Cleaning the old "house"

I now and then come across links and pins to my old blog. I think to myself; I really should move that stuff to my new "home" - to have it all in one place! And then I never do...

Well, now it is time to get started!




Detail of a miniature of the cleaning of the house, from the Golden Haggadah, Spain (Catalonia), second quarter of 14th century, Additional 27210, f. 15
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2012/04/hag-pesach-sameach-happy-passover.html 

Bright colors

I recently bought a curtain at a thrift store, it was probably from the seventies but I liked the brocaded pattern and though it was a bright lime green:

Synthetic as it is, I had some success in the past, giving a similar fabric a date with some black dye, so I thought I'd try it again. Tossed the curtain in with the black dye, hung it out to dry and this is the result :

My camera does not give it quite the right color, but it is now a more olive tinge and noticeably darker, which is what I wanted. Now I can continue with the next stage of the jacket I want to make.

Thrifty tunic

I bought a linen table cloth a while back. It had a nice pattern:

 It was roughly 1,4 m square, so just barely enough for a tunic. I picked the hemmet edges to gain the extra centimetres, and then I cut the fabric and made this:

I will add a bone bead as closure but that will have to wait, since I didn't bring it to Gotland. Right now I'm in the process of getting my kitty Jameson used to being outside, so I can go travelling while my parent have the care of my furballs.

Creative pattern making

When you are on your own, you really have to be a bit creative to make a close fitting pattern. I often combine patterns, make adjustments I hope will work and then make a mock-up and try it out. Sometimes it works like a charm, sometimes not...

This time I want to make this:

I got out three different patterns: my Brueghel jacket, the low neckline bodice and my partlet:

Combining the thre patterns, I then made the mock-up, had my boyfriend fit it in the back and I did the front. Some minor adjustments later I have this:

Now I just need to decide on which of my brocades I will use for this project!

Let it burn!

Life got in the way, and between work going crazy and prepping for DW I got sidetracked. But thanks to some friends - here is a post that I think just might get spread around:


It all started as a rather innocent discussion at the sewing meet. The discussion focused on a rather common topic - has the level of our garb risen to far for newbies to aspire to? Is handsewing the only option etc. It gave me some food for thought and I had an idea for a class - and with some helpful input from among others, Lia, Kathryn and Helwig, I got started on a lecture about the basics of textile knowledge and what every seamstress should know about fibres.

Part of this lecture included the fire testing of fabrics - different fibres beahave and smell differently and often you can figure out what you've got by just setting it on fire!

I grabbed a bunch of different fabrics from my scrap basket and went to a colleagues place and spent some time burning holes in it. Back at another sewing meet a chance remark about silk veils being very flammable made me realize I had not burned any veils of any material.

Back home I set up as safe an experiment zone as I could. Pulled the batteries out of the smoke detector, filled a pot with water and turned on the ventilation above the stove on max. I got out a piece of silk veil,  sheer cotton, linen and I also sacrificed a piece of my precious wool muslin.

I tried to be as scientific as I could about the whole thing. Each piece was to be subjected to the same:

Held in flame from a lighter for max 10 sec, or until it caught and then either blow it out or dunk it in the water. If I had to drown it to kill it, I'd let it dry before test two: hold the fabric flat and above a flame until it caught fire.

This is the result:

Top left: Linen Top right: Cotton, Bottom Left: Wool muslin, Bottom right: silk

The wool and the linen self extinguished as I removed it from the flame. The cotton had to have a bath and the silk I dropped in a hurry....
The sheer silk in a windfree environment definitely does not self extinguish as the thicker kinds of silk do, and it burned so rapidly I dint want to do the second test on what remained.

As I held my class at Double Wars I realized that how much more a simple testing of fibres to resolve the fibre content of a fabric, had as a value - since we do hang around fire a lot! Like some of the parents in the group commented - to think that some people clothe their children in syntetic fleece! if they only knew...

I will definitely continue on this avenue -and I think my lecture will evolve for Cudgel Wars - I'll keep you posted!

The hoarder confesses, part 2

I started to take pictures of all my stuff, and boy, there were some. So now I continue to share images of my successful hunts, just to show what may be found in a Swedish "Loppis"

More bowls:

Pewter Bowl

Alas, no food!

Ceramic bowl

Pewter bowl with ring handles

Pewter Bowl

Brass Bowl

Pewter bowl

Square plate/bowl

Small ceramic bowl from Etelhem Pottery

Small pewter cup/bowl

Ceramic Bowl

Replica of cup from the ship Wasa

Ceramic bowl from Etelhem Pottery

Large ceramic bowl

Turned wooden bowl

Small ceramic bowl from Etelhem Pottery

Tiny ceramic bowl

Small ceramic bowl

The hoarder confesses

I love flea markets, charity shops, antique stores and the like. I'm always on the look out for things that can fit in to my medievalist hobby. Throughout the years the hoard has grown, and I just can't stop gathering! I often lend people stuff when they've forgotten for example their feast great. Trust me, you don't have to worry if you by accident break it, I really, really have more....

Often people ask where I get it from, and sometimes how I know what's good and what's not. It all comes down to getting a feel for what might work, both from an aesthetic point of view and from the historic corrected ness view. Look at reproductions, look at paintings and drawings, trawl through the museum image data base. Then you hopefully will have that 'third eye' for what looks good.

I started to take pictures of all my stuff, and boy, there were some. So now I plan to share images of my successful hunts, just to show what may be found in a Swedish "Loppis"

Bowls:

These are the  replicas bought at different places over time, and one more is coming....

And this is the original, a 16th century bowl from the mining village at the silver mine in Sala, Sweden.