March 2021 Recap: Getting Back on the Horse
In March, my goals were to:
Make a second and possibly third camisa
Finish Salome's cofia tester
Maybe decorate the third camisa a little
This month I was doing a lot better than last. We signed a new lease- which means a new (amazing) kitchen, a craft room/office, and a closet just for my SCA stuff. It's also near my Barony's martial practice site and a bunch of fun grocery stores. All in all, it's got my optimism up and by extension my motivation.
The first project I tackled this month was a camisa. I was reasonably comfortable with the patterning after my recent one for Tempore Atlantia, and stuck largely to that. I did make the front a hair smaller than the back to counteract the slight backwards cant that my other camisa has and that worked out reasonably well. What I didn't account for was how challenge it would be to integrate all the gores together on a sewing machine. I decided to do all the structural seams on my machine for efficiency and then finish by hand, but I decided for the next one I would do the points where all the gores meet up by hand and the rest of the structural seams on my machine. I also decided to square off the neckline a little bit, and I think this gave the camisa a little more stability. I could have stood to gather the back a bit more than I did though.
I then made some good progress on my draft of Salome's cofia but that's still not done yet. I definitely have the scale wrong on that. It'll need to be scaled up slightly to truly get the detail and neatness I want in the end. I also did a small experiment and came to the conclusion that for the straight lines, I actually prefer how a chain stitch looks in this piece, so that's a bit fun.
Lastly, I worked on a third camisa. My original intent was for this one to be a bit fancier (bigger sleeves, maybe some decoration), but as the time came to do it, I actually switched tacts and decided that a more casual option would be best for this one. The previous camisas have all had trapezoidal sleeves, to help minimize the amount of bulk at the armscye. For this iteration, I wanted to try some more rectangular sleeves, just to mix it up. This worked out well, because the sleeves themselves were not overly wide.
At this point, I'm almost at my goal for number of camisas and other similar garments, so that's really exciting!
Moving will see me re-jiggering April a little big, but that's the beauty of flexibility.
