February 2025: Project Jail’s Newest Resident
February Goals:
Garb:
Finish the Juana camisa facing.
Finish assembling the camisa.
Remove lacing rings and add eyelets to the green saya.
Start on the new red saya project.
The facing pinned onto the camisa before basting into place.
I was so close to greatness on the camisa, I really was.
The facing got finished, based into place and the neckline sewn down for its first round (it’s gonna need four sets of stitches to complete total). I went to put it on to test how it was laying and discovered two very unfortunate things. First, that the camisa needs underarm gores. Not too badly, but badly enough that it will require disassembly for me to add. Second, the new not-flat felling technique has exactly the pot hole I was worried about- fraying at the seamline. Overall, it was a disappointing “hack” that wasn’t really a hack. Either way, after 2.5 weeks of work and being on track to finish it this month, it is time to rage quit that project for a couple weeks.
There are some good notes- I’m really pleased with how the facing turned out. The embroidery is definitely an improvement on the last one in quality of stitching as well as the scale. It sits well where I wanted it to on my body and I think once I sort out the sleeve gores, this camisa will in fact do what I wanted it to with this project. It’s sitting pretty flat at the neckline, and should work well with the multilayered outfits I intend to wear it with. The sleeves are also a nice length and shape. I’ve been trying to find my sweet spot on sleeves balancing length, fullness, and my need to be able to regularly use my hands throughout the day. These sleeves do a good job of that.
The camisa is in project jail, where it can think about what it’s done until I forgive it for its trespasses.
The next project I moved onto was the alterations to the green saya. This project has the benefit of serving multiple purposes. The saya itself is a little loose, so refitting it to better suit my needs by adding lacing holes instead of using the lacing rings made it more comfortable. Additionally, it served as a great way to determine which dress pattern I wanted to use as my starting point for my red saya project. I like to start with my most comfortable pattern as the base for new dresses and then make adjustments to them as needed for each individual project. For the red saya, I was considering two dresses- the green saya and the tan saya. The tan saya is still one of my favorite dresses, even though I have made overall adjustments to the design in the waistline and skirt over time. The green saya is a lighter fabric piece, which the red saya will also be, and since the red saya is going to be part of a multilayered outfit, something more flexible as its base is a great place to start. Ultimately, I decided to use the green saya as the base design for the red saya, with almost no adjustments except for the lacing holes.
The eyelets were such a nice decompression project. I like doing them a lot because they go quick and they really make a garment feel “ready to wear.” This was also the maiden voyage for the absolutely unnecessary but absolutely cute bone awl I splurged on at Pennsic, so that was fun. I did decide to make these a little more fun too by doing the eyelets in a non-matching thread color. The green saya uses a pretty dark blue thread for some of its construction, and it’s not quite contrasting but it is a little touch of personality.
My red sari project
Once those were done, I started in on deconstructing a red cotton sari I have for my next project. This was a slower task than I had originally anticipated, by a long shot. It turns out that all of those tiny pretty mirror spangles are individually sewn down around the sari trim and had to be individually removed with a seam ripper. I do stand by my decision to remove it instead of cutting the garment with it in place. The choice was meant to allow for more flexibility in cutting layouts with both the red fabric and the trim, which will also be used in the second garment that this outfit is going to have. However, it was slow and slightly tedious. I got, I would say maybe 75% of the way done with this stage of the project in February, which to be fair was more than I anticipated. Construction is likely to commence within the first couple days of March.
The sari itself is delightful though. It’s got such a fun red/green flower pattern and it’s going to make a beautiful saya and garment that I think may be classified as a gonete but am still unsure of the definition of. I’ve got some plans for fun sleeves as well. It’s super light- almost see through- so it’s going to be backed with some matching heavier linen for both weight and opacity.
The other thing on my mind this month has been event schedules and moving. There’s some really cool A&S opportunities coming up over the next couple months, and I’m looking forward to letting people actually taste some of the Foods That Built Spain recipes in person! I’m hoping to have one at Coronation in April and another at Skewered! in May. I’ll be teaching in person at LEAFS as well as doing A&S stuff there, which should be a delightfully fun day of my favorite things- food and agriculture A&S!
All in all, three out of four monthly goals is pretty darn decent! One major bummer of February was my University class though. It went beautifully and I was so happy with how it did go and then my computer decided to just randomly stop outputting sound. Getting it edited has proven a fruitless task and it’ll get done… eventually.
I’m looking forward to Coronation in early April- the theme is 13th century Spain, and one of the competitions is likely a cooking and sweets class. I’m thinking I’ll pull out my orange sweets and maybe one other digestif style sweet for it.
March Goals:
Garb:
Finish assembling the camisa, if it has properly repented.
Red saya project, all day every day.
Classes:
Finish the editing of my Foods That Built Spain class
Competitions:
Maybe find a thing to do at Coronation, pending announcement.
