kareina

My normal #1 sewing rule is "Don't sew to a deadline". I find that if my goal for any given sewing project is "I want something to do with my hands right now, and this is pretty and fun to sew" I am happy, and life is low stress.

However...

• When I fell in love this year I acquired a new champion. Unlike my previous champions, this one didn't say "I don't really want to win, I am just going out to have fun" (an actual quote from my viscount, who had so much fun that day he won), instead he said (translated from the Swedish) "I want to enter this tournament with intent to win: I think it would be fun to serve as Prince and Princess with you". 
• I have always loved the look of bliauts, especially the variation for men, with the slit skirts, like St. George wears. 
• I saw a photo on FB of a lovely blue diamond twill wool available for purchase

Together these added up to a very ambitious project: two bliauts, to be worn if we happen to win Nordmark Coronet. Because I am me, (and because of how delicious this fabric feels) I, of course, want to hand-sew them both. All 44 pieces (each) of them.  Alas, we didn't start these soon enough. I only finalized the cutting diagram and started cutting the fabric on 18 July, which was just over two months before the tournament.  

Therefore I started focusing on "what can I do to get them 'wearable' before the date of investiture rather than perfect?" and focused on that.  Therefore, before this weekend, both of them had come this far:

• body rectangle attached to the skirt gores that are on the side, framing the side slits (6 fabric pieces each for this step)
• sleeves attached, including the contrasting colour upper arm band (5 fabric pieces each sleeve, so far for mine (there will be another set of three gores added to my upper forearms, later), and 8 each sleeve for his)
• hemming of all of the above
• lightweight linen undershirts with extra long, very fitted, sleeves finished enough to wear (though they are on the short side, and could use extending the hems a bit, eventually)

This weekend my beloved took me over to the "dark side", where they have not only cookies, but sewing machines, and I (twitching only slightly) cut and pinned the fabric while he drove a sewing machine (and in-between cutting and pinning, I kept hand-sewing the parts that need it), and now we have added:

• four sets of skirt gores inset in his bliaut plus two sets of skirt gores inset in my bliaut (each set comprised of 3 triangles), all machine sewn together, and attached to the bliaut such that the machine stitching is on the inside (it was necessary to un-pick the machine sewing several times when I accidentally pinned the gores to the skirts the way I normally do them (with the stitching to the outside, because I prefer to work on the side that is going to be visible later, so that I can make the stitching disappear completely)
• The points of three of the four sets of his skirt gores have already been hand-finished
• one set of skirt gores for mine hand sewn and ready to inset into the front, and the three pieces for the second set cut and ready to hand sew and inset
• one cloth belt, for him cut and ending in rope in the same manner as St George's belt in the above linked photo (I already have a belt for a bliaut)

The event starts Friday of this week. The tournament is on Saturday, the investiture, as per Nordmark tradition, will be that evening.  We won't know if we will need these or not, but "just in case", between now and Saturday evening we need to:

• hem the all of the new skirt goes 
• finish the point of his remaining skirt gore
• finish the points of all four of my skirt gores

Then, if there is still time, I really want to:

• finish the bottom bit of the seams all around the hem (the middle bits of those seams can be done after the event)
• cut the fabric for the black band that will go around the hem
• attach the black band around the hem (this part is is the reason those seams need to be partially finished, so that we can do the first pass of attaching the band by machine, running over the finished part of the skirt seams, then turn it over and sew the second edge by hand
• attach the black chevron band at the waist
• add those above mentioned additional sleeve gores to mine

• anything from the above that didn't actually get done by the deadline (hint: when on a time-crunch, focus on making the front side pretty and done, and hope no one notices the back isn't quite there yet if you don't quite manage to get it all done)
• finishing the remaining seams
• possibly add decorative embroidery over the black bands

All in all I am enjoying the project, but I think that some of the seam-unpicking that happened yesterday was a direct result of the stress of a looming deadline encouraging me to work too fast, and thus missed seeing that I was sometimes pinning the pieces using autopilot, which is to say, incorrectly in this case. 

However, much though I am enjoying the project, and loving how these are coming out, I still cannot recommend sewing to a deadline. That path leads to the dark side, short-cuts, and unnecessary errors...

A couple of years ago I visited the museums in Vienna with Racaire and got to see for myself the gorgeous blue tunic. Seeing the details of the sewing up close convinced me that it is missing a decorated over bit.

Today I was catching up on reading the 12th Century garb email list and saw a link there to one of her photos of a belt which is displayed in the same collection, and was reminded of the tunic. I don't remember if I mentioned my thoughts on the missing bit here before, or if it has only come up in conversation, but even if I did it might bear repeating, since I have links to specific photos ready to hand just now, and I know that some of my friends are interested in such things.

Why do I think it is missing something? Well, you can see in this photo that the neck slit isn't meant to be seen--the stitching along the neck slit is a coarse covering of the edge and no where near as pretty as even the other seams, and doesn't come close to comparing with the fancy establishments on the cuffs and hem (see neighbouring photos).

The other clue is the tunic in the next display case. As you can see, there is a rectangular beaded and embroidered section sitting over the neckline of the white tunic. If the blue one had such a thing that matched the cuffs and hem it would explain why the tunic itself is so plain on the neck, and why the quality/style of stitching is so different for the neck slit compared to the other seams.