Rosalie Gilbert

The sorting of stuff I'm not keeping is a bit of a heartbreaking affair, with some things used only for photos and grand parades and practically new.. In particular, a beautiful silk surcote in a soft blue lined with white silk which is unworn by me and entirely hand stitched, almost brought me to tears. It's so pretty. 

I need to toughen up and really try to not let it bother me, but I just want to keep it for myself. 

The requests for my stuff are still coming thick and fast, and just answering messages to say, "No, I said I had nothing else yet" take time to answer, which is slowing the whole process down. I have 4 weeks until our biggest event of the year, so I really need to get stuff done. 

Photo of the blue surcote added so you can appreciate my sadness about it. The colour is just the best shade of blue. And it's silk. Lined with silk.
Just so much silk.

I'm very excited that my sister and her two teens will be coming with me to the Big Medieval Event this year, however it does mean that I need to provide everything they need to attend, including medieval clothes for three days.

My sister is about the same size as me, so that is just a case of looking at what I will be wearing and seeing if she fits into other things. My niece, however, is another slender girl but sprouting up like a bean pole, so clothing options for her are a little more tricky. She's also a little neuro spicy, so finding things that she can cope with is a consideration also.

My nephew is a pretty good sport and will wear whatever. He may feel a little odd at first, but as there is another new boy not far off his age coming for the first time too, I feel by the time they compare their outfits and see what other manly men are wearing (those hose are a bit alarming for the new re-enactor), I think he will be fine.

The more busy bit is that it's not just day clothes. Oh, no. I need to prepare three sets of fancy Grand Parade outfits as well, which I have of my own and can modify, but it'll all time and effort and organising tents and sleeping gear along with all the camp stuff.

It'll be fun though.

These are the little buttons I've been making for Edith's green faux-silk kirtle which wasn't quite finished in time for Abbey Medieval Festival. I've had the kirtle returned and all I need to do now is make 24 of these little guys and hand stitch the button holes and then it's finished.

She looked absolutely lovely in it, and as it's nice and cool and green, I already know she'd like to wear it for Christmas events at the museum, so really, not too much time to waste on it!

As mentioned previously, trhe fitting did not go especially well. Where I had allowed a lot of fabric in the seams, it seemed that I hadn't, in spite of using the same pattern as last time and allowing a hefty amount so i could cut it in.

Only the back seam needed to come in quite a lot for shaping, which was perfectly fine.

The armholes didn't sit correctly and needed big adjustments, which took up so much extra time. I think I'm on the right track now, but it's a snug fit. The style of the kirtle means it's supposed to be a snug fit, but now I'm worried that the lady will tear it in her haste to undress rather than undoing the lacing right to the bottom and carefully wriggling out of it.

Time will tell, I guess.

Progress is happening in this direction. 

I've managed to trace out the Crowned A which will go on the heraldic surcote. I've traced and drawn out two of these ready to cut. Hooray for progress! As it's not a re-enactment garment, I've used iron on interfacing to stop the fraying and to allow me to place the stitches a little further apart. It's looking lovely and I'm very pleased!

I really don't know how this even happened. I really don't. The original outfit was my size and cut down several sizes but my arms aren't freakishly long, so I was completely unprepared for the amount I'll be needing to trim from the sleeves!

I'm pretty happy with the rest of the fit though. The front is past her toes, so when it's drawn up over the belt like the picture, it comes to the ground at the front, and has a small train at the back. The colour is a pretty nice match too, though, of course, manuscript ink and fabric dye and not always sympathetically realistic. The blue is an achievable colour with natural dying, so I'm happy with that too.

It will have a little neck slit for a brooch just to make it easier for her to get off and on, and I absolutely will do a reinforcing strip around the neck as well, like the neckline from the Museum of London finds just to give it extra sturdiness for taking on and off.

The original artifact, shown here from the Museum of London, is on woolen fabric and has several rows of stitching which would have maintained the shape of the neckline and made a sturdy internal facing.

Although this gown I'm making is silk, it is not unreasonable to use the same tailoring technique for the same reasons.

The above image comes from the Luttrell Psalter, East Anglia (England) and dates 1325 to 1335. It's a very popular manuscript for historical re-enactors due to the nature of the daily life activities shown throughout its pages. (British Library, Add MS 42130)

I've been working on this outfit for two days while at the mall doing the book promotions for Medieval Wisdom for Modern Women, and finally I finished it with a day to spare! At least I was able to wear it for one day here, and then at the Markets the next day and the following week. The red is perfect for Christmas, although it is an undergown, it will also be worn by itself like this.

Slightly hilarious that the best photos I can get of this gowne is with Santa, who was an utter delight. I may be able to edit him out at some point, but it's such a great photo, I thought I'd share.

I don't often have success with dying silk, but lo and behold, this time I did.

The upgraded gold gowne which I bought from a friend which needed to be taken in is a story earlier on the blog, and you may remember it. I did still want to freshen the colour up a bit and tried a coffee overdye with absolutely no success. Figuring the the fabric just wasn't going to hold dye well, I thought I'd try a brown over-dye which I thought would mostly wash out and leave the gold less light and a darker gold.

This is not how it worked at all.

The dye grabbed so much better than I could have hoped for. After rinsing and drying, it's a really wonderful light milk chocolate! It's not what I was aiming for originally, but I have always wanted a brown silk dress of some kind, so now I guess that box is ticked too!

I had hopes to share a standing view with the train out behind, but sadly, a phone selfie with a timer on the camera is the best I can do for today!

I'm very pleased with this and have been using it for photos for the new books even though there's still a piece at the back to fix. When cutting it out, I somehow didn't take into account that the two types of silk, being very different types, would hang and drape differently when finished. The result was the the hems didn't line up and needed quite a bit of trimming. Obviously, wanting to keep the train as long as possible, I faced the hard choice of shortening it quite a bit to make the hem even, or, piecing a small extra wedge into the back.

In the old days, I would have just not considered the latter, but after realising that medieval people really did piece their clothes if they needed to, I figured I'd be substantially happier with a long, pieced surcote than not. I'm a bit surprised how it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would.

I took a series of phone selfies, and many of them worked really well, so I'm feeling pretty good about that.

Wearing this circlet did bring to the forefront another issue though... the circlet is way too thick. Too much metal. I do need to make several others (which is the topic of a separate, upcoming post) so I am in the process of doing that too.