Decisions, Decisions!

I set my sewing aside for over a week because of a fibro flare but now I feel like sewing again. The question is: Do I finish the green wool gown? (Front of bodice is finished, still pad-stitching the lining for the back, and skirt panels cut but not sewn.) Or do I set that aside and do the Ottoman ensemble? On the one hand the green dress has been a UFO for so long that I should just Get. It. Done. But, on the other hand, I think I could whip out the Ottoman garb by this weekend because I would do most of it by machine as I am only concerned with the look of the garments and don't feel the need to do it by hand. Hmmm...I think I am leaning toward instant gratification! LOL

13 Days

Thirteen more days before we head to Pennsic and so much to do between now and then!
Nothing has been accomplished the past few days with Norm's visitation, rosary service, and funeral mass plus me being in the midst of an arthritis/fibro/whateverthehellitis flare-up and feeling too tired and brain fried to do anything productive. So the to-do list includes:
*order Kacie's birthday cake
*make birthday cards for Kacie and Tom
*celebrate Kacie's 18th birthday on the 21st by taking her to order her class ring, tagging along when Kim takes her to get a tatoo, then cake & ice cream at home
*make invitations for Stephanie's baby shower so Kim can address and mail them while Tom and I are in Pennsylvania
*try to finish the "Keira's 1st Year" album before the end of the month so I can get credit for doing it during the ScrapFreak summer challenge (I thought the challenge ran through August so I would be able to finish after Pennsic but found out it only runs through the end of July.)
*celebrate Tom's 51st birthday on the 25th
*finish the second biggins cap/coif that I started earlier this week for Tom
*make the green linen roman tunica/chiton for me and possibly...
*buy trim for the chiton so that I can get away with machine sewing the hems and disguise the machine stitching
*make at least two partlets- one with gold lace trim
*get together with Rebecca to decide who is cooking which evenings at Pennsic
*test recipes and finalize dinner menus for Pennsic
*make an anniversary card
*help Tom apply a beeswax finish or milk paint to the chests and tables he's working on and the bed frame
Okay! I hope that's everything!

Done with Tom's Tunics!

Woohoo! These things are just so boring to work on that I am happy to finally be done. I did the brown and the green back in the spring so he had something to wear then set them aside. I pulled them back out and finished the navy tunic then set them aside again. I finally made myself finish the rust and the teal tunics so that, along with his ren faire shirts, Tom will have enough garb to get through Pennsic. Next up are a couple of coifs so he won't burn his bald head then his garb will be done and I can get back to sewing my things.

Sewin' sewin' sewin'...

Keep those fingers sewin'! (Sung to the tune of "Rawhide" :giggle:)
Saturday was such a beautiful spring day that I sat outside and worked on sewing hems on Tom's tunics. That tune just kept running through my head as I was sewing. I've finished the brown with green and green with navy tunics but this project is soooo boring that I haven't been eager to work on them. The two finished linen tunics along with the two wool ones will get him through the upcoming weekend campouts. He won't need the rest of them until Pennsic in August so I think I'll set them aside and work on something else for awhile.

Assembly Line Tunics

I've started on the linen tunics for Tom's summer camping garb. I measured and cut all five on Saturday then pinned all the gussets and gores on Tuesday and started sewing the first one. When it came time to cut the neck and figure out the facing/trim I pulled out my circle template from The Crafter's Workshop and the rotarty cutter I got free when I purchased my paper trimmer. I love it when I can use my scrapbooking supplies on my sewing projects! LOL Today I got the first one done except for the hemming (I'm still undecided whether or not to do the contrasting fabric at the hem) and the gussets and gores sewn on the second one. They will be brown trimmed with green, green trimmed with navy, navy trimmed with rust, rust trimmed with teal, and teal trimmed with brown.

Mmmm...Fabric!

JoAnn's has been redeemed in my eyes! I know I have complained several times about the half-aisle of crappy scrap supplies and the limited selection of fabrics at my local store. The new humongous Superstore just opened so I headed there this morning with my coupon to 20% off my entire purchase and LOVED the place! The scrapbooking section was a big as the entire store near me and looked to have a better selection of desirable products but I resisted the urge to browse that area because I was there for fabric. Most fabric stores around here much of what they offer as "linen" is poly-rayon linen weave crap with a few bolts of linen blends mixed in. Well this new store had at least 15 different colors of REAL 100% LINEN!!! After some internal debate I did opt for the linen rayon blends at half the price since I have a lot of garb to make before camping SCA season but I will defintely be going back for my next 100% linen purchase. Anyway, I bought enough fabric, matching thread, and misc. to make five tunics for Tom and a dress for me for under $90!
I read recently that just about any color can be achieved with natural dyes so there is no reason to restrict yourself to muddy earth tones to appear "period". Taking that to heart I chose olive, teal, navy, rust, and brown for Tom's tunics and intend to trim each with one of the contrasting colors. I have the fabrics all prewashed and ironed so I'll be starting soon! (These are the strips I tore off to even up the cut ends.)

I purchased a reddish purple for my dress shown below with the navy and seafoam green I already had planned for camping dresses.

Warm Garb for Tom

After finishing my coat I took Thursday off from sewing to go shopping including buying wool to make a coat for Tom. I found some chocolate brown 100% wool suiting at Joann's (the only wool they had) then decided to check Field's where I found some dark navy wool melton cloth. Since Tom hasn't shown an interest in any specific time or place I had no idea what kind of coat to make so I just made a t-tunic and opened it down the front. I then bound the edges with burgundy bias tape and used the same to create loops for the pewter buttons. Making the coat took up most of my day Friday but late Friday night I decided to use the brown wool to make him another tunic. It took me about two hours to measure and cut all of the pieces then sew the gussets and gores, when I got to the point of needing to cut the neck opening I realized I was too tired to do anything that couldn't easily be redone if I goofed so I went to bed. I woke up early Saturday morning to do the neck, sew up the side seams, and hem the tunic before getting myself dressed for the event.

Ivory Wool Tunic or Cote

After Tom nearly froze his tushie off at Fall Harvest I decided it needed to make him something warm to wear for cold weather SCA events. All he had were warm weather RenFest clothes: a few cotton and linen shirts and one pair of knee length pants. He didn't own any kind of doublet or jacket and I didn't feel that I had the skills or patience to try to make him one. We settled on a generic wool tunic or "man's basic cote" using the cutting diagram in The Medieval Tailor's Assistant.
This was supposed to be a quick and easy project so we chose an inexpensive wool blend fabric. I cut the pieces and quickly assembled them by machine. I follow the no *visible* machine stitching school of thought so planned to do all of the hems by hand. I expected to just pink the seam allowances and call it good but, unfortunately, the inexpense fabric ravelled like crazy! Deciding that felled seams would be too thick and bulky I chose to turn under each seam allowance and stitch it down with a running stitch. It's a good thing we ended up not going to Winter Revel in January because all of that hand stitching took me forever to finish. I did get it finshed in time for Val Day by hemming in the car on the way to the airport for the cruise.
In the interest of full disclosure (and because I share my mistakes so others than learn from them LOL) I did NOT know what I was doing when sewing in the split center front gores and totally screwed the top point up. Fortunately my mistake was hidden under Tom's belt because I also made the split a bit too high. And I did do a better job on the back. I didn't do a facing for the neck but simply turned the edge under and stitched it down. I may at some point in the future turn it into a keyhole neck and add some trim.


Side

Back

Front

Here's how it looked after we got home around midnight (which is my excuse for the crappy pics). I'm also posting a crappy mirror shot of my outfit because I never seem to remember to get pics of me in my garb.