Maiden's chamber

All the serious updates will have to wait, since I feel like doing a meme.

( Meme time! )

I haven't done a proper update for ages! It just that I've been extremely busy with work and sewing and studying and etc. However, I thought that this could be a good time to show a little something I did back on August.

My bf and I decided to attend a medieval handcraft market in the end of August, but the problem was, that neither of us really had anything to wear. The event was set in 1400's and while I just wanted something new to wear, bf didn't own anything but one quite badly made viking outfit. I may have also promised to sew him a 14th century outfit about a year ago, but really, that is way beyond the point here...

So anyway, I didn't get a good night's sleep in several weeks, and there are still some minor things I need to do with our otfits, like do the buttons on bf's sleeves and finish all the seams in my dress, but all in all, I think we looked rather dashing.



To be totally honest, all I had to do for this event was the cotehardie and the dress. I had made bf's hood last summer, while the hoses, braies and linen tunic were made earlier this year. My dress was also partly sewn couple of year ago and never finished, but it was still quite a lot of work, and I needed almost two weeks sleep before I started to feel human again. I'm apparently getting too old for these sewing all-nighters...

All the clothes expect my linen shift, which is 7 years old and machine made, but fitted perfectly with the dress, are hand sewn. I also made the reed hat myself. In addition to that, I'm wearing my Birgitta cap, but of course forgot to take a picture of it.

Instructions:
Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair - just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with the picture.



I've just woken up about an hour ago, and don't feel like going to my German class at all...

I've been spending the last three weeks sewing the cap of St. Birgitta, as pictured in in the article by Camilla Luise Dahl and Isis  in Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4. Earlier, the cap of St. Birgitta was considered to be alike with the men's coifs,  but Dahl and Sturtewagen argue quite strongly, that the cap is actually similar to women's headwear seen often in period artwork from 13th to 14th centuries for example in Maciejowski Bible and Tacuinum Sanitatis. This was very exiting, especially since I've seen only one interpretation of this model before, and it differs quite a lot with the cap attributed to St. Birgitta. Personally I like Camilla's and Isis' interpretation more, the other one just doesn't feel medieval to me.

Anyway, I really loved the article and got very exited about the cap, especially once I had a change to talk with Camilla at NESAT X.  Luckily, I was able to sew that cap at work, so I didn't have to spend my free time on it. I still counted I used over 70 hours for this project ( I did have to redo some parts though). Here's me sewing the cap at the sunny Seurasaari (I just can't resist).



The cap has a very simple construction, it's based on two rectangles with the upper corner of both pieces cut to the shape of the head. The pieces are joined together by using interlaced herringbone stitches with a separate weaving thread intertwining with the stitches and forming an embroidered midsection. The lower edge is then gathered to small pleats and stitched to the front side edge in order to get the pleats lie horizontally. The cap is then edged with an decorative border which also forms the band that is used to tie the cap in place.

The Birgitta cap is made of z-spun linen with the thread count of 32/cm, where as my linen had only 16 threads per centimetre. I used basic linen thread by Gutterman for the seams, and 35/3 linen thread for the embroidery. Silk thread was used to them the the curved edges.

The authors think the cap was originally used by a woman with a head circumference of about 51 cm. Since my head is 3 cm wider, I added 3 centimetres to the measurements, hoping to achieve the correct fit. However, the carrying around and three weeks of construction took their toll, and I had to cut the frayed edges off, resulting that the cap ended up being only a little bigger than the original, and hence a little too small for me.

The embroidered midsection took the longest time to work, and I actually had to redo it completely, when I noticed that I just couldn't get a even result without attaching some kind of interfacing to the halves. Even after doing this, I noticed that I sometimes pulled the threads too tight, and my midsection ended up being only 0,5 cm wide, when in the original the gap between the halves was from 0,8 cm to 1,2 cm.

The other tricky part on the embroidered middle section were the beginning and the ending of the section, where the network of herringbone stitches were incomplete. In the upper end the problem was solved by placing the border on top of the uneven embroidery, but on the lover edge I had to stitch the extra thread on the wrong side. To do this, one can not darn in the threads used in the herringbone stitch, before the whole embroidery is complete.

     

I secured the pleating from the inside with two rows of back stitch. The lower row was hidden under the decorative border, and I unpicked the second row after the attaching the border.

The only thing I did differently was the attaching of the decorative border. Instead of fastening it with hemming stitches from the right side, I used back stitch on the inside. I figured this would create a bit more neat result, and in case i ever wanted, I could still add the hemming.

The decorative border also came out little differently than the original, because of the different thread count. The original border is only 1 cm wide, where as mine is 1,3 cm wide. The embroidery was 24 threads wide, and in the original, it fitted well into one centimetre (32/cm), but my fabric (16/cm) needed a little more space. In the original, the decorative border and the band are both 1 cm wide fro the most part, so I decided to make my band a 1,3 cm wide to match the border.

Here are some pictures of the completed cap.

        

And here is the cap on me.

The best Twilight comic ever!

This summer I'm working as a museum guide at the Seurasaari open-air museum in Helsinki. My work is basically to guard the museum houses and tell people about them. I get to do all kind of handicrafts all summer and enjoy the weather. Plus I have really nice outfit, a traditional Finnish folk costume (not a canonized national costume). I just had to take some pictures today.


     

     


I'm weaving a reed band on the upper pictures, and the pattern is taken from a horse's leash from the Ivars farmstead (from the western coastal side of Finland) seen at the back in the last picture. The nice view and the spinning wheel are from the Kurssi farmstead (from same area as Ivars, ie. the Southern Ostrobothnia).
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I've already learned to spin with a spindle, to tie fransus and today I made a bracelet using a birch bark. I'm quite proud of myself and very exited.

mielikkik gave me a link to an astonishing doll maker Maria Jose Santos a while back, and when I just checked her site, I noticed that she had done these lovely Marie Antoinette dolls:

  

She has also made an spectacular version of one of the gown seen in the Kyoto Costume Institute's Fashion:



And just to pimp the gorgeousness, here are my favourites, Erté dress, the goddess Diana, and Odile & Odette :

           

My friend and my sister are coming here today for sleepover with lots of food and romantic comedies. However, I would much rather be by myself, cleaning the house and shortening three pair of pants I bought couple of weeks ago. What's wrong with me?

I decided to try to cheer myself by writing a little bit about my portfolio work for the craft science as a minority subject. I'm actually quite proud of it, considering how little time I had to do it. Of course, I didn't get in, but that's quite alright since they only accept two students per year.

Sooo, I decided to do the gown of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia. I had all kinds of fine words written in my portfolio about the aims and objectives of this project, but I won't go too deep into those here. The most important part of it was that I was not in any way attempting to do a reconstruction or a copy, in stead I would call my dress an adaptation of the original. This because I could never meet the standards set on an reconstruction, but also because I simply didn't have enough information about the dress to do a copy, even if that would have been my aim.

Here is the pattern of the dress and the tools and materials I used:

 

I used gorgeous light green wool tabby  that I had bought a few months earlier. It isn't 100% wool, but looks and feels quite nice. I used white linen thread for the seams and green silk thread for attaching the woollen braid, and bronze and brass needles for sewing. I used running stitch for the long seams, backed up with few back stitches here and there, and I used back stitch for the most parts of the sleeves, since there would be more strain. I finished the seams with overcast stitches. The neckline is finsihed the same way as in mielikkik's dress, pictured here. The hem is finished with hem stitches, but I'm planning on doing there a tablet woven piped edge later on.

I followed the pattern, but adjusted it to fit my measurements, result being that the proportions of my dress are a bit different than in the original, as you can see from these two pictures of the original dress and my version. I think they look quite the same, but my fabric drapes differently, and the original looks a little fuller.

   

Here you can see comparisons between my dress and two German statues from Magdeburg (c. 1250) and Starbourg (after 1277). I look quite horrible and tired in these pictures, but they're the only ones I got.

     

I reeeeally like the way this dress came out, and I absolutely fell in love with this pattern. The dress drapes beautifully because of the wide side gores and no centre gores and it creates very lovely profile.

Sorry for the long silence, I've been super busy with my entrance examination for the craft science. But it's over now! w00t! I have long update about that coming up, but first I thought I could blather little bit about the NESAT X.

I had a blast there!

I shared a hotel room with two researchers/weavers from Turku, and we had so much fun together. Actually, I can't really describe the whole week so I'm just going to say that the week was fabulous, I learned so much and got a so much perspective to the whole textile field, that I just felt exhausted afterwards. But in a good way, of course.

I felt a little weird, since I've only studied history two years, and everyone else had already done at least their BA, almost everyone their master's thesis, and then there were those textile celebrities that everyone knew. So everyone was asking what's my field of interest and of what hade I done my research, and of course it was bit embarassibng to say that nothing yet. On the other hand, I think I got a good head start from NESAT to start to do my BA next autumn.

I also made lots of friends and got to meet frualeydis for the first time. Here's actually a picture of as taken outside of he Danish National Museum, where we had just attended to the opening of the new prehistoric exhibition (which was opened by Her Majesty Margareta II).



Gee it was a fun week!

Ok, just a quick update to tell that I traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark, this morning, to attend the North European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles, aka NESAT. So no updates till nex week.

I love corsets. I love doing them, and I love wearing them. However, I'm not that kind of girl who dresses nicely every day, so I rarely use corsets. Thus far, I've made two, one for myself and one for my friend, who saw my corset and wanted me to make one for her too.

My own corset was made back in 2005 for an masquerade ball where I wanted to dress as a Absinthe Faerie. I used L. A. Palmer's corset patent from April 17, 1877 that I found from this site. Unfortunately, I can't find it there anymore, so here is the link to United States Patent and Trademark Office's picture. In case someone doesn't have Quicktime, I also post the picture here.

 

This corset was made in four days, without much of a knowledge about corsets. Luckily, I had some spiral wire from Vena Cava, but all the other materials were very much improvised. I used two layers of some kind of cotton fabric as a lining, and silk dupioni as a cover. I used strips of fabrics cut in bias to bind the edges, but as you can see, I went for the non traditional way. Despite all the imperfections, I love this piece, and since this is for costume purposes only, the inferior materials don't really matter.

         

When my friend asked me to make her a corset, I was really insecure, since I had done only this one not-so-well-done corset. I promised to do it for free, on the condition that the corset would be "a practise piece", and that I could not guarantee the quality. I was super nervous, since I really wanted to make her a beautiful corset, especially after she had bought this gorgeous embroidered silk and talked her grandmother into making her a lace for the corset. I spent countless hours reading corsetmakers and plannig a perfect corset. I don't think the corset ended up being perfect, but in the end, my friend loved the corset so much that she and her boyfriend made me a really beautiful knife as a payment.

   

I am really happy with the outcome. The corset is Laughing Moon's Dore, and it's made of one layer of cotton coutil, cotton batiste lining and silk cover. I used spiral steel, but I put spring steels next to the lacing. Waist tape is situated between lining and coutil, and I bound the edges with ready made satin bias tape.

I usually score as Belle, which is fine, since she is my favourite character and I have adored her since I first saw Beauty and the Beast back in -92. I loved the fact that she had brown hair, green eyes and that she loved books (just like me!). I love Jane too, but I'm not as facinated with animals and nature as she is. Though Tarzan is one of the hottest Disney heroes there is (and I'm so not drooling over animated fictional characters, srsly!).

Pheew! The broadcast ended at 7 am and I had to sleep a bit before I could write something, but I've been so busy the whole day, that I didn't have enough time until now.

In a nutshell, I could say that this this year's Oscars sucked big time, mainly due to the problems with international airing. As for the winners, I was really dissapointed that Atonement got only one Oscar and that Enchanted didn't win the Best Song. I haven't seen Once or August Rush (I suspect they are not  goming here at all) but I reeeeally love That's how you know, and it would have been neat if Disney had won the Oscar for best song like in the good old days in 90s'. However, I did like Falling Slowly, even if it sounded a bit borng (and that was propably due to fact that the sounds were bit off at that time), and it's cool that indie musicians won the Osars.

I didn't expect Alexandra Byrne to win the Oscar for costume desing, but I'm glad for her. I was rooting for Jacqueline Durran or Colleen Atwood, since I adore everything in Atonement (probably one of the most perrfect films I've ever seen), and Colleen Atwood is my personal hero with her triangle cutouts.

There were some lovely dresses though.

1. Ellen Page  Love love love! It's simple, elegant and not too flashy for a girl in her 20s.
2. Anne-Marie Duff I adore the colour and the dress has a vintage feel to it. Plus she has James McAvoy on her side.
3. Nicole Kidman Maybe the hem is a bit too short, but the cut is elegant and I like her jewellery.
   
4. Helen Mirren Very age aproppriate and gorgeous,
   
5. Anne Hathaway The draping of the skirt is gorgeous.
   
6. Katherine Heigl She's like a classic Hollywood star.
   
7. Amy Adams I don't get why people don't like this dress. The colour is gorgeous on her and the cut is very beautiful.
   

Saoirse Ronan, Amy Ryan and Miley Cyrus all wore lovely dresses, but in my humble opinion Miley Cyrus is a bit too young to flirt with the camera the way she did.

These were quite nice:

1. Cate Blanchett The colour is delicious and I love her errings, but the neck tie ir really weird and the dress could have been longer.
   
2. Diablo Cody I like that she marches to her own drum, but the dress could have been more fitted.
   
3. Jennifer Garner It's very stylish, but maybe there s too much going on with the skirt, and her hair looks kind of messy.
   
4. Jessica Alba I adore the colour and the cut, but I think the dress is too low-cut and that she could have dumped the featers.
   
5. Marion Cotillard The cut is beaytiful and her profile is perfect, but let's face it; she looks like a fish.
6. Heidi Klum The dress is very statuesque, and Heidi Klum is probably the only person to wear this properly, but maybe it's not a right dress for the Oscars.
   

And last but not least, the ones I din't like.

1. Tilda Swinton Words can't describe how horrendous this dress is. Everything is just off. The fabric, the cut, the proportions *shudder*.
2. Sarah Larson She looks like she's wearing grandmom's curtains.
   
3. Jennifer Hudson Not so bad, but a woman with such a large breast could use more support.
   
4. Cameron Diaz I don't understand what's with her every year. Again, the dress is weird (especially the back) and she has that beach hair.
   

mielikkik  got the dress yesterday, and was apparently very pleased with it. I'm super relived, since this was only the second time I sewed something to someone else. Here's a picture she was kind enough to send me:



This is an early 14th century cotte, made of little less that 3, 5 meters of thin wool tabby (80% wool, 20% polyamide). My initial inspiration were the figural sculptures in Martebo and Stånga churches depicted in Else Marie Gutarp's Hurusom man sig klädde, but I decided to go for the less fuller look seen in Codex Manesse. This is my inspiration picture, along with the front and back views of the finished cotte.



The cut is very simple, but it doesn't base on any particular finding. It has gores on the side seams and in the center front and back, and also slightly fitted armholes. Sleeves are narrow in the forearms, with four buttons on the cuffs. I turned the neckline with the help of a braided wool yarn in order to imitate the technique used in the Herjolfsnes finds. As for the sewing, I used running stich in the skirt and back stich in the bodice and I finished the seams with hem stiches.



I have to say again that I'm reeeeally happy with this one.

Pheew! I I've been sewing mielikkik's early 14th century dress that hardacnut asked me to make for her for ages, and today I finally packed it for her. And fore once, I'm actually happy with something I've done. Sure, the buttonholes could have been better, but all in all I did pretty good job with it. I took few hasty photos of the dress with my dress form, but I won't post anything until mielikkik has gotten the dress. I'm also hoping to get some pictures of the dress on her, but that might have to wait till the Tavern event in the end of February.

I was saddened to hear about Heath Ledger's death. It's actually strange, how sad you can be about someone you've never met. Maybe it's because my roommate and I have been all exited about the Dark Knight for so long, and first I wasn't too happy to hear they had cast Heath Ledger as the Joker, but when I saw the first promo pictures I was really impressed and exited. We were eagerly waiting for the hype to begin and to hear all the interviews where Heath Ledger would have shed some light on how he got into the character etc. Now all we have is just In memory of Heath Ledger on the end of the movie. It's just so sad. Not to lose a gifted actor, but that he died in such a circumstances. If it was a suicide, its horrible and he must have had really hard time, but it's devastating, if it was an accident.

My roommate and I are going to watch Brokeback Mountain and maybe light a candle for him tonight. I know that it's silly, but I haven't seen the movie, and it's not because he was famous but because it feels horrible that someone so young has died. It's not like his life was more precious than others, it's just always easier to have a face for tragedies.

And while reading the news I stumbled across maybe the best descripson of our generation I've ever heard. Nicole Vaughan 24, was asked why she had come outside Heath Ledger's apartment and she replied: "because of the way our generation is; we sort of feel we’re a part of each other’s lives."

I decided to do a little account of our trip to Europe's two metropolises, Paris and London.

I travelled with my three senior high friends, and like I said earlier, we had a blast. We spent four days in Paris, after which K, A-M and I continued to London for four days while lilium_mortagon stayed in Paris. We had rented an apartment from Interhome and it was superb and Louvre was almost literally next door. We arrived on Sunday morning, and the first thing lilium_mortagon and I did was to head to Musée Galliera to see the 1920s exhibition (there's a French video clip of the exhibition on this site). I loved the exhibition, and I so regret that I didn't buy the catalogue but the museum was closing for the day and they had already shut down the cash register. So I figured I have to think where to spend my money and that I could always come back later, but sine we had so much to do I simply forgot it.

Next day we went to see Notre-Dame. It always strikes me how beautiful it is in nature. I took loads of photos of the statues and reliefs, and after wandering there I left to see Musée national du Moyen Age aka Cluny. Of course my camera's battery died as soon as I stepped in, so I had to get back there on Wednesday. I have been there before, but it was still amazing. Later that day we went to Louvre, but since I still hadn't got the chance to charge the batteries, I don't have any photos from there. At that point, I must admit, I was reeeally tired and could't concentrate. I wandered to see Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa and som paintings by Rubens but there was just so much to see and I couldn't decide where to go that in the end I didn't see anyhthing I really wanted to see. In other words, I have a good reason to go back there some day.

Tuesday was a Disneyland day with K and A-M and perhaps one of the best days of my life. I'm a huge Disney fan and as a child I wanted nothing more that to some day get to Disneyland. We had a great time there, the Parade was great and so was the shops, it was like being in some sort of weird Disney reality and we just hoped that we could have stayed there. Here's a picture of us in Alice's Curious Labyrinth:



On our last day I visited Cluny again (and got some nice photos of ie. glass paintings, fabrics and embroideries) and went to see the tomb statues of French royalty in Basilica of St. Denis. For costume-wise it was maybe the highlight of my journey, since the statues were unbelievably incredible.

On Thursday we took the Eurostar train to London (very easy, btw.) Our day passed as we hunted musical tickets, and in the evening we went to see Wicked, my favourite musical ever. It was reat to see it again, and I actually liked the new cast better than the old one.

My friend J studies in Canterbury, and she came to London on Friday and we spent the day shopping and eating fish and chips. It was lovely to see her again and it was also great to hear she enjoys studying there. Friday's musical was The Lord of the Rings, and it was... err... interesting. They had clearly tried really hard to make it good, but most of the actors were quite horrible and they had some pretty weird ideas about elves (they dangled from the roof with some sort of ropes). I liked the music though.

Saturday's musical was Les Misérables and it was a whole another story. The cast was great, singing was great, props were great and everything was just perfect. Earlier that day I went to Museum of London, but sadly they had their lower floor closed, I could'n see anything younger than 16th century. It was okay though, since I went to see the medieval stuff, and they had on display one sleeve from the14th century (seen on the Textiles and Clothing). I just have to post the picture here:



On our last day we went to a Wicked day in Cardinal Place were they had costumes from the show on display, cast memebrs siging autographs and lots of free staff to be taken. We got one baloon and just had to write a little message on it before we unleashed it to the sky (except we forgot it in our hotel, but hopefully the staff understood what to do).




Yes, it was truly a wonderful trip.

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