What Do You Do With a B.A. in English
From Avenue Q
What do you do with a B.A. in English? What is my life going to be? Four years of college and plenty of knowledge have earned me this useless degree. I can't pay the bills yet 'cause I have no skills yet. The world is a big scary place... But Somehow I can't shake the feeling I might make a difference to the Human Race.
The Dragon Quotes
As far as goos go, that's one of the best I've tasted ~Danny
The Dragon Favors
3/23/05: Ben making a hat trick on the list; this time for showing me how to use my camera.
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.
Okay, so I actually finished the corset December 25, 2006. That's what, 3 months? Well, not always working on it consistantly. Anyway, I flatlined the linen:
So I was left with two "pieces" of each section, with the muslin/linen as the "good" side and the trigger as the "bad" side. The original Effigy Corset was all one piece, but as I'm losing weight, I didn't want to make another corset so soon, or have this one not fit, so I decided to do it in 3 sections with lacing on the sides to aid in sizing. Anyway, I then sewed the linen to the muslin sandwiching the trigger between them:
And then I had to bone the sucker. Step one was marking where my quilting lines were going to be. I did this on the muslin to keep my linen all pretty. I chose a thread color to work subtly on the linen as the quilting would be apparent on it.
My boning channels made, I opted to use broom straw to use for boning. Reed boning was used in period. Not pictured is me destroying a broom. :) Anyway, before I got to the actual process of boning the sucker, I figured I should put in the eyelets for lacing while the material was still movable. I bound the eyelets by hand, spacing them for spiral lacing. Next time, I need to use a bigger awl or something to get the hole bigger before I start as the holes are pretty small.
So onto boning:
You can see the eyelets and the quilted lines. There's the broomstraw that I clipped to the length I needed for each boning channel. Yes, I boned the tabs. When I sewed the linen to the muslin, I left the bottom open for boning, and I put the reeds between the two layers of trigger:
As a note, the first row of boning near each of the lacing edges, I used springsteel. It's a little more sturdy than the broom straw. No, I didn't take a picture of it.
You will notice that there are raw edges. I personally didin't want to turn under all that fabric and then sew, especially as there would need to be top stitiching. It also would make the outer seams and corners super-thick. Besides, the original Effigy corset had leather binding on the edges. With much color consultation from friends, I opted for a dark purple linen/rayon blend I had on hand. I made bias strips and sewed them on by hand (as I was worried about boning + my sewing machine), first to the linen side:
and then, turning it over and tucking it in, to the muslin side:
Yes, the majority of bias binding the corset happened on a long car ride (6 hours each way). I ended up finishing up the bias binding December 25 in the evening. I currently have some ribbon that I'm lacing it with, though the laces (at least on the front) will probably change in the future.
I then put it on me and took several bad pictures, but you can see the basic sillouhette, and the lacing in the side for sizing purposes:
Subsequent to that, I had a friend help get the side laces to the (current) correct tightness so the corset is properly corseting. It is pretty comfortable to have on, and the boned tabs seem to keep my hips in control, which is a fantastic thing! All in all, it was pretty cool making a corset by hand. :)
So this started on Saturday, Sept 30, 2006. I'll eventually move it all to a permanent home, probably someplace in The Blue-Eyed (my SCA page). But for now:
So I'm making an effigy corset, using directions found here. I did make some modifications to the measurements, as I'm adding in sizing along the side seams, which will make sense later.
Anyway, I'm using as my fabric a lovely buttery-yellow linen that I got at Pennsic. I used only a little more than a yard, I believe, which makes me happy that I can use the linen for other stuff too; 2 layers of tan trigger (poly-cotton blend, but very stiff); and a layer of unbleached muslin for next to my skin.
So I washed and ironed all the fabric, made the pattern (Friday 9/29), made a mock-up of the pattern, edited the pattern and have cut out the pattern in all the fabrics (2 sets for the trigger), and I've basted one set of the trigger to the muslin lining, making a flatlining (I believe).
Next steps: 1. Flatline the linen 2. Quilt boning channels 3. Destroy a broom for boning 4. Bone the corset 5. Bind the fabric (with bias tape or home made bias tape) 6. Create lacing holes for ladder-lacing
I just had to turn on "word verification" for comments because I was getting comment-spam by spambots. BAD SPAMBOTS! I SMITE THEE!
It is a thankfully quiet morning. The sun is shining. It's April. That's what's scary. All of a sudden, it's April. January and Februrary seem like such a short while ago.
So I've got in my head snippits of stories, and it doesn't help that I've started reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman series and have progressed to the one where the author imprisions and disrespects a Muse and then is punished by Morpheus. Yeah, that's about my nightmare.
A-N-Y-W-A-Y...
That's a picture of me from September in all my medieval glory. Not much else to report right now, so until then... Give Figgy a hug as he hasn't been feeling himself lately.
