So a while back I wrote up a post summarizing the information found in Textiles and Clothing 1150-1450, a book about a large number of archaeological finds from London. I shared it to a Facebook group, thinking it might be useful to other people, and there was one guy who commented on it who had [...]
Category: Research
A Crazy-Person’s* Guide To Sewing A Late 14th Century Dress As Close To Period As We Know How (after Crowfoot, Pritchard & Staniland)
Wow, what a title! I finally got around to doing something I've wanted to do for a while-- going through one of my favorite books (Textiles and Clothing 1150-1450) and summarizing how to make a garment I make a lot as close to how they would have done it as possible-- a late 14th century [...]
Zen and the art of not messing up counted thread embroidery
The most common thing I hear when talking to people about my counted thread embroidery obsession is "I can't do that, there's too much counting and looking at charts". And they do have a point-- if you are a person who hates looking up from your work, finding your place in a chart, and looking down again, counted thread might drive you a bit mad. But, there are a number of tricks you can use to make the whole process easier.
Blah Blah Black Sheep
I was really extraordinarily surprised when my last post (cough RANT cough) about the history of colored sheep, a topic that is normally considered to be esoteric beyond belief, conjured a lot of interest in a follow-up. So Jason, Ari, and Randall, wherever you are, this is for you. It's pretty common knowledge that a [...]
Costuming in the time of Covid
(Roughly equivalent to Love in the time of Cholera but with less death, steamboats, and letter-writing) (Yes I have not read that book in years, and yes, those are apparently the details my brain has retained) Hi everyone. It's been a while. There is a lot going on in the world. I've had a rough [...]
Designing for Heat (again)
Ok we are backing up even further on the Designing for Heat wagon here because I realized I skipped a lot of what I consider to be the essential beginning steps last time! Here we go again. ~~Note that as always this is informed by my personal experiences, your mileage may vary~~ My goals: to [...]
Designing for Heat
Hopefully some of you remember the Avoiding Heatstroke Dress from a while back, which was intentionally designed and built to keep one (1) tiny human who is bad at homeostasis from developing heatstroke at events in the 95-105 ºF range. It was....moderately successful, I survived June Crown 2018 but Purgatorio 2019 killed me. It [...]
Filler post
Just wanted to insert a notice apologizing, I am still mostly alive I swear but likely won't be posting anything until after all of my assignments are due for the semester. I'm not sewing on much and I tried to write a post on TORM and just... couldn't make it happen. My 3000 word technical [...]
Ciudad de los angeles
Somehow I've managed to live in California for the vast majority of my life and never been to the city of Los Angeles? I've been to Pasadena to visit CalTech and the Norton Simon, and Malibu to see relatives, but not LA proper, so my mom and I decided to fix that before I leave [...]
Elizabethan Jackets
You ever start out doing something that's supposed to be simple and you end up in waaaaay over your head? Yeah. Welcome to my last couple days. I have 2 yards of a lovely changeable apricot/olive green silk that I bought at Discount Fabrics before I moved-- technically it's a shantung/dupioni silk with slubs, but [...]
Not Another Costuming Blog 