Friday, October 31, 2014

Rus Norse

This is the outfit that I constructed for Fasching this weekend, by layer.


The under tunic- made out of cream lightweight linen


Dress:  Green medium weight linen with bands of silk dupioni and inkle trim.


The silk was hand stitched into place and the trim was laid over top.  


The coat is heavy weight navy blue wool with a cream linen lining.  The mantle and cuffs are shaved beaver, which I got at Pennsic this year.  The trim is inkle woven from Forbidden Apple Presses.  Eventually I want to get some wider trim of the same color and pattern for the bottom.


Sewing the fur was a huge pain, and I was lucky.  Adam's great grandfather was an incredibly talented tailor and did a lot of work with furs, and Adam inherited some of his tools.  His furrier's knife was incredibly helpful at cutting the leather without making bare spots in the fur.




The Jewelry:  The beads all came from Fire Mountain Gems.  I got a couple assortment packs of glass beads to play with, since there is a huge variety in the colors and patterns on Viking beads.  This is a great resource to help figure out the types and amounts of different beads to create jewelry that's visually "correct."  There's a lot about the clothing and accessories that we don't know, and a lot of liberties are taken, but it's nice to have the existing research broken down in a way that's easy to understand.  The lunula came from Nord Emporium and is strung with amber beads.  The pin is Adam's and came from Raymond's Quiet Press.




Temple band a rings.  The band is just a bit of trim; the rings are jewelry findings.  They don't carry the same weight as some of the really beautiful hand crafted temple rings out there, but they were also only $16 for all six.  

So tomorrow everything gets a trial run and hopefully I can get some pictures of it on an actual body.



Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Quitting

So I started this year's IRCC with the best of intentions, like all projects.  But halfway through July, when I hadn't sewn anything and all my time was being eaten up with mill work because all Adam's time was being eaten up building a house trailer for Pennsic, I started to have my doubts.  When I realized that as soon as I got back from Pennsic, we had a fiber festival to prepare for and I was tired of being stressed... I quit.  Sewing should be fun, not that nightmarish thing you dread.  I save that for trips to the dentist and getting bloodwork done.


But now the festival is done and over and we have Fasching coming up this weekend.  And the weather is supposed to be about 34 degrees, so my normal Pennsic garb of Roman chitons is not going to cut it.  And while I have a decent amount of generic Norse stuff, I had fabric set aside for some nicer winter clothes.  So I've been busy making dresses, jewelry and a coat.  Hopefully with pictures to come.