Costume Contest

This past weekend was opening weekend for the Michigan Renaissance Festival and, after missing opening day to attend the family reuinion, Tom and the girls and I spent Sunday at MIRF. We had a fun day in spite of the all day drizzle. They are having daily costume contests this year and I wanted to see what the entrants were waearing so we went to watch. There were eight entrants in the contest. Third place went to a young gypsy girl who said her brother made her costume for her.



Second place went to the baker and her husband (who had to be the cutest couple ever LOL)



And guess which costume took first place.






I wasn't planning to enter because I haven't completed the accessories and I know all the mistakes I made but reluctantly did so after some prodding by Mary Jayne Fitzhugh, Town Seamstress of Hollygrove, and my family. The prize was four tickets to the faire so I told Kim that means she has to visit again and encourage Jason and Lou to come since Tom and I purchased season passes and don't need the tickets.

(edited to add) In hindsight I realize that I should have cut the bodice with a slight downward curve to the front waistline instead of straight across (but I'm not doing it over), I need to fiddle with the plackets on the side-back opening of the skirts to get them to lay right and not gap, and my camicia sleeves are not long enough for proper puffs through the openings of the sleeves so I'm thinking of sewing in some fake puffs or adding some length to the camicia sleeves.

The dress is done!

I spent most of Thursday finishing up all the fiddly stuff like sewing on the pearls and adding the points (ties) and aglettes to tie on the sleeves. Friday morning I shortened the hem a bit and added a velveteen guard to protect the light colored fabric from mud stains. I'll get some photos of me in the gown tomorrow at the Michigan Renaissance Festival. :)
btw- If anyone has any tips on hairstyles or headcoverings from mid 16th century Florence that will work for someone with very short hair please share! LOL

still sewing

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! LOL Since my last entry I have finished the construction of the bodice and it actually fits. I have all the hand work to finish up by this weekend. I've already handstitched all of the binding on the bodice and have half of the eyelets done. So I need to finish the eyelets, sew the skirt to the bodice, hem the skirt, and finish sewing the pearls to the sleeves. If I have time (or later if not this week) I want to add a paned cap sleeve and a black guard at the hem to protect the light colored fabric from the dirty faire grounds.

Sleeves- Part I

First a bit about the cording: I had planned on using some antique gold cord I saw at HL but, when I went with a fabric swatch in hand to buy it, decided the color just didn't go with the fabric after all. Then the clouds parted, the sun streamed down, and I spotted THE PERFECT TRIM :D on what appeared to be a full spool! It was a very tiny (1/8"?) black they called faux suede but it looked like velvet to me. It cost twice as much as the stuff I had planned to buy but I didn't care. I took it to the cutting table and told the girl I wanted all of it. She started unrolling it and saw that there was a short piece wrapped around the outside of the main piece so she set it aside and measured out over 17 yards then went to measure the short piece and noticed that they weren't the same. The 17 yd piece was about three times thicker than the 3 yd piece I had fallen in love with! :( I took the thinner stuff and a yard of the thicker stuff home with me to mull it over. I decided that I really didn't want the thicker stuff so I called the Hobby Lobby in Jenison and explained my dilema. The young lady who took my call told me that they had a nearly full spool of the stuff I was looking for and set it aside for me. I went out there yesterday afternoon to discover that it was actually the thicker stuff they had. The veteran employee on duty told me that the thinner stuff had been discontinued and looked through their clearance trims and called another store in the area but didn't come up with any of the trim I wanted. After I pouted for a few minutes while she suggested alternatives, she finally asked why I didn't just go with the original twisted cord piping but in black instead of gold. Why didn't I?!? So I chose to stop pouting, work with what was availble, move on, and be happy! LOL

Last night I sewed and turned each of the six sleeve sections. I then realized my error in cutting. I had been concerned with making the pattern match perfectly at the seams of my skirt (where no one but I am likely to notice) but I cut the sleeve sections at random. I ended up with one sleeve that kinda-sorta matches and the other not at all. Another lesson learned. I have decided not to worry about it.


This morning I cut and stitched the binding for the tops of the sleeves and turned it to the inside ready to be hand sewn.



While mulling over where I might find enough matching buttons on short notice for the 48 joins in the sleeves or if I wanted to go shopping for beads I remembered and old strand of cream colored Maljorca (sp?) pearls that needed restringing to re-attach the clasp that has 50 pearls and goes beautifully with the fabric! :D
I have the hand finishing and beading left to do and plan to take the project with me to a family birthday party on Sunday the work on while I chat.

Progress so far....

Doubling up the boning greatly improved the line of the corset.


Tracing the sleeve pieces along the edge before cutting the skirt panels.


I figured out the placket ting in the skirt openings. (I confess for my previous skirts I simply tacked down the seam allowance and left it at that.)



A shot of the cartridge pleating.


The finished skirt. Well, finished except for attaching it to the bodice and hemming it.

On to the Dress!

After discovering that I still need to do more tweaking to get the bodice to fit I set it aside and went back to the corset. I did end up opening the corset back up and doubling up on the boning. Much better! In the process I realized that I was wearing it too high on my body the first go round so I ended up replacing the straps with longer ones as well. I don't know why but I had a horrible time getting the placement of the strap right so I spent pretty much all day on the corset redo.
Anway.... I didn't feel like fiddling with the bodice again today after getting so stressed over the corset yesterday but wanted to make some kind of progress so decided to move on to the skirt and sleeves today. I cut out all the sleeve pieces along one edge of my fabric then cut four skirt panels to length. Even after evening up the side the sleves were cut from I still have wide enough panels to end up with a nice full 160 inch hemline. :) And the trimming are wide enough to be used for the paned cap sleeves. :) And... I have enough fabric left to make a forepart to use with the sleeves on another future gown! :) (Um... provided I don't screw up cutting out the bodice 'cuz there's just enough to cut it once and still get a forepart out of the deal.) I took a little break from cutting to typ this up. Now on to sewing the skirt together! Oh, yeah. I should show you my inspiration for the gown and the fabric I'm working with, shouldn't I? I am using the Elenora di Toledo portrait as my inspiration with this yummy fabric I picked up a Field Fabrics a couple of months ago on clearance for $3.97 a yard and plan to trim the sleeve panes and neckline with some dull gold cording I spotted and Hobby Lobby and plan to go buy tomorrow.

The Corset

Okay. I'm attempting a mini dress diary here. The trouble is that I get going along with the sewing and forget to take photos. I've decided I am ready to tackle a "real" Renaissance gown but the first step is to have the correct underpinnings so that means ..... a corset! I have a smaller frame with huge boobs (DDD) so I cut my pattern with size 12 shoulders and size 18 bust and waist. You know it kills me to type size 18! I hate that patterns are different from ready to wear where I wear a 12-14 which I have a hard enough time accepting. Anyway... Here's the pattern laid out on the cotton twill fabric.


The really tedious part was marking all of the boing lines using tracing paper and a wheel. (Another first for me.)

At this point I've sewn the back-side seams which was a real PITA because the two pieces are very different lengths. The instructions said to stay stich, sew the seam, then clip the curves. It finally dawned on me that I needed to clip to the stay stitching before sewing the seam to allow me to stretch the shorter piece to match the longer piece. I still ended up with some ripples in the seam but it'll do. You can see that the Margo Anderson pattern is cut to include a side seam, even though that likely wasn't done in period, for ease of fitting. That's a very good thing because I ended up taking in quite a bit at the bust. More than FIVE inches!



This photo shows the boning a little better. I used plastic cable ties for boning. I originally purchased more rigid ties but they were too wide for the channels and I didn't want to hassle with remarking them so I ended up with narrower less rigid boning. I am still considering opening the binding back up at the top and doubling up the boning in the center front so that the boned tab will keep a straight line instead of curving out at the bottom.


The good news is that the corset subtracts four inches from my bust but the bad news is that it adds and inch to my waist. Today I am trying to fit the muslin for the bodice of the gown and it looks like I need a size 14 bust and a *gasp* size 20 waist!

Where did my baby go?

Kacie turned 16 while we were in Mackinaw. I think back to the day that asshole doctor told me that my beautiful baby girl wouldn't ever walk or talk and I wish he could see her now! I am so proud of her and how determined and independent she can be yet I know what a naive and trusting soul she is and I just want to wrap her up and protect her from the big bad world.

Mackinaw/Mackinac Photos

The girls and I spent July 20-23 visiting Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island where I managed to get some nice photos. Enjoy!

It's my anniversary!

Can you believe I've been married for 26 years?!? And to the same guy, too! LOL I'm having a lousy day healthwise so I'm mostly being lazy 'til I need to shower and dress to go out to dinner. I did, however, drag my butt into my scraproom to make DH a card in response to the mid-week challenge at the Scrapbook site to make a card using song lyrics. I decided to make DH a silly card for a chage since I usually give him serious cards and he usually gives me silly ones but he surprised me with a serious card this year!

Imported Dirty Sour Cherries!

Yep, Kim and I want to see a roadside stand selling those! LOL The girls and I just returned from a four day weekend "up north" visiting Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island. We lost count of how many signs we saw advertising "Local Washed Sweet Cherries" for sale along the highway. I'm not sure why they make a point of saying they are washed.
I have unpacking and laundry to do and hundreds of photos to edit so I'll be back to post a few photos after I finish.

It's been a long weekend.

It's been a very long weekend and not in a good way. I came home and checked my email after the fireworks Wednesday night to find a message from someone I thought was a friend attacking my character for posting at Scrapperie! The abuse has continued with additional messages berating me, the owners, and the members of Scrapperie.

I choose my friends based on how they treat me. Obviously, the person who sent these messages is no longer considered a friend and apparently never was one. Sandi and Kim befriended me a couple of years ago when I was first beginning to scrapbook and have only treated me with kindness and respect. Most of the other people at Scrapperie are new to me but have been nothing but warm and welcoming. I choose to believe that you are all nice people unless you prove yourselves otherwise by your actions toward me. I am certainly not going to judge anyone based on one person's accusations.

It's just been a very draining weekend. I value honesty and professionalism [i]very[/i] highly and to have mine called into question was very hurtful. And to learn that I had misjudged the character of the person who would say such things to me was a major blow.

My Son

I'll bet some of you didn't even know I had a son, did you? LOL He's not very often the subject of my pages because he doesn't like getting his photo taken. Just now I asked if I could take his picture and he gave me a handsome grin and ran upstairs! I thought I was going to use a photo of Kacie for this page until I came across this one of Jason. This particular photo is his school picture from the fall of his junior year in high school in 2001. This page was done for a challenge at The Scrapbook Site to use a photo and the techniques from the year you started scrapping. Since I didn't really start scrapping until recently and started out in 2001 as a stamper my page includes cardstock, stamping, and lots of ink.

A Day at the Beach

We had our first visit of the season to the beach today and I got some great photos! I've printed out a dozen of them and already scrapped the first one using papers from the Scraplovers June sponsor Crafters workshop.

He was Hot! LOL

DH and I went to our first ever Highland Games over the weekend and had a blast! I took a ton of photos but had to scrap this one and share the story behind it as soon as I got home. The journaling says "This gentleman was dressed in full regalia and waiting in the shade for the closing ceremonies of the Highland Games to begin when he was approached by two women asking "Aren't you hot in that?" I had to chuckle and share with him that the correct response was to treat the question as a statement and simply say "thank you". We hear this a lot when in garb at a renfest." And he was hot in an older Sean Connery kind of way. :D

I was tagged!

uh oh! Linda tagged me! So here goes!
These are the rules…. Each player starts with 7 random facts about themselves on their Blog. People who are tagged need to blog 7 facts about themselves and post the rules as well. At the end of their blog list 7 people you are tagging. Let them know that they are tagged by leaving them a comment.

1. I've been married for almost 26 years to the same man! Hard to believe in this day and age, isn't it?

2. I've recently discovered that I enjoy sewing.

3. My second toe is longer than my big toe.

4. I am a chocoholic. Really. If there is chocolate in the house I will eat it. I can't help myself.

5. My favorite color is blue.

6. I love animals and to me a house without pets is not a home. I currently share my home with one dog and one cat plus the two turtles and all the fish who live in my son's room.

7. I am the right-handed daughter of a left-handed mom and two of my three children are left-handed.

Hmm...who to tag? Who do I know who hasn't already been tagged? Can a person be tagged more than once? Lisa, Renee, Anne, Jules,Sandi, Colleen, and Fran were tagged!

Some Recent Pages

I have been doing a little scrapping between sewing projects. I am particularly pleased with "The Candy Lady" created with products from The Crafters Workshop for Scraplovers. And I had to combine my hobbies by scrapping a page for a challenge at Scrapperie using photos of my daughter in her new garb. :)

More Adventures in Sewing

After realizing that I really can sew (doing it mostly by hand, though, since the sewing machine and I still still don't get along well) I started working on some things for myself. I made some alterations to my purchased bodice by covering the large grommets with strips of velveteen and sewing on decorative lacing rings. I made a hat and woven ribbon caul for myself and a beaded net haircovering for my daughter. I made a cartridge pleated velveteen trimmed wool skirt and a bum roll to wear under it. I made a set of reversible sleeves with one side matching the blue wool of the skirt and the other matching the navy brocade of my bodice. I made a linen partlet (think of it as an Elizabethan dickey! LOL). Next up is a square necked shift to wear under everything since the partlet looks silly with the gathered neck chemises I have. I am hoping that these additions will bring my garb to more of a middle class than peasant look. I have also been working on a Florentine gamurra dress in between the other things.