A Proper Super Tunic

***PLEASE BE PATIENT THIS POST IS IMAGE-HEAVY***

I am very excited to be going to Pennsic this year. Sadly, after having my second baby my body doesn't resemble what it used to. Needless to say that I now need make more garb and alter the few things that I can, in order to have a workable wardrobe for Pennsic.

Woman's outfit, from an 11th century illustrated
manuscript in the British Museum.

One of the pieces that I used to have (it seems to have walked off somewhere) was a super tunic or an over tunic called a Gunna, in the fashion of the Saxon women, like the one to the right. It was not one of my best pieces of work. I had made it in the "quick and dirty" fashion. That is, I took my existing tunic dress (folded in half lengthwise) and placed it on another piece of fabric folded in quarters. I traced the shape I wanted according to the existing dress. Like the picture below, right. It was something done on the spur of the moment and the finishing was awful. The fit wasn't perfect but I t was comfortable and easy to wear. With all that in mind I decided to make another.

"Quick and dirty" method.

I don't usually like using what I call "icky" fabric like rayon, nylon, and polyester. I do however make exceptions. This is one of those times. While there are a lot of cons to using this kind of fabric like no breathability, odd textures, and it's tendency to melt when touched with fire, there are a few good things to keep in mind. Many of these fabrics are hard to wrinkle and generally wrinkle less when packed. Need to look great on the first day at an event and don't have time to let something hang out to get the wrinkles out of that linen? Also, I find that these fabrics are harder to stain. The big clincher: the price. Linen/Rayon blends are cheaper than straight linen and even linen/cotton blends in many cases.

Pieced sleeve. 4 pieces to achieve the desired bell shape. 

In any case I found myself with a bright teal piece of fabric that seemed to suit my purpose. Like I usually do I washed the fabric and dried it on the hottest setting. (This is what's meant by pre-shrinking folks. Do it before so you don't wind up with a child size later.) After all of that I ironed it and measured the final dimensions. Then came the planning. I know what I want it to look like: a full skirt reaching to my knees and a fairly decent bell sleeve that falls to my elbow. The fabric is sufficiently small that I had to get a bit creative in my layout and piecing of the sleeves. I've put a picture of one of my completed sleeves to the left. I had debated on whether or not I was going to surge my fabric but after seeing how easily it was coming apart it was a no-brainer.It was coming apart easier than some linens I know. I put a before and after image below.

Top seam: serged. Bottom: not serged.

Non-serged seams. 

Main material with sleeve lining.

 I also decided at this point that I had to make my over tunic a bit fancier. First of all I needed additional fabric for the gores of the skirt and secondly because I didn't want the seams to show inside my sleeve. A lining of something fancy was in order. A while back I picked up several pieces of fabric from the remnants bin at Osgood's. So many good finds! In any case I have a light blue satin with vines that will do the trick nicely. I've added the picture below.I thought about doing the neck facing in the same material but in the end I didn't have enough.That's okay though. This was planned to be a use of odd bits, ends, and remnants.It's part of the reason that the sleeves turned out the way they did. So I put both the sleeves together and then just took them and traced them on to the lining fabric to make sure they matched up. The satin I didn't bother to piece and just did it in one whole piece. I had enough fabric to do it and then my OCD wouldn't kick in to try and match the pattern on each piece. I was working out of habit when I sewed my lining and sleeve together.I realized that the traditional methods of sewing weren't going to apply. Traditional methods of sewing the lining and main piece together are to sew the three sides together and then turn it inside out or sewing the separate pieces into tube than putting them together didn't really work. It didn't help that I had had to put them together over two days. I ended up going to bed saying, "Don't make that same mistake again tomorrow morning." It inevitably meant that I did make the same stupid mistake. Lesson learned! The end result was very nice and I was super excited to get the rest of it put together!

Both sleeves complete with lining.

Just taking a moment to show you the sleeves since I mentioned how they turned out earlier. Usually the sleeves would be rounded on the bottom, not squared off. The lining looks great and I'm really happy with how they look.

The sleeves done, it's time to tackle the main body part of the tunic. This is fairly straight forward. I'm not putting any gores in the front or back of this piece. Again, remember that I'm working with small fabric pieces to begin with. As it is I have to use the vine satin to put the side gores in. All I have of the solid teal-blue color is a strip about two inches wide.

After I've cut the gores out I'm faced with what to do about the neck facing. With not enough fabric of either to do the facing the way I usually do, I go diving into my remnant bin. I cam out with this dark goldenrod cotton which worked perfectly. Now I just had to decide on what kind of neck to do. I usually do the fastest thing for myself and, since this was fancier than most of the stuff I've made for myself, I decided to go with a keyhole type neck. The biggest thing for necklines is to place them properly. It's easiest to just find the center and layout your neckline over that. I took the time to do it properly: 2/3 of the opening in front and only 1/3 behind. The keyhole is a pain when I'm working towards a deadline but thanks to a hot iron and plenty of pins I was able to get it done in fairly short order. I put the picture below.

Neck facing 1/3 done while on the ironing board. 

Left side done! 

This also takes a lot of pins. And patience. It was well worth it though and after the neckline was done I was able to put my first sleeve on with the gore and I was happy with how it looked. Though in retrospect I think I would attach the sleeves with the drape in back rather than against my ribs...It's not a huge deal and something I can fix easily down the line. You can see what I'm talking about in the picture to the right. As it stands now, when I'm moving, you can't really tell anyways. (See the picture at right, below.) Oh, and disregard the orange dress peeking out from under the blue dress in the pictures at right!

Left side, arm raised.

Putting on the last sleeve and gore was a snap. I was able to finish it and hem it all in about four hours. (Interrupted time...baby, husband, etc.) I've put the pictures of the completed right side and the completed, hemmed garment below. Yay! My first new piece of garb in four years...*lol*

Completed, hemmed supertunic.

Completed  right side.

Post Baby Garb

So I know it's been a while since my last post but I think you can expect many more soon. After having my second baby, a healthy girl, none of my garb fits. Not only that but I need to remake or fix a lot of the stuff I have. It's a bit aggravating but after child birth your body changes and, well, my garb is now looking like it was made for someone else. In a sense it was I guess.

I started on updating my wardrobe last night by making the first piece of my Persian outfit. I did my research and while striped fabric wasn't often used in period other than for the lower classes it was what I had on hand. 100% Cotton teal stripe, a fabric I picked up a few years ago as an impulse buy. I figured that I would find a use for it eventually and I was right! I figured that the finished pants would be light weight and comfy enough for both summer and winter events. I followed Rashid's pattern for 16th century Salwar pants for my first attempt which I've put below:

 I followed the instructions with no changes (always a good idea for the first time around) with one exception: I didn't guess on the measurement for the ankle opening. Instead, I measured around the heel and top of my foot, at the ankle, while my foot was pointed. As if I was putting on pants. Since this pattern works on a fold I simply halved that measurement and drew my diagonal line to there. I also upped the thirteen inch  rise measurement to fifteen since I am taller than the average woman. In the end I don't think that it was necessary but better to be safe than sorry the first time around! While I did measure in the recommended way, I feel like the pants are a little long. I may shorten the rise on the next pair or modify these if they I find that they're too long. I need to get some input from someone who makes them on a regular basis.

Today I'll start working on a kamiz using Rashid's pattern for a 14th century Kamiz/Pirihan. I'm using slightly thicker material than would be ideal but we'll see how it goes! I'll post pictures of the pants soon!

Blue Linen Dress Re-Do: Trim Found!

So today I took my DS to have lunch with daddy during daddy's lunch hour. There's a great fabric store right around the corner from my DH's workplace so naturally I had to stop. This place is extensive and stocks everything from apparel fabric to whole hides of leather. I had two things on my "to buy"  list. The first I was disappointed in: faux fur for my son's bear Halloween outfit. The second and successful find was trim for the blue dress. I found a short remenant in the colors I have as well as two larger pieces and I've pretty much decided to go with the lighter themed of the two. I've posted the picture below.


I don't like to buy much commercial trim (but do due to time constraints) because of the mostly glaringly obvious non-period materials and patterns. There's a great picture from a class that was presented and I use it as a good visual aid. I'm trying to find it now. Basically staying away from all of the super shiny metallic silver and gold stuff and sticking with trims that you usually find in the upholstery section is a good bet. That's actually where I found all three of my finds today. The trim pictured above is fairly simple being two twists of blue and gold laid side by side and stitched to the beige backing with light blue scalloped edges. It's just enough color and simple enough to go with the dress. Everything else I had was too modern or not in the right colors to be used. I'm hoping that with the 8 yards that I purchased I'll have enough. I was silly and forgot to measure the hem so I had to guess-timate. The thing is, I don't get out to that store often and the reel had the original sticker ripped off. So I couldn't tell you where to get this if I wanted to. I'll be keeping a swatch of course for future reference but I'm not sure what I'll do if I don't have enough to complete the dress...I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I was planning on doing more work on the dress this evening but my DS decided not to nap today which meant that keeping him on track for bed time took two parents, not just the one. We also tried to move a bit of our stuff from the garage into our new shed in preparation for the winter delivery of wood pellets that keeps our home toasty warm  during the winter. Perhaps I'll get some work done tomorrow! I have ironed out the muslin to cut the mock ups out of and I am really looking forward to pining them onto the dress to see if my patterning skills have rusted at all! That's all for now, hopefully I'll have more news after the weekend!