlining fabric. This time I used two layers of linen and one layer of the grey horsehair stuff. I didn’t really want it to be any thicker but because the cream linen is so light you can see the grey horsehair stuff through it. I didn’t have that problem with the Blue Kirtle because you can’t see the grey through the deep blue. Using two layers of the heavy white linen means that you can’t see the grey stuff through the cream stuff. Here’s a picture of those three layers:

As with the Blue Kirtle, my next step was to stitch the layers of interlining together. I used running stitch. Next step: cutting out the top fabric. I cut out the lining fabric at the same time to make sure it was the same size and shape as the top fabric pieces. I was pretty careful at this step because I think that wrong cutting-out of my lining fabric contributed to the shoulder-lumping on the Blue Kirtle. I also used a slightly smaller seam allowance this time and I didn’t have to trim any off. After all the cutting-out I used a big running stitch to baste the top fabric to the interlining.

Picture for proof:

And then, herringbone stitch! I remembered to take pictures of my herringbone stitch this time so you can have a look at how I did.

Along a straight edge:

Around a curve:

The next step after the herringbone stitching (which took forever, it’s such a slow part of the process) was to sew the seams. There were many more seams on the Cream Kirtle than there were on the Blue Kirtle. I sewed the side seams first and then the shoulder seams. I don’t really think that the order would have made a difference, I just did it in that order because I thought it would be better to sew the longer seams first. I used back-stitch because it’s good for seams. After I sewed the four seams (two side-seams, two shoulder-seams) on the top fabric, I sewed those same seams on the lining fabric.

Next, I pinned the lining fabric into the bodice. I started by matching the seams and then I tucked the seam allowance all under and pinned that down. For around the armholes I did the same thing, using little snips to be able to fold it in neatly. Interestingly, I was watching the “Jersey Shore” episode of Bones whilst doing this. I don’t know why I remember that. Anyway, I then sewed down the lining using slip-stitch. Here are a couple of pictures of the lining all sewed down:

I’m pretty happy with how the bodice has turned out so far. It doesn’t have any weird lumping that I’ve noticed yet and I think my sewing was mostly quite neat. The only part of the bodice that I’m not as happy with is the back panel, which is a V-shape. I’m not happy with it because it turned out not-very-pointy. I tried to make it pointy but it didn’t turn out very pointy and I don’t know how to increase the pointedness. Here’s a picture of how it turned out:

*sigh* Oh well, it will do.

I’ve done a bit more work on this dress but I haven’t taken pictures yet, so I’m going to keep this blog post short and sweet and leave it here.

The rest of what I’ve done is: cut out the skirt pieces, do the pleating, attach the skirt, sew the side-seams.

What I have left to do is: a bunch of finishing, remove basting stitches, a bunch of lacing-holes.

UPDATE: I may have done this stuff already (but not on the blue dress yet).

Hopefully by the next time I blog I’ll have completely finished both dresses! I should be able to sum them up in one post (with pictures)!

Thanks for reading :)

♥Nancy♬

Hysterical Pregnancy

Hi everyone!

I promised that there would be some more creative writing to come and here it is, yay!

No, it’s not A Fantasy Story. I still fully intend to write more of that but I haven’t been inspired and so I’m just experimenting with short pieces at the moment.

I don’t really have any background information to offer on this one; I pretty much just sat down to write and this was what came out.

I hope you enjoy it and, as always, I appreciate any comments you’d like to provide. I’ll only get better if I get some constructive criticism!

♥Nancy♬

She sits in a deep, velvet arm chair with her hands resting gently on her swollen belly. There is a tiny fire struggling to maintain vigour in the grate but she does not take any actions to help it survive. There’s not much left in the room. The floor is wooden but the thick layer of dust makes it difficult to tell. There is a coffee table with a now-cold mug of green tea leaving a wet ring on the glass surface. There is a photograph of a married couple on the mantlepiece; they look happy together. She pointedly avoids eye contact with the man and woman in the photograph. She caresses her distended abdomen. Empty. That’s what the doctor told her. He told her that her belly was empty and barren. He called her hysterical. A hysterical pregnancy. She didn’t believe it was kosher to call a pregnant woman hysterical; surely it was just the hormones making her a little crazy? She’d tried to explain that to Dan, but he’d believed the doctor and screamed at her for making her empty belly out to be full of growing life. Which it is, there is no doubt in her mind. She feels a flicker of movement.

 “Don’t kick,” she scolds, gently, affectionately, to the baby that she knows is wriggling in her womb.

She supposes it was wrong to blame Dan for walking out. They’d tried so long and so hard to have a baby. They’d both wanted the baby. At first, anyway.

 “Okay,” Dan had said, “we’ll go to a specialist.”

He had been so good to her, way back at that point. It seems so far away now. They had gone to the specialist. She remembers back to poking and prodding, appointments and injections, and test after test after test coming back... negative. She tries to forget.

And instead she remembers Dan saying, “we need to stop trying. It’s not going to happen.”

She’d gotten so mad and they’d fought. She regrets it now and wishes for Dan to come home to her. She glances up at her dusty wedding photo. For a split second she misses that woman, the one laughing and smiling with Dan on their wedding day. But she wasn’t pregnant. She stops missing that barren bitch and caresses her stomach again.

Dan will come home, she is sure of it. Once he realises that she’s actually pregnant this time, that’s when he’ll turn right around and come home. How could he not? They have always dreamed of raising a child together. Dan might have said otherwise during their fight on the night he left, but she was sure that he didn’t mean it. He can’t mean it now, anyway, she thinks. Not now that he’s had time to calm down; he has definitely realised that she’s truly pregnant this time.

A doubt niggles in the depths of her mind.

 “I don’t care anymore, I don’t want a baby!” Dan had yelled, on the night before he’d left.

 “Yes you do, you do,” she had yelled back, “we’ve always dreamed of raising a child together!”

 “That was your dream! And it’s not going to happen.”

 “It’ll just take a little longer.”

 “I don’t want to try anymore. I can’t live like this. I’m leaving tonight.”

 “You can’t leave! It’s dark and it’s raining. It won’t be safe on the roads.”

She had turned to logic in her time of need. A pregnant pause had followed. There was a kind of poetic irony to that.

 “Fine,” Dan had said. “I’m sleeping in the guest room. I’ll leave in the morning.”

She shakes her head gently to break herself out of the painful memory. Thoughts are whizzing around in her mind and she can’t do anything to stop them. Dan will come back. They will have this baby together. She’s not hysterical, she’s just hormonal. And her belly isn’t empty, it is full of growing life. It can’t be empty, not after what she did...

She remembers:

It was dark and lightning struck outside the window, lighting up the living room with its wooden floors, polished mantelpiece and deep, velvet armchair. This was a night where the weather was cutting the world off from heaven. How convenient. She lit a candle. She’d wanted a black one but they only had plain white candles at home. Did people really stock black candles in their homes? What would you ever need one for? Well... this. She sat on the floor in front of the coffee table with its glass top and watched as the candle began to drip-drip-drip its wax. She began to speak.

 “Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Innana.”

She’d read the names on the internet. They were names of goddesses, of female gods that, let’s face it, no one really worshipped. But it was nice to think that on this dark night of rain and storms and husbands leaving there was someone listening, even if it wasn’t God. And this was a woman’s problem.

She read the names again, “Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Innana.”

She spoke faster the second time, liking the sound of them, the rhythm and the unfamiliar sounds as they fell off her tongue. She said them again. She said them again. She was chanting.

She is not the chanting sort. And now, as she breaks out of that memory and back to reality for just a brief second, she feels bad for turning her face away from God. She turns to him now and makes a different wish, a wish for her husband to come home. It doesn’t feel as powerful as the wish she made on that dark and stormy night. She falls back into the memory.

 “Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Innana, Isis, Astarte...” she had fallen into a rhythm, a proper chant. But she could feel something building too. It wasn’t God, he didn’t seem to be watching. But it was a familiar force, something that could have been from her own religion and not from one of the crazy religions where the names she was chanting actually meant anything.

Again, she chanted, “Hecate, Demeter,” and she felt that same feeling that something was building, like a wave or bread rising, or an orgasm. “Kali, Innana...”

A pause. And then: “Lilith,” she hissed, and felt the presence of something very powerful all around her. Lightning cracked again. She had chanted women’s names but the last name, that was not a made-up goddess from a pretender’s religion. Lilith may have been demonic but at least she was Judeo-Christian and that had to count for something. And really, she was only turning aside from God, not away to Satan, just... aside. To a female power who could help with a female problem.

Thunder clapped and she made her wish in front of the dripping candle and in the presence of that female power.

 “Give me a baby.”

She snaps out of her reverie and feels sweat running down her brow even though it is a cold day. Her actions had worked. The night had been dark and God had not been watching, but she knows now that he must have heard her plea and understood what she had done in desperation. She smiles and caresses her beautiful, pregnant belly. Empty? Pah! She knows her body better than any doctor. She isn’t hysterical. This is not a hysterical pregnancy. She spoke directly to God and now she is pregnant.

Dan will be home any day now.

She begins to laugh. She is alone in a cold and empty house. Alone, with her cold and empty belly. Her soul feels cold, too.

She laughs. And laughs. And laughs, until the fire goes out.

16th Century Blue Linen Kirtle

Hi everyone! It’s been a long time since I did a garb diary. Usually that wouldn’t be a big deal but this time I’ve actually been sewing. A lot.

Armed with the AMAZING pattern that Rosie helped me with (read all about that process here) I began work on my first kirtle. I decided to start on the side-lacing one because I’m making that one in my blue fabric, and blue is awesome and should come first every time!

I started by cutting out my pieces in my interlining fabric. For the interlining for these kirtles I’m using a combination of heavy linen (I’m pretty sure it’s the 8 oz/yd² IL090 from Fabrics-store.com in Bleached, or maybe Optic White, I can’t remember exactly) and some sort of horsehair fabric that I found at Spotlight. I wanted horsehair canvas for its stiffness and I don’t think that’s exactly what I found, but it feels like natural fabric of some kind and it has no stretch to it at all, which in the end is the point. The heavy linen is stretchy (because it’s linen) so I added the horsehair whatsit stuff to stop it stretching (interlining needs to hold its shape). Anyways, after I cut out the pieces in exactly the same size as my pattern I then sewed them together. For the first dress, the blue one, I just used 1 layer of linen and 1 layer of the horsehair stuff.

Here’s a picture which kinda shows that. The grey-ish fabric is the horsehair stuff.

I sewed the layers together using running stitch around the edge, and then I put the pieces onto my blue fabric so that I could cut out the top layer, with appropriate seam allowance. The linen I used was the 5.3 oz/yd² IL019 from Fabrics-store.com and I think the colour was Pacific Blue but I can’t remember or find where I put that information... Anyway, the following picture demonstrates how I went overboard with the aforementioned seam allowance; you can also see my running stitches on the interlining.

Once I had cut out both top pieces in my beautiful blue linen I basted the interlining to the corresponding top piece using a big running stitch. This was the only part of the process that I used definitely incorrect materials (I’m still not sure if my horsehair stuff counts as a period-accurate material but at this point I’m giving myself the benefit of the doubt). I used crappy cotton thread to do the basting. I used this because a) it was really low-quality random thread that we had laying around, as opposed to my fancy linen thread and b) because the basting stitches get pulled out at the end anyway so it didn’t really matter that much.

See the above picture: basting. Also, too much seam allowance.

My next step was to use herringbone stitch to attach the top-fabric to the interlining. I didn’t take any photos of my herringbone stitch, unfortunately. But basically I started about two finger-widths in (to leave room for finishing edges after I attach the skirt) and herringbone-stitched the whole way around, leaving the top of the shoulders open so that I could sew the seam later. I was pretty happy with my herringbone stitch, I think I did lots of nice small stitches and I made sure I never went through to the top fabric so it’s basically invisible now.

Cutting too big of a seam allowance caused some issues when I was doing herringbone stitch up around the shoulders and then when I was sewing the shoulder seam, but I fixed that problem by trimming down the seam allowance.

My next step was to sew the shoulder seams. I used back-stitch because that’s a nice strong stitch and the shoulder seams have to be particularly strong. On a side-lacing kirtle the only seam is the shoulder seam, because where side-seams would be otherwise there will be lacing on this dress. One of the shoulder seams went just fine but the other one turned out kinda lumpy. I don’t know what I did to make it go like that, but you can’t tell on the finished thing so I guess it sorted itself out.

I then cut out the lining fabric. My lining fabric is white linen, again from Fabrics-store.com, but I can’t for the life of me remember whether it’s the 5.3 oz/yd² or the 3.5 oz/yd². I cut out the lining fabric with too much seam allowance too and had to trim it down also. Once I’d cut it out/trimmed it down, my first step was to sew the shoulder seams. After that I pinned it into the rest of the bodice and then I tucked all the seam allowance in and sewed it down using slip stitch. I left a little gap at the bottoms (about two finger-widths) for finishing and sewing on the skirt.

I had a similar lumpy problem when I was sewing the lining down around the shoulder seams. In the following picture you can see some lumping:

The lumping isn’t too bad really, it just looks a bit messy. I couldn’t work out how to fix it up though so I’ve just left it that way. It’s on the inside so I don’t think it really matters that much. The other side turned out just fine. Here’s a picture of what the shoulders look like along the edges:

Here are a couple of pictures of the lining sewn down on the bodice, so this is what it looks like on the inside. I especially took pictures of corners and stuff because they are fiddly bits.

So that was the bodice pretty much finished, except for lacing holes and finishing off the edges at the very bottom. My next step was to do the skirt and that is where things went kinda wrong. I decided to do a bit of shaping at the top of the skirt.

This was my process: I measured the edge of my bodice, I folded and cut my fabric in half, I cut the diagonals at the top for the shaping.

The problem? I’d measured the shorter part of the bodice. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that the two pieces of the bodice have different length edges. Noooooo it was a disaster! One of the pieces was the right size but the other one was not. If I hadn’t already cut my diagonals I could have just rotated it (not ideal, but it would have worked) and cut different diagonals and it would have fit perfectly. But I had cut my diagonals so I freaked out and cried everywhere until mum came home to help.

We remeasured my edges, recalculated the lengths of fabric I needed and tossed around ideas of how to make it work. In the end I rotated to the too-small piece, which made it approximately the right size, and cut new diagonals even though they were smaller than the diagonals on the other piece. In the end I still have an unfortunate diagonal at the top and bottom on one side, but at the top it should be lost in the waist seam and hopefully at the bottom it will be lost in the hem, so no harm done in the end.

Now that my skirt-cutting drama was over, I was able to pin the skirt onto my dress. I lined up the seam allowances at the edges and pinned it in place and then went around pinning my pleats. I decided to do a box pleat in the middle and knife pleats fanning outwards because I think that looks nice. I had measured my skirt so that I would have three times the length of the bodice and I did tiny perfect pleats of 1cm width. I say perfect, I am seriously exaggerating when I say that. I ended up with the same number of pleats on both side (of the middle, not on both sides of the dress) but it took some wiggling. It’s very hard to get accurate pleats.

Once I’d pinned my pleats I used backstitch to sew the skirt on. I tried to sew it in such a way that I got some of the stitches into the interlining as well, so that when I removed the basting stitch it wouldn’t flap around at all at the bottom of the bodice.

Here is the skirt all sewn on and back-stitched and pleated. I’m pretty happy with it.

And here it is on the outside. The pleats don’t look entirely even here, even though I think they are pretty close to even. When you hold the dress up they look more even so it should look pretty okay when I wear it.

After the skirt was sewn onto both sides of the dress my next step was to sew the side-seam down the whole length of the skirt. I did it with back-stitch and it was a pretty uneventful step in the process.

Then I had to deal with this mess:

This is what it looked like at the bottom of the bodice. It’s excess seam allowance and that sort of thing and it needed to be neatly tucked down and finished off. I was quite unsure how to get that all working. It took looks of folding and poking and prodding and pinning and, eventually, stitching. Here’s how it turned out:

It think it looks pretty okay in its finished form. The folded bit down the edge is the edge of the skirt-opening. I folded it in and sewed it down using slip-stitch and it continues into the seam of the skirt where it then turns into a flat-fold finished seam.

Pictures for proof, the edge:

Pictures for proof,  the seam and finishing on the inside:

That all went quite smoothly, except at the top where the seam-opening starts. I had to find some way to make that all be finished edges so that it didn’t fray to pieces and, well... just look:

So... it turned out kinda messy. That’s the inside, of course, so it’s not really a huge deal. In order to make it look neat and tidy on the outside I think I will try to sew a little buttonhole-bar, just to give it strength and neatness at the bottom. For now, though, it looks okay so I’ll probably do that as the last thing before I wear it.

I finished off the bottom of the bodice, over the skirt seam:

And then, goodbye basting stitch!

Yay! It’s looking quite good.

So what’s left to do on this dress? Well, it’s not wearable until I sew some lacing holes. The reason I haven’t done that yet is because I don’t have an awl. However, an awl is a belated part of my Christmas presents from mum and dad so when it arrives I will be sewing about a billion lacing-holes.

I asked a garb expert (Rosie, again) what colour my lacing holes should be. She told me that lacing holes in English garb are the same colour as the fabric. If I were sewing Flemish garb I might have just used my same natural-coloured linen thread to do the lacing holes. But I’m definitely English rather than anywhere else so I will be doing the lacing holes in matching blue thread. Linen thread is hard to find and even harder to colour-match, so I pulled a bunch of long threads out of my excess blue fabric. The lacing holes should end up pretty much invisible, as long as I sew them well!

I also have the bottom hem to go, but I’m planning to leave that until my lacing holes are done so that I can be properly wearing the dress when it comes time to measure the hem. I think that will make it the most accurate length-wise.

Without an awl I am currently stuck so I have left this dress alone for now. I’ll work on it more when I have an awl. In order to keep myself busy while waiting for that important tool, I started work on my next dress, yay!

But this post is pretty long already so I’ll blog about my next dress another time (maybe once I’ve made some more progress on it).

Hope this was an interesting read!

♥Nancy♬

Coffee Boy

Happy new year everyone! I hope you had a pleasant Christmas and that 2013 has been good for you so far.

I know I have readers who are holding out for the next instalment of A Fantasy Story (hi!) but, unfortunately, that's not what I'm here to deliver today. It'll come, I promise. I have lots of ideas for it, I just needed a break.

So, to kick-start what will hopefully be a writing-filled year, here is a piece I wrote just before Christmas.

Enjoy! And keep an eye out for more posts this month, there will definitely be at least one more because I wrote at least one more thing!

♥Nancy♬

Coffee Boy:

It was a quiet day at the office, which led to it being a quiet day as an assistant. As Matt walked from the office to the coffee shop down the street, he realised that the whole world was quiet today. There was barely a soul on the street and only a handful of quiet customers in the coffee shop. Hubble Bubble was a small, suburban coffee shop and it was usually pretty quiet, but today it was practically dead. A high-pitched bell jingled as he walked through the door. Straight ahead at the counter, the coffee girl perked up at the sound of the bell. She quickly fussed around with cleaning cloths and moving milk jugs, but Matt had seen her leaning on the bench before he’d pushed open the door.

 “Hi,” she called out, and gave him a wiggly-fingered wave. “Coffee?”

 “Yes please,” he said, arriving at the counter. He unfolded the piece of paper that he’d carried from the office and put it down in front of the girl. He spun it around so that she could read it. “My boss wrote a list. She said you’d be able to understand it, it’s all fancy coffee names, I don’t know.”

 “Thanks,” said the girl, taking the list and scanning her eyes down it.

Matt peaked at her name badge. Katie. Would it be creepy to call her by her name? Probably. He decided not to.

 “She used to own a coffee shop,” he said, “my boss. Which is weird, because she doesn’t drink coffee.”

The girl, Katie, smiled. Matt’s heart starting to feel warm, fuzzy and off-beat. Was it his heart? She was pretty and he was reacting in... other places, too.

 “I don’t drink coffee, either,” she said.

 “Well in the interests of full disclosure to my caffeinated-beverage-technician, I definitely do drink coffee. I’m that one, down there,” he said, leaning over the counter and pointing wildly at the list.

 “Matt,” she read, off the coffee list, “coffee. Black.”

 “Yeah,” he said, “sorry.” Then he said, “Katie?” testing the name waters.

She stopped working on the coffees and turned to him. “Katie,” she confirmed, pointing at her name badge. She got back to work on the last coffee.

 “Are you working long today?”

 “No, I finish at four. No big deal, really.”

 “Any big plans for after?”

 “Just enjoying being free.”

 “I would have asked you out for coffee,” Matt said, “only I know you don’t drink it. So...”

Katie grinned as she put the last cup of coffee into a cardboard coffee holder. “Pity,” she said, “I would have said yes anyway.”

 “Oh. So...?”

 “Well you’ve missed your chance now, haven’t you,” she said, as she tapped at a calculator to work out the cost of all that coffee.

 “Oh,” Matt said, a little embarrassed by his failure, but also how obvious his disappointment was.

 “But I’m working the same time tomorrow,” she said, “if you wanted to try again.”

Matt’s grin lit up his face.

They completed the coffee transaction and he walked back to the office with a spring in his step, glad that the street outside was quiet because it meant there was no one there to see how he was grinning like an idiot.

“What’s happened to you?” asked his boss, taking her hot chocolate from Matt’s coffee tray.

 “I asked out the coffee girl.”

 “She said yes?”

 “No, I screwed it up and she said I missed my chance.”

 “Well fair enough, really. A pretty coffee girl isn’t going to agree to a date with every baby-faced office drone who asks her out, is she?”

 “I guess not. But, I mean, she didn’t just say no. She said I could try again tomorrow.”

Matt’s boss sipped her hot chocolate, and smiled.

 “Don’t screw it up,” she said. Then she handed him a pile of papers. “File these for me.”