Meltintalle's Closet

It seems like every county fair finds me sewing a new shirt for someone...

This year the project was a 1790s style woman's shift, petticoat, and short gown.

links consulted:

• http://www.sharonburnston.com/shifts_construction.html


• http://www.sharonburnston.com/revwarshift01.jpg


• http://www.sharonburnston.com/015%20shift%20neckline%20c%201775.jpg

• http://mantuadiary.blogspot.com/2008/08/hand-sewing-techniques.html


• http://www.koshka-the-cat.com/18c_petticoat.html

• http://www.marariley.net/jackets/shortgown.htm


• http://fashionablefrolick.blogspot.com/search/label/shortgowns


• http://worldturndupsidedown.blogspot.com/2015/06/colonial-shortgown-bedgown-sewing.html

measurements to remember:

shift:

• sleeves are 16" wide x  however much was left after taking a body of 20" wide from the piece of fabric (could possibly go down to 15" ? )


• gussets were cut 4.5" x4.5" from the circle taken out of the neck opening and hemed are approx. 3" x  3" (try flat-felling edges after insertion???)

petticoat:

• waist was pleated down to approx. 19" on both sides (44" fabric, selvadge used for side seams)


• 3.5" hem depth


• super happy with how this turned out!

short gown:

• went with 17" wide for the sleeve


• 8" to side seam


• 8" x 2" neck opening, cut on shoulder fold; added 2" depth to front after tring it on


• winged the side seam curve; looks okay? we'll see how it wears


• reminds me a lot of the patterns for viking coats, could be the length of the skirt on the gown

Ravelry Entry

Pretty sweater, yay!

I've not been doing much sewing at all lately (in fact, a Christmas present for brother #1 has languished in the UFO* pile for months despite only needing a slight adjustment before he can wear it...). However, a sister was invited to participate in a fur trade encampment as a spur of the moment thing and brother #2 spends a significant time amount of time there too anyway so I was sort of inspired to go ahead and refurbish a chemise I'd relegated to the scrap pile for him. After all, I owe him a new shirt for some reason or another since the Robin Hood shirt is too tight in the biceps at the moment. (And he hasn't handed it over so I can fix that problem.)

The chemise had been worn until the fabric at the top was disintegrating, so I ripped off the obviously unusable stuff and had enough left for a shirt. You can see the decorative tucks I'd put at the hem still there. Taking them out now would leave obvious marks and I was all about saving time by using the existing hem.

I am tickled with how the shoulder gussets came out. They are squares folded in half to make a triangle. I sewed the first half into the shirt and folded seam allowances to the inside on the other half and topstitched it down. Probably my favorite part of the new shirt!

For sizes and shapes I consulted

• Shirtfrock Pattern
  
• 1790's men's shirt
  
• Mr. Knightly shirt

Who knows how long it will last but it looks pretty good for the weekend. My brother says he wants a rapier to accessorize.

*UnFinished Object

This is what you get when you raid the scrap yarn basket and don't find the yarn you were looking for until after you're finished with your project...

The variegated is super intense. I went through several different pattern attempts before I settled on this design as not being insanely hard on the eyes.  

Pattern notes: chain 25 +2, three rows of sc or dc, sc variegated with fp triple or quadriple crochet to make design, repeat until symmetrical, sc around edges with variegated

 

Lo, I have finally procured photo documentation of my sweater (and its lovely 'buttons'). It was snowing to beat the band, and I think the photos are some of my favourites of any project so far. :D

My purse handles wore out after several years of frequent use, but the body itself is sound as ever. So I thought to replace the handles. Tablet weaving has been a fascinating idea for some time, but a great mystery. NarniaWebber wild rose kindly shared her expertise in a comprehensive tutorial that managed to demystify all the points I hadn't gathered from Card Weaving by Candace Crockett.

( Read more... )

I ran across this tutorial this morning:

• http://www.modabakeshop.com/2012/03/cathedral-window-pincushion.html

It just so happens that I could actually use a pincushion, and I thought I might have a few extra quilt squares hanging around (I didn't find them) so I sat down to whip one up!



Measuring Tape Girl* claimed to be interested in the process, enough to look through the tutorial and afterwards claim that she could only remember what the last step looked like. She certainly remembered that after stuffing it you were supposed to add a button to the top! (I wonder if it wouldn't have been easier to add the button before stuffing the cushion, though. One of those things one thinks of far too late.)

I ended up using 5 4.25" squares. I cut 4 of the squares in half on the diagonal which minimized fabric usage. (Possibly because of this I ended up with a gaping middle on the bottom which I cleverly covered with a diamond pieced from the scraps. If I hadn't whip stitched it in place with black it might not even be all that noticable!) Ironing the large square that forms the leading in the block is the most difficult part because the more precise your folds the prettier the finished square.

The only other noteable thing about this project is that I pieced the large square. 10"x10" is hard to find in the scrap bag! It's a fairly heavy fabric, so I may end up not being able to stab pins in deeply. 

Um, right. Back to those other projects I ought to have been working on...


*My youngest sister, so christened because she likes wearing measuring tapes around her neck and can usually find one if you need/want one

For his llama costume entry this year Little Brother #2 decided that he wanted to be Robin Hood and his llama could be Will Scarlett. Not surprisingly, the shirt from the Robin Hood costume I made him back in 2008 didn't fit him anymore. So I used the following links and a heathly dose of fudging to make him a new one. (I put more work into his costume than he put into the one for the llama. XD )

• http://www.renaissancetailor.com/demos_shirt.htm
• http://www.sempstress.org/skill/hand-worked-eyelets/
• http://crossstitch.about.com/od/patternsfromyourguide/ig/Alphabets-/CS-Alphabet---Six-Stitches.htm

I used a light cotton in a dark green and eyeballed the measurements against one of my T-shirts. It is possible to rip nice squares and rectangles on the grain of the fabric, so that's what I did for most of my pieces. For the shoulder gussets I did right angle triangles instead of isosceles triangles. If I'd been paying close attention, I could have pulled the underarm gussets from the scrap ripped to square the edge of my fabric and used more exactly two-thirds of the 3 yards of 45" fabric... the little nibble out of the remnant piece makes me sad.

Friends and I had recently visited an exhibit on Nordic Lace and I noticed on the shirt from a man's wedding outfit that embroidery was used to hold the placket down. So I put my brother's initials there because I didn't have time to do the entire alphabet like on the piece I'd seen. I did two handworked eyelets to close the collar. The cuffs are currently loose. I don't know if they will eventually get eyelets and lace shut or hooks and eyes or a button and frog or... never be done at all. :p 

• sport weight yarn
• size 5 USA needles
• 14 stitch repeat
• in worsted weight, the repeat equals 2.75"x6" inches of knit fabric

Naturally, I started my swatch with the ribbing. Two purl stitches to one knit looked really good. But... ribbing stretches. That's what it's supposed to do. So the pattern is actually knit one, purl one. What you'll see when it's relaxed is all knit. That figured out, it was on to the fun part--reading knitting charts. You can see one of my sample eyelet lace patterns pulled from the set I pointed out in the previous post next to my screencap print-outs...

The whole over-under knit two together for the leaf edge took awhile to figure out. You need to have the stitch from the inside of the leaf on top to define the motif. Well, I noticed that about halfway through the first set of leaves. Trying to position the eyelets by eyeballing the pattern didn't work out so well either, but by then I had some idea of how the pattern was supposed to work. 



I started over with the ribbing and a neatly charted pattern. Hurrah! The failure/practice helped. It looks a lot better this time. And even though the eyelet at the top didn't quite work out (they need to be closer together) and there might be an extra knit 2 together, or knit 3 together, on my chart, it's fairly obvious while knitting when it needs to go. I'll have to mark it next time through the pattern.

I'm thinking maybe 10 repeats in the beret in the show? It seems to be knit in a lighter weight yarn, maybe baby or lace, which ought to put it in the 22" brim circumference territory. I just so happen to have a set of size 2 circular needles, and I hope I have enough yarn... I might be able to make a guesstimation by weighing the ball of yarn.    

The swatch folded itself nicely and suggested a hotpad. White or Ecru, of course, is not the wisest choice for a utilitarian item, but it is what it is.

Using a kit from Herrschners.com I tested out the name of the pattern.

It took me about an hour per ounce for the main body of the blanket, and six three ounce skeins went into the pattern. That took a week. Then I spent another week doing the popcorn border instead of a fringe because fringe is bad for babies? There was a rumour to that effect somewhere... That was another three ounces of yarn, but more like six or seven hours of work.

The other thing is that the gauge on this pattern seems to be wrong.