Project Roundup: More Irish stuff, yet another waistcoat, and dyeing

I haven't been sewing as much as I would like...for some reason, I've been more tired than usual, and it effected my motivation.  Plus, my major project was on hold until I managed to dye the silk then buy materials.  Excuses, I know.  But this will probably be fairly short.

Like before, they should be in more or less chronological order...

When I last posted a Project Roundup (my term for my "dress diary" posts, I had just finished my handsewn Irish leine...this meant that I needed to make the inar to go over it.

Image is a closeup of a Durer drawing.

The Inar.  For reference, the inar is a short, jacket like garment made of wool, and with a short, pleated skirt.  If it seems like I am stressing the word short...that's because the entire garment barely comes to my waist.

Above, you can see the sleeves (straight strips of the fabric), the back (a rectangle) the front (the only shaped part of the garment), and the many pieces of the skirt (I had to piece it).  The wool is a lovely English tweed upcycled from a thrift store overcoat.

Because of the materials and how coarse the wool is, I decided to use a wool thread (around 16/2, I think) to sew it, using a backstitch. Here, I was hemming the sleeves with a blind overcast stitch.

Finally!  I dyed the silk canvas for the Hastings Suit.  I bought the silk canvas on Fashionfabricsclub.com, and it was decided that the colour was a bit light on me...so I needed to make it a much darker green.

This was my first time attempting to dye yardage, and it worked fairly well.  I used a large tote to hold it, and an immersion heater to warm and keep the water hot...that worked quite well, although it would be best to preheat the water overnight when I have that much.  Instead of immersing the entire lot of yardage at once, I sewed the ends together and draped it over a dowel.  The section which was out of the bath got rotated every five minutes.

The dye came out fairly even, although on the wrong side it lightens considerably towards the fold.  This is the new dark green, compared to the original fabric.

Back to the Inar...the skirt was roughly pleated by eye, then sewn into place.  I did have to take several inches off the wait, because it was too long.

I was slightly bored while pressing, so decided to make a video of the secret to flat seams and pleats...plenty of violence.  Hopefully the video works properly for you...I don't think I can tell until this has been published.

 Remember that extremely slubby silk from the last post--it was white/grey then.  I decided to toss it in the dye bath as well, which worked quite nicely.  Sadly, when I washed the fabric it got even more slubby and horribly rough...so when it came time to press, I decided to polish it with parafin.

That's right...the white circle is a block of parafin wax, leftovers from the tea-lights I use to keep my teapot warm.  Using the dry iron seemed to work nicely...it's still slubby, but considerably smoother now.  I'll probably polish it one more time before final assembly.

With the outer silk dyed, I could finally decide on the underlining and lining colours for the Hastings Suit.  In the end, and with much deliberation, I chose the slightly silvery charmeuse as the underlining which will barely be visible at the edges of the pinking, black linen for the base which will show through the pinks, and black habotoi (8mm) as the trunkhose lining, which will show between the pinked green panes.

All of these fabrics are either on the way, or now here.

I eventually cut out the now green silk to make a double breasted, shawl-collar waistcoat.  The pattern used was the same as the linen waistcoat I made last month, with the minor additions to change the style. 

The interlining is a heavy thrift store linen, there is a bias canvassing, and it will be lined in white linen.  I decided a few days ago to scrap the shawl collar because of errors I made, and go with a normal collar instead...if I don't change my mind again and switch to no collar.  I'll have to think on whether that is something I desire for work wear or not.

At some point--and I know this isn't remotely my normal topic for the blog--I decided it was time for me to pick up calligraphy again...something I haven't played with since I was 15.  Here, I am working on a Carolingian Minuscule hand.

 Just a roll of leather...nothing interesting.  Yet.  But this roll of leather means that I can do more shoes, since it is sole bend.  On the list are resoling and repairing my Lucas 5s, and making a pair of sandals--possibly Roman caligae style.

EDIT the next day:  Two other projects I've been working on--patterning out the Hastings trunkhose.  I based it primarily on the Medici pair in PoF3, and partly on the later Sir Rowland Cotton pair, which is covered both in PoF3 and the recent V&A book.

I did made a mockup up in felt, which seamed to work fairly well; eventually, I had to take about 6" off the bottom, and 2" off the top--which means it used less fabric than I had anticipated.



Other minor things of interest is that I have been playing with live FB videos, both on my personal and Matsukaze Workshops pages; the new waistcoat I'm working on was one topic, and doing the roughest draft for the Hastings doublet was the other.

Almost lastly, I bought and did a review of the linen and hemp swatches carried by Dharma.  Some were nice, a couple not so much, and one absolutely lovely.  The full review is on the companion FB page, which is linked in the paragraph above.  However, the middle linen above (the 4.7oz) is nicer than, and comparably or better priced than that from Fabric-store if you need to make a pleatwork shirt or something.

 The final project is that I started in on a handsewn late period shirt, based on a couple of examples in PoF4, including the Sture shirt.  However, I am only gathering it into a narrow band collar, rather than doing a full ruffle, since I would prefer my ruff to be separate for ease of washing (and so I don't /have/ to wear it).

It's fabric store linen, sadly...if/when I do it again, I'll probably buy the Dharma linen above this photo and use that, rather than the somewhat coarse 5.3oz.  All the pieces are being hemmed with a rolled hem, and then will be sewn together with an openwork seam in blue silk thread.

© John Frey, 2017. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial private research or educational purposes provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.