Sunday 26 February 2017

Boring but necessary

The plan for Raglan is to have a fresh set of body linen every other day. That means five shifts, five pairs of hose, and five veils. I needed a veil for the event last weekend, and since I was cutting out the fabric anyway I figured I might as well just do the lot.


The veils I've made are 100cm by 30 inches before hemming. Why the weird measurement combo? Well, I wanted metre-long veils, and my fabric was 60 inches wide.


I ended up hemming the selvedges as well because the fabric has annoying frilly selvedges. I also embroidered a little glyph on the corner of each veil to mark them as mine - I've lost too many over the years!


I also have plans for the sixth block of fabric created when I cut out the veils, but that's another post.

Friday 24 February 2017

Frock 2.0

Having finished fixing the grey frock, it was high time I moved onto the next project for my Raglan basket. The next item on the list was the second frock, this time in black wool. (My wardrobe is pretty boring, colour-wise. I'm ok with that.)

The tippets are shorter and narrower than those on the grey frock. The sleeves are shorter and tighter. And I used regular gores in the skirt, so there wasn't epic geometry fail this time. It is in all other respects identical to the grey frock.
Photos courtesy of Lady Tamara.

Now with bonus spiffy champion!

I spent an entire weekend in this outfit. It was incredibly helpful to test out how the clothing behaved. Some observations:
  • The entire outfit (overfrock, underfrock, shift, hose, shoes, veil) takes up less than half of my carry-on bag. I could theoretically get the entire wardrobe into a carry-on at some point as long as I didn't need anything else with me. 
  • You can't cook when you're wearing tippets. I had to borrow a tunic in order to go play in the kitchen.
  • I need to shorten the straps on my shift like whoa. They are too long and consequently uncomfortable. 
  • Ditto the neckline on the underfrock. It's too wide.
  • Need to practice pinning the veil properly. It needs to fit closer to the back of my neck so that it doesn't look quite so much like a scarf.
  • The hair works, but makes it surprisingly difficult to hear!
  • The sleeves on the underfrock are exactly right. I really like the way they fit.