Building on the generic Medieval fantasy costume that I started working on last month, I made up a relatively straight-forward sideless surcoat. Went the easy route and again brought out the Burda 7977 for this instead of using one of any number of fabulous tutorials that are out there. The goal here was to bang something out quickly so that I could show off the kirtle at Figments & Filaments here in Kansas City next month.
I was already planning to avoid buying anything new for this project, so it fit in nicely with the Historical Sew Fortnightly Monthly challenge for March which was "Stashbusting". I found a five yard section of wool suiting that had a subtle brown and tan twill weave to it that I picked up at a steep discount eons ago with the notion that surely I could use it for something. Thems dangerous words right there. Well, to make it a little less 'shiny suit' and a little more Fourteenth Century, I serged the raw edges and dumped the lot of it into the washing machine on warm, and dried it on medium heat. This resulted in an every so slight bit of felting which softened the overall hand and color nicely. The contrasting was done in black silk velvet that was leftover from my Queen of Hearts project, and plus the thread, that's all there is to it.
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| Lol. My neighbors must think we're so weird. |
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| Not sure why it's riding up like that in the back. Must have caught on the belt I'm wearing over the kirtle. |
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| Another shot at that paternoster and the decorative edging on the sleeves of my kirtle. |
You can almost tell in the close up shot above, but for the velvet, I just laid out the pattern pieces and cut strips about four inches in from the arm hole openings. The velvet was sewn to the WRONG side of the arm openings, then folded to the outside, encasing the seams. I then top-stitched about 1/4" from the edge, then again about 3" in from the edge and trimmed off the excess. The top stitching largely gets lost in the pile of the velvet, so I didn't think it detracted from the historical look too much. To finish those raw cut edges, I just used black silk thread to whip stitch and short intervals all the way around. The collar and hemline were treated in much the same way
