The Brown Silk - Vol II

I'll post about the progress of my Brown Silk Garb here.

So here is a picture of the silk fabric. The colour is a little bit off, it should be dark chocolate brown. See the pattern? It is (machine)embroidered in chain stitch. (Click it to make the picture bigger.) I'll put more gold on it, first the flowers, them stems and as much of the leaves as I have time for. One pattern section is about 30cm across.

Here is 1/2 of the pieces I cut today. The front piece is quite wide, but so am I. The sleeve is made from three parts, the small ones go to the sides of the sleeve. The tip of the gore will be set between the small corners of the sleeve under ones arm, creating a W pattern. That one is very usefull, as the seam will stretch. There will be only one gore on each side, so the hem is not very wide, but it will be an early period garb, so it doesn't matter. The sleeves are not going to be buttoned, since I want to be able to dress myself without extra help, but I can always make them tighter later, if I want to. This one being the outer layer, the sleeves should actually be wider and maybe lined.

Which reminds me, that I should start thinking about that under layer too.

New garb on the making

So it is time for a totally new garb. I searched the internet for fabric, but all suitable matherial was too expencive or I just didn't like internet shopping. Anyway. Yesterday I ran through every fabric store I could find in Nürnberg. The last one (Maderer) was the best, and I could find embroidered raw silk, even if they didn't have any silk brocades. The embroidery on it is quite simple, so I can improve it with my own. I think that that chocolate brown (my favourite colour, though not the best one for garb. They didn't have enough of the yellow version, which I still couldn't leave in the shop. I can do something with it later!) can benefit from lots of added gold.

They had only 2,2 meters of it, so I had to play some tetris. I'm planning on a garb based on the Tunic of St. Elisabeth of Thuringia. Mine will not have buttoned sleeves, and the cut is slightly different due to shortage of fabric, but something in that direction.

I made a test sample of my cutting plan from a plain cotton bed sheet yesterday, and it worked well. Only the hem was a little short, only to my ankles, but I'll add a border or a broad trim on it to fix that. (Propably with some embroideries.) Now I have cut the silk as well. I'll fix the edges first so that they will not fray, and then I'll do the embroidery. The pieces are easier to handle when they are not put together yet. I'll put the sleeves together first, though, since they are made from three pieces each. Unfortunately it was not possible to position the sleeve pieces on the fabric so that they would both have the same part of the embroidery on them, so the other sleeve will have embroidery in the middle and the other on the sides. Tough, it couldn't be helped.

And the picture in the beginning of this post? That is the leftover pieces of the 140x220cm fabric. I wonder if that is enough to make buttons for the sleeves, if I deside to make them tighter later?

Black Dragon Guard Embroidery

I made this for my friend Gottfried. It is the embroidery for a Black Dragon Guard tabard. The Dragon is about 25cm tall. Split stitch and couching with cotton and fake gold threads on linen. This piece took me about four weeks to make and I'm quite satisfied with it.

Other side:
Some details, as I had a new camera to play with:

Elisheva's Test Kitchen - "Apples"

Today I tested a medieval recipe from Harleian. It was supposed to be meatballs disguised as apples. The diner would bite a green apple and be surprized! The trickery! The cunning joke! Ah, we have to try this.

Here are the meatballs already cooked. The meat mix is made from ground beef, raisins, dates, cinnamon, pepper, cloves, eggs and ginger. The meatballs are then boiled.

Up next it colouring them green. We'll use parsley, finely chopped and minced and the juice is squeezed out to make a green liquid in the picture. That small amount of colour, about three table spoons, took a big bush of parsley.

Then a batter is made from flour, eggs and ginger and it is coloured green. The recipe tells us to use the whole eggs, but I'll use only the whites next time, as othervice it will be too yellow and the green will not be bright enough. Then the apples are fried and the dough is sprinkled on top of them. They should be roasted on a spit. I used a frying pan, and that showed.

Next time I should make the dough thicker, so that it can be molded on the meatballs, or deepfry them with the thinner batter. The colour was nice, light green, like apples.

And the taste? Delicious! Slightly sweet, spicy meatballs. I only have to get the dough right and these will be an exelent dish for a feast. And they are so filling, that if served first no-one will complain about smaller portions served later. I'll try using spinach for colour next time, it is cheaper, you can always find it frozen in grocery stores and it is already chopped, so I'll save time and energy.

Work Baby, work!

Why I allways notice a need for new garb right before an event?

Let's make an under dress or a shirt to my Eura Garb. I had just replaced all of our old bed linen with new ones, and so I had a lot of off-white cotton material. This took 1 1/4 bed sheets, that's about 3,1 meters of fabric. The pattern is clever and uses all of the matherial, leaving no leftover pieces. I made use of my needle and finished this one in just two days. I'm very proud of myself. 11 meters of seam. Damn I'm fast!

The neck is very wide, but not from side to side. Instead it is wide from front to back, making it very practical for breast feeding. Not that I need that practicality anymore.

Two of the six long seams, the middle seams of the gores, are bag seams.

The other seams are pictured above. I have no idea what is the name of this seam type. (EDIT: The name is felled seam.)

As you can see, I could cut the fabric in a way that left me no edges to be hemmed. Sweet.

Now I'm off to bed. I'm leaving to that event in the morning, and it is already 1:17 am.