July 2023: Happy Accidents and Minor Disasters
My July goals were:
Finish Gracie and John’s Pennsic clothing
Help out in any way I can for Tala’s vigil
Make SOME sort of progress on my gonete or commonplace book.
Just one of my gores from this set of garb that I am very pleased to see.
I’m fairly convinced that someone put a small curse on this project for Gracie and John. The original design was to be blue bodies and gores for both, with red facings at the hem and cuffs. Sounds straightforward enough, right? Wrong. Sof’ia and I had grossly overestimated their last fabric order so we cut back this time. However, we cut back too much and even with me cutting as conservatively as humanly possible, we were about a yard short of what we needed. This was a minor setback, but thankfully, we had plenty of the red fabric and could replace some of the large gores on Gracie’s dress with it to get John’s missing sleeves. Great, simple. Again, wrong. Because Gracie’s sleeves somehow ended up in the scrap pile and got in part cut into John’s sleeves. Queue panic. That gross overestimation of fabric last time actually came to my rescue and I was able to replace the remaining blue gores to create the second set of sleeves. The body pieces and sleeves were made of blue linen and the gores alternated red and white, with some more red accents on the cuffs of the sleeves. I love how these turned out and I’ve settled into a really comfortable method for inserting gores on my sewing machine, which I’m super proud of.
In addition to the garments I made this time around, I did some repairs and mending work on some other garb of theirs. I took in the sides of Gracie’s blue and white dress from Coronation and that’s what this dress was patterned on. I let out the shoulders a bit from a piece of John’s that someone else made him and then used that to pattern the piece I made him for Pennsic this time around. A few other small pieces of mending and they should be comfortably set up for clothing for Pennsic. Sof’ia was kind enough to ferry these to their final recipients en route to Pennsic so the clothing could be enjoyed.
This set of garb took most of the month between the designing, patterning, minor meltdowns, and actual construction, as I expected it would. However, it was totally worth it. The fit adjustments I made for them and the new garments all worked out fantastically and honestly turned out way more interesting than my original designs. So much so that someday, I’m going to need to make one of these dresses for myself in my own colors.
Once these were done, Bea and I spent a solid day working on elevation projects for Tala. I got to spend the day doing some of my favorite work, which is necklines and sleeve cuffs. The fabrics chosen for these pieces were absolutely gorgeous and a dream to sew with.
Commonplace book in progress!
On the Pentathlon front, I used the down time days between jobs to make some progress on the gonete. I have to start considering what Mark 3 of this garment is going to look like or what I’m making it from but I am more reasonably sure of how I want to make it. I’m still going to complete this version; it has enough merit to still be a usable garment and I do love the color. On the commonplace book, once all the Pennsic making was done, I was able to complete almost all of the Spanish language entries. I’ll be moving on to Latin next! Balancing out how much I can fit in this relatively thin book is proving a fun challenge so far and I’m looking forward to writing up the documentation.
Somewhat related to the commonplace book, I did some additional pen shopping as well. My first two pens had had some writing troubles a while back and I took some time to work on diagnosing and cleaning them, and thank fully they’re both back in working order. However, I still want a flex nib pen to experiment with varying line weights more, so I went shopping for one and have a few options for the next in my collection. We’ll have ample choice of which pen to sign our ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) with in November. I think the next project on the Pentathlon list is going to be my chopines once these current two are complete.
While it still feels early, I have also been considering my plans for Fall University’s virtual session. I think for the next couple of University sessions, I’m going to revisit existing class content I have but finally record it. I have wanted to get some video content for a while and this setting should be the right one to do so with relatively little additional brain power. I’ve got a few ideas for classes noodling around in my head, but we’re going to put those on the back-burner for now I think.
I did, over the course of discussions with Bea, find my first post-Pentathlon project this month. In the painting to the right (The Decollation of Saint John the Baptist by Juan de Flandes, 1496-1499) there is a woman in the background in a yellow dress. I love the sweeping waist on this, the full skirt, and the open front, and I think this would be a super fun project. The painting is part of a larger altar piece and I think there should be sufficient information on Salome’s outfit throughout the altarpiece to put together a rough idea of what this yellow gown would look like. While this outfit would have been made of wool in period, I think I’m going to do it out of linen for a lighter wearing garment. You can always layer up in Atlantia but dressing down from wool clothes is much harder. Plus, Fabrics-Store has a linen that is basically the perfect color for this project.
By the looks of it, this outfit will have a couple parts:
A saya with a black stomacher. Salome (in the foreground) has a green saya under her brown velvet. Other women in this series also have that alternate color showing underneath their gowns, which are shown either tucked up at the back or at the side (see this example). Since the overdress is open at the front and loosely laced, it is not likely to be supportive enough on its own so a structural saya beneath it is likely. However, in the case of our woman in yellow (I really need to stop picking them), I do think the saya underneath is black. If you follow a vertical line from directly beneath St. John’s head down to the ground, there is an area of cloth pointed towards the executioner. This does in some ways resemble the color of Salome’s outer layer, however, they are not identical. This black cloth also has a white or silver line of trim or visible lining, and if you look closely at Salome’s green layer, it also has a line of trim or visible lining at the bottom in a contrasting gold. While given the lining color of Salome’s outer layer that black is potentially part of it, other parts of the polyptych make that unlikely (see how that is missing from this image of the same Salome here). I may not make mine quite so long as to drape that far behind me as it would not be practical for events, but I will probably stick with black with a light ribbon trim. The neckline of the black portion of our woman in yellow is also notably higher than Salome’s- I’m not sure if that corroborates my stomacher theory or not but I do know that making a saya with a neckline that high would make for some very odd armscyes.
A golden yellow outer dress. Bea theorizes, and I agree, that this dress is probably also a version of a saya, given that it does not fit Bernis’s description of a brial as loose and baggy. I would also like to make this of linen for comfort and layering. The sleeves are revisiting something I have struggled with though- open seams on those sleeves. I think some sort of stiffening layer is necessary to keep them from flapping everywhere. I also think my openings need to be smaller than they have been in the past to keep the sleeves fairly fitted. However, even though we cannot see a full side view of the yellow dress sleeves, given that several of the examples above also show open sleeves to the back, I think this is a reasonable assumption. There also appears to be a thin gold trim down the front opening edges, which I suspect are laced together with lacing rings.
There are two possibilities for her head covering. She could be wearing a fabric hood of some sort and a head ornament that is reminiscent Salome’s circlet of jewelry on the top of her head. Salome’s hair appears to be braided and possibly woven into a bun at the back of her head and that is absolutely within the realm of manageable for my hair and underneath a black hood. Alternatively, she could have her hair down under a very sheer veil like the cap (I have a lot of questions about said headwear, please don’t quote me that that is a cofia of some sort, I am very likely wrong) Salome is wearing. I’m not thrilled with that possibility, as it sounds like a great way to get my hair super tangled.
She also has some sort of round necklace on but I can’t zoom in enough to make out any details. I think for this, a long chain with my Pearl medallion on it will suffice.
I have started my new job officially, so I’m back at home full time. Even so, getting back into the swing of making my own art is going to take a little time so I’m hoping to set a low bar and hopefully exceed it for the month of August. My August goals are:
Finish the gonete.
Finish the commonplace book.
