Dragon's Musings
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Peacock Doublet Diary
So, a friend was getting rid of a pile of fabric and another friend comes up and says "oh, that would make a hideous fencing doublet. I want one!" So I made him one. Since I started with only two different patterns of corderoy, I picked up a little bit of heavy denim. I had two layers of the denim punch tested (and it passed), so I used one layer of denim as the lining, and basted all the other fashion pieces to the second layer of denim and treated it as "one" piece of fabric. I started from a pattern that I got from a third friend (known in the SCA as Justin Lymner) when making minionwear and altered the pattern to fit Friend #2 (Fergus). Below are the front and back pieces and the epaulets, a picture of the tabs for the bottom and the collar.
I took a cue from another piece of minionwear and decided to make the doublet particolored quarterly. Furthermore, I decided to put the stripe on the bias for added visual interest (and blindness). This is where it is useful that it is basted to the denim which is not on the bias.
So I sewed all the pieces together and got this monstrosity:
I quickly realized that I would need something to break up the massive colored blocks, because despite being in the same color family, they don't really "go" and though this was termed affectionately "the Hideous Doublet of Hideousness," I didn't really want it to be overtly ugly.
I found a dark teal that I then used for accents, covering all the seams and then to add the diagonal accents. Time constraints forced me to machine sew them on, which makes me sad. I did sew the whole thing together and then bias bound the edges with additional teal bias strips. Those I did hand-sew on. Part of the charm of the Doublet was the mismatched fabrics, so I received permission to put a mismatched set of buttons on it. The final result is here:
Oh, and it is reversible, so it has a non-ugly side:
The buttons on that side all match, you'll note.
Fergus was really happy to have it, which makes me happy. The name was changed to the Peacock Doublet, in part to squeeze it into an A&S competition focusing on the Seven Deadly Sins, and in part because looking at it, it kind of fits the peacock's coloration.
Liz the Mischievous renovated @ 20:44
