Figments & Filaments 2015

Last weekend I attended the sophomore year of Figments & Filaments here in Kansas City (Overland Park, if you want to get specific).  It's exciting to have a costuming convention starting up in my own town.  And there was SO much awesome packed into such a small con.

I got to go to a great panel about the 14th C V-neck gown (houppelande) by Robin Netherton.  She had many thinky thoughts on the evolution of the neckline and the construction there of.  It left me wanting to make another go at making a houppelande, and possibly not out of heavy upholstery fabric this time.  I also hit a panel on the use of silk and gold in Medieval textiles by Gale Owen Crocker that left me wanting to embroider everything in gold.  A panel on leather working got the inspiration running and lead me make an inaugural visit to Tandy Leather for basic supplies.  I also caught Jillian Venters catch-all panel on Goth Style which left me wanting to tweak and mod my way into something fabulous.  I also hosted a panel on 18th C Womens' Fashions, focusing on the social and political climate that they were a part of.  Wow, but it's been a while since I've had to do such concentrated prep work for something.  It was like college all over again.  But on the bright side, I now have a rough draft of a good programming topic put together that I can refine before bringing out another time.  Not that spending hours collecting images of portraits and extant garments wasn't a fabulous use of my time.  And I solidified a lot of things that I kinda knew, but didn't know well.  Especially with regards to the timeline of events in the French and English courts and the people involved.

Pretty much everything else that I got up to can be summarized in photos.  Luckily, the official con photographers and the couple of others that were flitting around were great about catching lots of photos of everyone and I got caught at one point or another in every costume that I wore. 

I put the His & Hers 18th C Court Ensemble in the costume gallery.
Photo by BMoon Studios

I finally caught a few photos of me wearing my 1880s tea gown.
Photo by Tom Ulrick

Obligatory cup of tea with the tea gown.
Photo by BMoon Studios

As a guest lecturer, I scored an unexpected invite to the VIP meet-n-greet on opening night.
Photo by BMoon Studios.  

I overslept and missed the opportunity to wear my chemise dress to my 18th c fashion panel,
but it made a great outfit for lounging about on Saturday afternoon.
Photo by BMoon Studios.

Finishing my white work embroidery project started back at Costume College last year.
Photo by Tom Ulrick.

Aaaaand, I got to have a right and proper geek-gasm getting my photo taken with the lovely gentleman from
Iron Brothers of Topeka.  I've admired their suits from afar at other, more crowded events.  So it was a real
treat to get to check them out in a much more subdued venue.  Photo by IBOT.

Stephanie caught a photo of me in the Queen of Hearts costume that I wore for the fashion show.
The look was well-received, but I creep myself out whenever I see pictures of that makeup job.
The goal was to minimize the pretty and over-emphasize masculine mouth and jawline.  *shivers*

And here I am with Kimberly, scaring off new friends just as fast as I can make them.
Photo stolen from Stephanie.

It was SO hard staying in character for pictures.  Everyone seemed to get a kick out of reacting to an angry queen,
but I would bust up laughing in a matter of seconds.
Photo by BMoon Studios.

Lazy Sunday costume of my Medieval Sideless Surcoat.  No wig, corset, makeup, or heels.

HSM April: War & Peace - the 14th Century Linen Coif

April's Historical Sew Monthly Challenge was War & Peace: The extremes of conflict and long periods of peacetime both influence what people wear.  Make something that shows the effects of war, or of extended peace.  

After getting dressed up for pictures in my new side-less surcoat, I was reminded that, while I love having the veil, I hate the work it takes to get it on right.  I had been wearing my veil pinned to a matching silk fillet (strap around the head) and barbette (strap under the chin), but the process of pinning those pieces in place, then pining the veil to them had grown cumbersome.  I was looking for something both more secure, and requiring less fiddling to get and keep on straight.  Hence the coif!

There are any number of excellent patterns and instructions out there, but the one that I found most useful was posted by the Maniacal Medievalist, which used lots of measurements and math to get something close-fitting and properly fit.  I made slight alterations to the pattern in that edge against the face is bound in the same narrow strip of fabric that extends down into the ties, rather than having a turned under edge with separate ties attached.  I felt that this made my ties more secure, but had the drawback of leaving me with short ties, due to the size of the scrap of linen that I was using.  As much as having things secured under the chin tend to annoy me, I'm thinking I may just leave the ties undone, or tie them instead behind the neck.  Either way, the cap stays relatively secure.

I left a bit of ease in the back so I'd have a place to stuff my hair, if I succeed in growing it out.

Octopus made a fantastically patient model for me while I kept fiddling with camera settings.

Seen from the back.  Lower edge was turned under twice and whip stitched.

Once the cap was complete, I tried it on and was a bit disappointed in the center seam.  The two pieces were sewn together, then the seam allowances folded back under themselves and secured to their respective halves. I was a touch unsure about the security of the seam, and so decided to do some sort of decorative top-stiching to secure it.  Well that went downhill and I ended up doing a more elaborate layered herringbone design reminiscent of some of the St Birgitta's caps I'd come across in my research.

Detail of the herringbone stitching down the center seam.

The details for the challenge

What the item is (and how it is a product of war or a lengthy period of peace: Medieval linen coif.  I kind of see the entire medieval period as an unsteady period of war and peace, and war again.  However, 600 years in the future, historians could probably say the same of today.

Fabric: lightweight white linen
Pattern: here
Year: 14th century
Notions: linen thread, bamboo viscose crochet thread for the embroidery
How historically accurate is it? 9.5/10, with a half-point docked for the embroidery thread
Hours to complete: about 8, starting from measuring and drafting out the pattern.  About half of that was spent on the embroidery.
First worn: Planning to wear it for Figments & Filaments later this month
Total cost: maybe $2.  All of the materials were in the stash and really only a very small bit of them had to be used.

Naka-Kon 2015

I spent the weekend out at Naka-Kon, Kansas City's Anime convention.  While anime is not really my thing, I've been involved with this convention in one capacity or another for going on seven years now, so it's always held a warm spot in my heart.  The con has been growing by leaps and bounds lately and this year, they had over 8500 attendees - and that's without counting hundreds of badges handed out to staff and volunteers and guests and vendors and press...  So yeah, it's gotten kinda big.  I went out on Thursday night and helped out with registration, and took the opportunity to wear my "angel and devil on my shoulder" bobble head get up.  Yes, that's Captain America and Iron Man.  No, you shouldn't have to ask which is the angel and which the devil.

After I went home on Thursday night, I got the itch to make up this yukata that I'd bought a lovely water lily cotton for something like $1.99.  It was one of those "simple" projects that I always meant to do up, but never seemed to get around to and I found I was just annoyed with myself enough to power through it.  From sketching out the pattern and doing my math (had to get creative with the cutting layout, as I only had 3.75 yards to work with), the whole project took just under six hours to complete.  But as I was approaching that third hour, disaster struck when I realized that I had cut one of my front panels upside down.  The left front panel, to be precise.  The exact panel which should be folded over on top of the right in a properly worn kimono.  Cue minor bits of swearing.  However, genius idea struck.  See, the major faux pas in wearing a kimono wrapped right over left is that wrapping a kimono in that fashion is how the dead are traditionally dressed for burial.  Soooo, I decided to be a ghost.  And let me tell you.  Googling for pictures of Japanese ghosts for makeup ideas at four in the morning does not prepare you for a restful night of sleep.  But, a lovely You Tube tutorial was found and all was well with the world.

People seemed to fluctuate between staring and being unable to make eye contact.  And let's be honest here.  I scared the crap out of myself whenever I wandered by a mirror.  Creepy veiny eye bruising aside, my wig was BLONDE!

Creepy bottom-lit cosplay photoshoot for the win.

Saturday was eaten up as a workmanship judge for the cosplay contest.  I swear, workmanship is my favorite kind of judging.  I get to see all of these amazing costume up close, and then they TELL ME HOW THEY DID IT!  I am still amazed by all that can be accomplished in the world of faux armor, and got several ideas for painting techniques that I hope to one day take advantage of.

photo credit to Satoshi Inoue

I always have trouble deciding what to wear when I'm judging a contest.  There's a part of me that thinks that need to "wear my credentials', but sometimes hard to balance.  It has to be a costume that I can drive to and from the convention center in, as well as comfortably sit in for hours, and that eliminates pretty much all of the corseted costumes.  I don't want to wear anything that has lots of makeup or body paint when I expect to be fondling other peoples' costumes.  And at an anime con, I'm always afraid that the historical garb would be completely lost on anyone.  So, kimono it is, then.  I ended up over-sleeping on Saturday and just threw on my hand-painted haori jacket over street clothes and had to make do with that.  Felt a little odd being the only non-character, unwigged person on the judging panel, but perhaps I got lucky and they all just thought I was super confident, or something.

Now I just need to find myself an anime character that I can make a cosplay of for next year.


edited to add on 3/06/16: basic kimono pattern manipulation to accommodate wide hips.

Sideless Surcoat - Historical Sew Monthly Stashbusting Challenge

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.

Lol.  My neighbors must think we're so weird.

Not sure why it's riding up like that in the back.
Must have caught on the belt I'm wearing over the kirtle.

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

Thrift Store Finds: making a 1920s Flapper-worthy hand bag from a ladies blouse

A bit of a 'quickie' project to help me feel accomplished in between finishing off bigger fish.  One of the things I made time for on my trip to LA last summer was to hit up some thrift stores.  One of my finds from the Goodwill of Los Angeles (just west of Beverly Hills and south of Hollywood) was this blouse, a Hale Bob beaded silk burnout tank top that I practically tore off the hanger and hid under my arms.  It's the kind of top that, while pretty, I could never personally wear and do justice.  But as luck would have it, it was just enough fabric for a kick ass purse.

The color.  The beading.  The pattern... there was nothing about this that I didn't love.

Blouse was lined in a bright yellow habotai silk, and so I cannibalized that to be my purse's lining.

Only $2.99.  Considering similar blouses on the store's website were running around $140, I got off pretty light.

I happened to already have a ball clasp purse frame in the stash, so I used that as the foundation.  The lining and fashion layers were separated, and a bit of scrap yellow cotton was used to sketch out a pattern (and later as an interlining to give the finished bag some shape).  Basically, from the hinges up, I added a half-inch to the finished dimensions to allow for seams to be folded down.  Then I free-handed a basic purse-like shape that was wider than the handle, but would end up being gathered in at the top edges to meet the hinges.  I did the whole thing over top of the lining to remind myself of what my absolute limits to the dimension would have to be.

I took the cotton pattern and folded it in half before cutting so that I'd end up with something a bit more symmetrical that what I could manage by hand.

I treated the interlining as a sort of flatlining for the lining silk.  I did this because I wanted to install pockets and they needed something of structure to attach to.  I made up the template by pulling out the things that I knew I wanted easily accessible.  By having the heavy phone anchored to the wall of the lining, I could avoid having a bag that sagged in the center under it's weight.  The pen and cash/card pockets were for things easily lost in a big bag.  I just approximated about a half inch of space around each of the items for ease of use.

  

I folded the lining fabric over the edges of of the interlining once on three sides, and folded down twice on what would be the top edge.  The bottom corners were turned in to keep them from straying into the seam allowance on the bottom edge.

Finished pocket attached to the lining, flat-lined to the cotton interlining.  I put a row of stitches across the bottom of the cash n cards pocket to raise these items up a bit to make them easier to retrieve. 

The fashion and lining layers were assembled separately by laying the right sides together and stitching around the bottom/sides to within just over a half inch of each top corner.  The lining was sewn on the machine, but the delicate burnout velvet fashion layer was done by hand (mostly to keep my machine from eating the bead).

So sheer!

The fashion layer was attached to the purse frame first by folding the top edge over the bar and hand-stitching in place.

Then the lining was inserted and the top edges folded under, then whip stitched to the fashion layer just under the bar.  The outer corners were folded under and whip stitched as well, and then the points of those corners were tack stitched to the insides of the corners near the hinges to give the bag a bit of a gathered effect.  I made sure to  put the tag back into the finished purse, as a reminder of the piece's former life.  It makes me smile.

Slap on a beaded tassel and TA DA!  We're done!  Now to find an excuse to wear it.  :)

Medieval Fantasy Kirtle and Paternoster (Rosary Beads)

So I made myself a second kirtle for a medieval fantasy group project that I got roped into and I found myself wanting to come up with an outfit to wear it with.  Hence the non-specific Medieval fantasy-like project was born.

I used Burda 7977 for the kirtle and ended up fitting it with bust darts to give it a bra-less snug fit, so not terribly historically accurate, but comfy as hell.  Darts were a much easier fix to do when fitting myself, as opposed to trying to re-work the armscye.  There is not enough yoga in the world that would let me do that properly and I was too impatient to wait for help.

The dress is a mid-weight (4.7 oz) linen from Dharma Trading Co, dyed a pale green to match the details in the as-yet unfinished overdress.   Machine sewn for all weight-bearing construction seams, since learning when to say no to hand-stitching is one of my goals in life.  But I did cave and tack down the felled seams by hand.

This is the second time I've made up this pattern, but the first time that I attempted the double sleeves thing it has going on.  They actually turned out pretty nice and I think I'll leave off the lacing on the over sleeves so that they hang open a bit for some flair.

Here you can see the hand stitching to finish the seams, as well as where I used gold silk thread embellishment to hide the top-stitching around the neckline, which was also how I treated the lower edge of the cuffs of the over sleeve.

Once it's on me and I'm wearing shoes, the hem will sit just off the floor.

While I was fitting with the back safety-pinned closed, I realized that I could slip the dress on and off without un-pinning it.  Therefor, the lacing didn't have to be strictly functional.  So to save a truly epic amount of time, I skipped binding the eyelets and just gently used an awl to help thread a rayon yarn through the edges.  I was able to keep my lacing intervals much narrower this way, so to avoid too much puckering of the center back when worn.

I came across the idea for a paternoster while browsing through medieval costume sources online, looking for accessory ideas.  While not a particularly religious person myself, I latched onto the notion of the rosary being an acceptable way for individuals to express their tastes and show off wealth, without being considered "too flashy" in doing so.  As the outfit I was making was gearing up to be an upper class representation, the rosary became an essential accessory.  Sarah Edgecumbe has put together a fantastic pinterest board on the topic, with LOTS of references from paintings.  Also, paternoster-row.medievalscotland.org, as well as this SCA paper were super informative.

I ended up making mine from materials that I already had on hand.  Fifty 5/16" light red beads meant to resemble coral, separated by larger beads of "jade", also quite decadent.  Christ Laning has an entire blog post devoted to the red beaded paternooster that helped cinch my choice of beads.  My fantasy lady apparently has expensive and exotic tastes.  I strung them all on gold silk cord and I made a small tassel from the same.

The whole thing isn't large, but just enough to wear wrapped around the wrist and offer me something for my fidgety hands to play with.

Life catching up with you

So... apparently, I haven't published anything since mid-September.  Opps.  I'd say, how did that happen, but I think I already know.  I got side-tracked from historical projects when I scrapped my initial plans for Halloween.  And then work got the way work tends to do, sometimes, with looming inspections and an unimaginable quantity of new responsibilites.  Stress means that I started spending my free time immersed in my preferred avoidance technique, reading fanfiction.  Combine that with a shiny new fandom obsession (hellooooo, Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Where have you been all my life?)  Then there was Arisia coming up and my responsibilities there were more focused on the planning of programming than the making of anything new.  So, yeah.  A creative dry spell and falling off the face of the blogosphere was bound to happen, as I always feel like I have nothing to say if I've got nothing to show.  But things have sorta kinda settled down with work a bit, and I'm ready to stop avoiding the craft room and get back to work.  So I share with you an overview of what I've been working on.

Scrapped Halloween Plans
My original idea for Halloween fit into the Alternate History challenge for the Historical Sew Fortnightly.  The spousal unit and myself were going as 'Victorian Spiders', inspired by some of the fantastical fancy dress costumes of the late Victorian era.  I already had the black underskirt, but I was able to bang out a black widow themed over-skirt and most of a brown gentleman's vest that was due to have an inverted fiddle applique on the back.  But this was the project that just stalled out on me and ended up getting shelved.  Nice part is that when I come up with another event needing something along these lines, it shouldn't take too much effort to polish them off.

Halloween 2.0: Marvel Superheroes
When the motivation to work on the Victorian spiders dried up, I decided to pursue a wild hair inspired by my current fandom obsession.  I made the Captain Marvel on the left for my bff (well, cannibalized a zentai suit and attached the mantle, hip scarf and accessorized), and my fem Captain America on the right (in which I Frankensteined a dress set out of a pair of stretch, textured tube skirts off the rack).  Wolverine in front and Star Lord in the center back completed our haphazard team.

Quilted Jumps
They were originally plotted out as an entry for the HSF challenge #16, Terminology.  Then they took a little while to get from drafted out to cutting and so got pushed back to #17, Yellow.  Then I found a funny reference in a poem while I was doing some research and they were totally going to be done in time for the challenge #18, Poetry in Motion.  But even on the machine, the quilting took FOREVER and I was like, that's it.  I know I've seen SOMEBODY do jumps in the last 18 months of HSF, I'll just write it in for inspiration and call it good.  Well, yeah.  They're still a work in progress.  I'm just about done with the binding, having left a few gaps to put in the boning that I ordered the other tnight.  So there's really very little left to do at this point.  I wanted a set of jumps to use as an alternative to stays worn under my chemise a la reine.  The yellow should be light enough to not be TOO obvious under the thin white cotton (or at least less obvious than my current gray and navy stays).

And what's coming next?

- Well, I've given myself permission to set aside the HSF challenges for now.  As much fun as they were, I was stressing myself out about getting to every single one of them and screwing myself over when it came to prioritizing projects.

- Figments & Filaments (a costuming convention here in Kansas City) is coming up and I've gotten a few panel ideas in for that.  I've not let myself be in charge of anything big, but I've found lots of little ways to get involved and hopefully make the experience a better thing for all involved.

- the deadline for getting in class proposals for Costume College came too soon after Arisia for me to be able to devote a lot of energy to them, but I was able to get one proposal in at the last minute for a workshop that would be uber fun to do, should it get selected.  Plotting for costumes for that, however, will just have to wait.  Before that is...

- Costume Con, which I had to miss last year and I was totally missing it.  Costume Con has a strong competition element to it (among a lot of other things), but as I'm one of those people that thrive on competition, it's totally my thing.  I find that having a hard deadline and knowing that someone is going to be looking at my costumes VERY closely really spurs me on.  I do more research, make my work neater and really put the extra umph into it, which results in a better finished project.  I've lucked out in that I have only one new 'from scratch' project in mind for this year, and that was being an extra in someone else's big group project, so I don't really have to do the stressful plotting and planning for it.  Just make a dress and show up for rehearsals, which is oddly relaxing.  I have a couple of pieces that were long languishing works in progress that I've brought out to finish up for this.  And a finished costume that totally fits a theme.  And my historical masquerade entry was 'finished enough to wear' but totally needs more work and the collation of all of my documentation.

So I've got enough to be getting on with, me thinks.  Mostly I wanted to get all of this down to swing myself back into this blogging thing.  As I wrap projects up, hopefully I'll remember to do the show-and-tell part that should come after them.