Endless sewing

I must have been out of my mind to think I could outfit the whole family in a week. Still, some semblance of Viking-hood has been created. Miles to go before I sleep, though.

Just a few quick notes:

* Fabulous guides exist on the web. In particular, Hefdharfru Vidgis Vestfirzka's underdress page and accompanying apron dress page (doesn't show diagrams in Firefox, works fine in IE) are what I've used for Charlotte's & my outfits. For the guys, I've relied heavily on this overview, Christina Krupp's guide and Cynthia Virtue's tunic worksheet.

* One garment a day is ambitious but doable. Two a day is madness.

* There appears to be no limit to the number of times I can sew seams wrong side out.

* As a corollary to that, the real secret behind the Damendorf Trousers is clearly someone who cuts fabric like me: cut it too small, sew bits and pieces onto it to make it bigger, cut it again, repeat.

Time to put dinner on. After dinner: pajama style pants for Dean.

Tally sheet:
Charlotte's dress: done
My dress: done except for sleeve hems
Dean's tunic: done
George's tunic: done except for sleeve hems
George's pants: may be able to use existing pair
Dean's pants: not started
Charlotte's apron: not started
My apron: not started

We plan to be at the fair in approximately 70 hours.

Miscalculation

I don't think these sleeves are going to fit!

Maybe if she just keeps her arms inside ....

In case you were wondering ...

... the maximum length of an inkle band I can weave on my Ashford inkle loom appears to be 3 yds., 5 inches. (Minifigs included for scale.)


I assume my crummy selvages will improve with practice.

5/2 pearl cotton, 106 threads, about 2 1/4 inches. This will probably be George's belt / sword belt, but I might cut it up to trim our outfits.

More about weaving.

Here is my scarf, hanging to dry. It is Rowan Botany in two lights, one dark. You can see that a) I did not record how many dark rows I did at the beginning, and so didn't match it at the end, and b) there's a spot where I did two rows of light instead of four. But I like it anyways.

This shot was taken outside, and shows the colors better. It also shows the problematic selvedges. I'm thinking about using a two color blanket stitch around the edge to neaten it up some -- what do you think?



Here is my temporary weaving studio:



Charlotte was weaving just where her loom is sitting now, which gave her a pretty good view of the mechanics of the floor loom.

Here are some closeups of the loom (since you asked, Caroline). It makes more sense when it is threaded but that's some days off yet. Looking from the front:


and from the back:


There are some pictures of the loom threaded here and especially here.
But I am on a different tangent right now, having just realized that the Medieval Fair is only 10 days after we return from next week's vacation. We are planning on going as a Viking family but nothing more than planning has occurred to make this happen.

Some fast research has revealed that the most distinctive thing about Viking dress is a lot of decorative banding around wrists and neck openings. So I have warped up my inkle loom:


and started weaving:


This long band ought to be enough to make George a belt & sword belt, if he wants one. I'm going to take some tablet weaving on vacation with us. Then I can sew like crazy after we get back & with luck get it all done in time. I'm trying to forget that last year's "fast research" got me to the fair dressed as a barmaid instead of a merchant's wife.



A totally unrelated picture:



Who on earth would offer a disposable (manual) razor as an incentive for buying batteries? This makes no sense to me at all. The batteries were on sale, so I bought them, but I am very puzzled.