The Elvish Maiden

Eleven years ago I made a dress to wear to the premiere of the final part of the LoTR saga, The Return of the King. I took my inspiration from the Elvish styles in the movies, but both the dress and the embroidery was my own design.

The dress is made from a semi stiff and rather heavy fabric with a woven in pattern. The sleeves are lined with linen. The neckline and sleeves of the mock under dress are made from raw silk.

It is a lovely dress, but sadly I never got any pictures of myself wearing it, and now I can’t fit into it anymore, as I have a rather more Hobbity shape than I had when I was twenty. I’ve been thinking for some time that my sister E might be able to wear it, being of a similar height to me, though a bit more slender than I was when I wore the dress. As she was staying with us for little over a week, and the dress fit her well enough, we took the opportunity to have a photo shoot.

She was wearing a piece of hair jewellery I made myself for the premiere of The Two Towers, twelve years ago, obviously based on Arwen’s beautiful one from Fellowship of the Ring. It was more striking against my darker hair (which back then reached passed my tail bone), but looked pretty against E’s fair hair as well. 

Her hair looked a bit like that of Legolas, so we thought that if he’d had a little sister, this might be what she’d had looked like. Or it could just be any young Elvish maiden.

While taking the pictures we discussed elves and wondered how quickly they grow up. How fast do they mature, intellectually and physically? When are they considered being of age?  I like to know such things - even when it is a make believe people in a story….

Sewing Roll

For a while I have seen many Swedish textile crafters, historical costumiers and the like make sewing rolls (or mesma/marsma as thay are often called). Sewing rolls don’t have a historic base in most of Sweden (unlike the housewives of other places), as it seems to have been a Sami thing here, and, as Anna pointed out in a discussion about them, as in so many cases all over the world, the majority of a countries population, thinking themselves very civilized, don’t want much to do with the indigenous people’s traditions. It is however a very clever thing for when you need to bring your sewing kit along when travelling, which is probably why the Sami used it, being nomads. As many people today go away from home more or less frequently, and many sewing people bring their projects with them on vacation, to school, work, the beach, sewing groups etc., it comes in handy. I’ve been meaning to make one myself for years, but somehow I never got round to it, as there have been so many other things to do. The past few weeks however, the making of sewing rolls has really taken off in a sewing group on facebook, and I fell for the pressure and finally made one. 

Neatly rolled up, with braided wool ties keeping it closed.

As I intend it for modern use I could go for whatever design I wanted. I chose to be inspired by 19^th century rural folk textiles from my county Skåne, and the thing turned out to be a nice marriage between a historic item from the far North of Sweden and historic textiles from the far South (which would still considered quite far North by most of the world).

I used heavy wool left over from my folk costume skirt (same as I used in my pincushion), and embroidered it with wool yarns - wool embroidery of high quality is often seen in cushions and covers in this area during the 18th and 19thcenturies. 

 The outside.

 The lining is made from lighter wool, as are two of the pockets and the bound edge.

Proof of a mishap and change of plans: originally I had another embroidery here 

(my initials and the current year), but it had a quite severe, military look about it that I didn't like. 

I unpicked the embroidery and did this instead, when the pocket was already stitched 

firmly in place - thus the now uneven edges. Sigh.

The pockets are all lined with striped cotton, slightly resembling the ones often seen in country women’s and children’s aprons in 19th century Skåne.

The small pocket will be good for holding Nalbinding needles and such.

The metal button is supposed to bring the thought to the silver buckles, buttons, chains, clasps etc. worn with the folk costumes for best. 

 The lid of the pocket closes with a sewn loop.

The bottom pocket is made from the test knitting I made before beginning my folk costume spedetröja a few years ago. It is bound with a strip of silk, as the finest spedetröjor was. I’d been saving the test piece for this purpose, thinking it too pretty to throw away. 

 Knitted pocket bound with silk.

Examples of extant women's clothing and jewellry from my area can be found here.

Scissors, thimble, thread and more.

I’m quite pleased with how the sewing roll turned out – it’s almost a little piece of art in itself, and will look nice in my sewing room, and when I bring it along with me.

Detail of the embroidery on the outside.

I have a new skirt to post about as well, that have been pending for a couple of weeks, but I need some photos first, and in my present state of late pregnancy, I don’t often feel like going through all the hassle of a photo shoot, not even a small one.

Pre-Raphaelite Medieval-ish Dress

Many years ago, at the beginning of my living history days, I made a dress inspired by medieval ones. Well, it was quite a bit inspired by pre-Raphaelite and fantasy takes on the Middle Ages as well – it was made to be used at the premiere of The Return of the King after all.

It is an interesting mix of period construction (wool fabric; more or less straight panels for the front and back with all shaping in the side and back seams; width given by set in gores; hand stitching; hand made eyelets; felled seams) and not so period elements (a combination of cotton and linen thread; embroidery on a dress style that usually had none, with the embroidery design inspired from the margin of a manuscript – and made in linen, and, what irks me most; cross lacing at the back) that reflects the stage I was at then, having gained some knowledge, but still letting myself be way too influenced by make believe. Still, it’s a very pretty dress I think, worthy of a bit of recognition.

Even when the dress was new the sleeves were a bit too tight, making bending the arms uncomfortable. Several years ago I took them of intending to make them wider, but never got round to it. Now, finally, I made the changes by putting in a gusset in each sleeve seam – luckily I had some of the dress fabric left. Thus, this UFO/Make Do and Mend-dress was done in good time for the Fairytale challenge of the Historical Sew Fortnightly. 

The dress is still too small for me (my figure has changed quite a bit since becoming a mother) so I plan to sell the dress to someone who might give it a proper life – there are some very high quality LARPs and LARPers here in Sweden, and this dress might be perfect in a fantasy lady’s wardrobe. 

It is modelled by my cousin M, for whose help I’m very grateful, as I never had decent pictures of the dress before. 

We were both pleased with how her hair came out as well (especially the fact that her fringe did not show at all) – not very medieval to be sure, but good for the “1911-goes-medieval-Sleeping-Beauty”or pre-Raphaelite look I had in mind. 

The Challenge: #6 Fairytale

Fabric: Wool

Pattern: none, draped my own

Year: “1911 goes medieval” 

Notions: Cotton and linen thread

How historically accurate is it? As a medieval-ish dress – not very much as it’s a blend of period and fantasy. As a 1911 try at medieval – too period correct; it would probably have been constructed differently at that time.

Hours to complete: For the changes I made, maybe two or three?

First worn: Since changed - for the pictures

Total cost: none at this time as everything was in my stash

A Minion for Little B

Little B has a great liking for the minions in the ‘Despicable Me’ movies. He’s never seen the movies, as he’s a bit too young, but he’s seen some of the short films and music videos starring the minions. A while back I saw a few examples of amigurumi minions on Ravelry and decided to make him one. I began in November, and finished it this morning, Christmas Eve, the day we celebrate and give presents in Sweden, after sitting up half the night working on it. I have had a few other things that also needed doing, what with us moving in a week and everything….

Anyway, I used one of the free patterns on Ravelry as a starting point, but didn’t like how it turned out, so in the end I improvised a great deal. I had planned to let the minion have two eyes, like this fellow:

Unfortunately I found, at half past one last night, that the grey crochet yarn I thought I had was nowhere to be found. Luckily I did have a small amount of grey embroidery floss, which was only just enough to make a (rather shallow) Cyclops goggle, like what this one has:

Phew. It vexed me a bit that the tiny buttons I had planned to go on the front of the trousers were packed and impossible to get to, but I can stitch them on later. I had also planned to embroider a G on the front, but that too will have to wait - if it ever will happen…. I did have some scraps of white cotton fabric that had not yet been packed though, and I had left my embroidery floss unpacked on purpose. This morning I embroidered an eye, stitched it to the minion, embroidered a smile and then attached the goggle.

Finished. I’m quite happy with the result, despite the few miscalculations, and even better, B is happy with it. Good thing too, as it is the only Christmas present any of us got today: we’ll save the rest of our gifts for when we have moved (not that we ever give much; we’re quite restrained when it comes to that. Better one or two things really appreciated than several that you don’t care that much about, just for the sake of it). We don’t really need more stuff to carry.

Despite us celebrating Christmas amongst boxes and cartons, we are happy. We have each other, we have good food, we’re healthy, we’ll be moving to a new home in little over a week, we’ll be having a new baby next summer. God has blessed us greatly.

I hope you all have a nice Christmas (or just a nice week if you don’t celebrate it), with lots of joy, love and inspiration.

Mystery Project

For a couple of weeks we’ve had snow here (it’s snowing again tonight), and though I know the snow has caused a lot of trouble in the traffic, I’m so pleased. I love the look of snow, and how it adds a little brightness to the dark afternoons and evenings of our northern winters. By four in the afternoon it’s pitch dark here, and where my sister and her family lives, much further north, it hardly gets light at all at this time of year. Hopefully the snow will stay over Christmas. The snow does hinder one to get around with the pram though, so we’ve been home a bit more than usual lately. 

My baby just had his first birthday. How fast this year has passed! It feels like we’ve had him in our family forever. His first teeth finally poked through (so far I’ve not been bitten when nursing…), and he learned to walk for real a week before his birthday. He doesn’t really speak yet, but wants to know what everything is called. I think he’s building up quite a vocabulary for when he will.

I’ve not been idle since last I posted, but I don’t really have anything fun to show for it yet.

I began working on a dress from old curtains in November, but was then interrupted by another, more intriguing, project. My 15 year old sister is going to a Church youth conference after New Years, and one of the dances is themed “Disney”. She asked me for help, and as I was pining away from the lack of fun costumes to make, it really came as a blessing.

I won’t tell what costume I’m making just yet, but will give you a sneak peak. 

 Feel free to guess though ;)

Nalbound Winter Bonnet

Sometimes this blog is quiet for weeks on end, and then there are two posts in as many days….

I generally like having something on my head (which in many living history situations is lucky), but there is one thing I’ve never found neither comfortable nor attractive on me; the common knitted winter cap. I think they mess up the hair something terrible (I have very fine, silky hair, which is especially unmanageable during the winter), and, since I wear my hair up most of the time, it looks plain ridiculous with a modern cap over it. I had planned to make a winter cap of my own for years, with my usual hairstyles taken into consideration, but never got round to it. But now, over the past month or so, I have made one! I finished it last week, it’s been the project I’ve been working on while putting B to bed.

It’s nalbound from the same wool yarn as Tobias’ socks, no idea what the stitch is called. I had an idea to make it in a shape similar to that of a Regency bonnet, as they were made to fit over hair worn in buns, and frame the face nicely. Not sure how well I did on the bonnet shape, but I’m pretty pleased all the same. 

The bonnet has nalbound scallops round the edges, and is further decorated with embroidery in wool yarn, resembling a fantasy version of fir and berries. A little on the Mrs. Santa side perhaps, but I like it.

The bonnet can also be worn with the brim turned back; I’m not altogether certain which look I prefer yet. 

What do you think?

Pillow Cases and Cushion Covers

Two and a half weeks ago we moved to a new city, and though not completely unpacked yet, we’re feeling at home. My fabrics, thread, pins, needles and other equipment are slowly being excavated from the mountain of boxes, so hopefully I’ll be sewing again soon. In the meantime I’m working on a needlebound project that I’ll show you at some future date.

In the month or two before moving Tobias came up with the idea that I shouldn’t start any new projects until after moving, and considering how many unfinished projects I have lying around, I thought it a good idea. It was funny to see how close to finished some of these projects were, I seem to have lost interest (or been distracted by something else) just hours before I had completed projects. Hmm.

One of the projects I now finished was stitching lace to a pillow case sewn years and years ago. I already had one finished, as they were intended to be a pair, but I got fed up with attaching lace, and used the case I’d finished, putting the other one from my mind.

 Now I have two, but as the one that was finished had been bleached with use, I packed it away with the things to be in storage until we move again. Hopefully the new one will be bleached to a similar shade by then.

I had made another cushion cover at the beginning of summer, from scrap pieces of linen, and as I still had some of the linen left, I intended to make more. I admit I did bend the “no new projects” rule with this one. All three cushion covers are made from greyish lavender heavy linen, and all are embroidered using the same shade of floss, but they are all different. Diversity and uniformity in one; that’s what happens when I get bored with making the same thing over and over.

The first one is pieced from smaller scraps, and every piece of the front has been treated differently. One is left plain; another has two rows of hemstitching, and the third small embroidered flowers. 

The second (which did not have to be pieced) has a simple square in cross stitches, with a little detail in the corners.

The third is not pieced either, but unlike the others it opens in front. I covered buttons with the same linen, and embroidered them. 

Not the most interesting of sewing related posts perhaps, but beautifying ones home is important, so some time has to go to that. And now you know I’m still alive :)

From Scrap Pieces of Linen

I have an awful lot of fabric scraps, most of them from past projects. A few days ago I went through the case containing my linen scraps and dug out some herringbone twill. I wanted to put it to good use, and had some vague ideas about making a cloth bag to put our toiletries in during events, and, if I found a piece big enough, another towel. You can never have too many towels when you have a baby (especially a pukey one), and we don’t have enough linen ones to last us through an event.
 

I had enough fabric, and have now finished the bag and the towel. They’re both straightforward enough, the towel being a rectangle of fabric, 34x48 cm, hemmed on three sides, the fourth being a very neat selvage. The warp is running from side to side, rather than up-down, but I should think many simpler towels and washcloths were made from scraps and old worn out clothes, the warp directed every which way gave the best use of the fabric, so I don’t mind.

The bag (21,5x28,5 cm) also has the warp running the wrong way, and is pieced in one place. It closes by a braided linen cord in a casing. The thread in the cord is pulled from the fabric left when cutting the pieces to the bag and towel. None were long enough for the cord, but I managed anyway; I used three threads in every strand, and every time I got close to the end of one thread, I added a new one, braiding with four threads for a little while, and then continued with three, the new one having taken the place of the one that ran out. I waxed the threads before and after braiding, and the cord is now quite strong. It felt good not wasting good thread or yarn on such a common, rather dull thing, but using what would have otherwise been thrown away.

 I found a similar bag in a picture depicting the Biblical story of Joseph beeing sold by his brothers.

 Bible historiale, Royal MS 17 e vii vol 1 c. 1356-1357.

Tobias and I had talked about marking our things in some way, to lessen the risk of loosing them, and making them identifiable if they should get lost. In the past, it was not uncommon for households and/or individuals to have a mark, used as a signature on documents, and to identify property and sometimes animals. These marks often looked a little like runes. I don’t know much about them, so perhaps you should take what I wrote with a pinch of salt, I might have gotten my facts wrong. 

Anyway, we designed a mark for us. It’s just a T and a W on the side (we tried to fit an S in as well, but didn’t manage to make it look good…), but I rather like it. I embroidered it in the corners of the towel and bag with unbleached linen thread.

I think it looks rather nice. Now I need to make a larger bag for diapers…. I think I know in what style I’ll make it :)

Giveaway

Last April I promised to give away my brick stitch embroidery that I would make into a pincushion. It took me ten months to actually start the sewing, but this past Friday I did, and I finished it yesterday.

It’s embroidered in wool on a linen fabric, and the design is a 14^th century German one, the pattern of which can be found on the Medieval Arts and Crafts blog. The mustard fabric is a wool blend with a cotton interlining, decorated with simple embroidery at the seams. The pincushion has a base (8,5x9,5 cm) of cloth covered cardboard to prevent pins and needles to go through. The colours are not “me” as I said before (which is why I’m giving it away in the first place), but I still think it has a certain what’s it.

The pincushion is not medieval. I’ve never seen one in pictures, so I’ve no idea if they even existed, or how they looked if they did (if anyone knows more than me about this, please tell me). It can however give a medievalish flavour to your modern day sewing table, box or basket.

If you would like the chance to receive this, please post a comment. The giveaway is open until midnight Sunday next (19 February), after which I will randomly pick a winner.

Primary Coloured Brick Stitch

Last week I started on a new embroidery. It’s in brick stitch, a technique seen in several 14th century German textiles. I began it mostly to see how it turned out (having bought the loose weave linen used as a base that day), first having some vague ideas to make a purse from it. The colours aren’t really “me” though, so after just a little while, I decided it’ll be a pincushion, to be given away at some future date. Stay tuned for that :)

The yarn is wool, and the pattern is really addictive to embroider. It’s simple, so once you have made a couple of repeats, you don’t need the pattern anymore.

Edited to add that I found the pattern on this excellent blog.

Eyelets Finished

Last night I moved into our apartment. It felt odd… and as always on the first night of me living in a new place, I didn’t sleep very well. Until I have made it my home, I have a sort of uneasiness that is close to fright. New sounds, new smells; all of it makes me a bit skittish, and so I had a night lamp on. It felt a bit silly, but better silly than scared… It felt much better this morning.

This afternoon I finished the eyelets.

There are 38 of them, and as I’ve said before, they’re sewn with silk, which by the way is a delight to work with. I timed it, and every eyelet took two minutes to sew, and then there is time added for cutting threads, threading the needle, etc.

I also made a couple of tests on embroidery, just in case I’ll have time to embelish the dress. This is the one I liked best:

I think it could look pretty, and not too intrusive. The real embroidery would be continuous round the neck and wrists – this was just to see if the colour and thickness of the thread would look nice. What do you think? Opinions are welcome, though I’ll follow my own taste in the end :)

Giveaway Winner

I’m very tired, so this will be a short post. (Some of you might be interested to know that my constant tiredness have been found to be the result of a pretty bad imbalance in my vitamins, which I take supplements for now. Hopefully I’ll be back to normal soon.) It’s also a little bit late (going by Swedish time here), the batteries in my camera died.

Thank you all who commented on my last post and wrote something about yourselves! It was very interesting for me to learn a little about who reads my blog – the internet is usually very anonymous, and you have no idea about who reads, and what they find interesting. Please keep telling me, I really appreciate it!

Now for the giveaway winner: the slip of paper that came up had Kajsa’s name on it. Congratulations :) If you’d be so kind and post a comment with your name and address (which of course I won’t publish), I’ll send it on to you. I hope you’ll like it.

This was fun, I think I’ll host more giveaways in future.

100th Post Giveaway

This is my 100th post. Wow. I’ve been very interested in seeing where you, my dear readers, are all located. I’ve had visitors from the USA, Sweden, Germany, Australia, Canada, Poland, Israel, Egypt, the Netherlands, South Korea, China, Pakistan, Denmark, Finland, Russia, Latvia, France, Kenya and Austria, amongst others.

Some of you are my real life friends, others have become my friends over the internet, and some are complete strangers, but you’re all equally welcome and appreciated. To show my appreciation I will have a giveaway. Today I’ve made a wool embroidery, which will be made into a pincushion similar to the one I made a few weeks ago.

It’s free hand embroidered on black wool, in blue, yellow, olive green, and two shades of red. The embroidered square is 7x7 cm. If you are interested, post a comment (if you’d like to say a few words about yourselves that’d be nice), and I will draw a winner next Sunday.

Actually, the reason I’ve not posted for a while is that I wanted to host a giveaway, but didn’t have time to make something suitable until now. A lot is going on in my life, and the past week I haven’t got any sewing done – however, my corded petti is getting close to finished, so I’ll post about that shortly. Then I have a lot of other things I’m working on or planning – so much I want to do, so little time :)

Pincushion

The other evening I suddenly thought I’d like to try out an embroidery technique, known in Sweden as “Skånskt yllebroderi” (Scanian wool embroidery). It was common in the countryside in the county Skåne during the 18th and 19th centuries for covers and cushions. It’s embroidered free-hand on wool fabric (traditionally recycled from old clothing) with wool yarn.

The fabric is usually dark, and the embroidery is done in bright colours, often illustrating flowers, trees, animals and humans. To save material, the stitches are very short on the wrong side. Every woman had her own style, depending on her skill and artistic eye, so there are a lot of different looks to these works of art. Some are downright ugly in my opinion, but others are very charming. They all have the whole surface covered with different kinds of images, and for covers and cushions made for weddings, they also have the initials of the bride and/or groom, and the year embroidered on them.

My first project was a bit more humble than a cover for a bed or a cushion for the seat of a horse drawn wagon – I used a leftover piece from my folk costume skirt and made a small free-hand embroidery of a flower, and then a frame round it. I thought it looked a bit empty, so I added the “stars” or whatever sprinkled in the background. The flower is tolerably traditional, but I’m not so sure about the stars; I don’t care though, I think it looks pretty.

I decided to re-cover my old pincushion with it, since it was looking rather dismal – I have to do that every few years.

I also used this opportunity to put a piece of cardboard in the bottom, to save my fingers from accidental pricks; should have thought about that some years ago...

I like how it turned out very well indeed. Small, quick projects are gratifying.

So Tired

The last couple of weeks I’ve got increasingly tired, going to bed at unnaturally early hours, and taking naps almost every day – so not like me. I wonder if it’s just the shortening days or something else. Either way it leaves me with a lot less energy and inspiration to work on school or any textile related thing than I’d wish. I can't help it, but I’m feeling a bit listless.

I’ve managed to get a little work done however. I’m working on the 43d row of cording on the petticoat. The group I’m working on now will be as wide as the one at the hem, and then I’ll make groups with fewer cords in them, probably three or four cords/group. It’s very convenient sewing when you can’t seem to work up anything that looks like brainpower to do something more complicated. You just go round and round and round and round….

The Bayeux-inspired embroidery has all that was drawn on it sewn, so now I have to figure out what I want to do on it next. The borders need to be embroidered – the upper one should be simple enough, I’ll just take whatever figures captures my fancy from the original. The lower one is the problem – I could do something similar to the top, but I think I’d prefer to add the events that happened before the major scene. That way I’ll get the whole story, with less work. And then I’ll have to figure out what the text should be, and what language I want it in. I think I’ll stick to Latin as the original, it looks cool. And I think I’ve decided to do more scenes after this one – the question is which ones; the burning bush, perhaps, and then Moses and Aron before Pharao? Decisions, decisions…

And lastly, lo and behold, I have started work on my winter coat again! I haven't done much (almost nothing to tell the truth), but I've got the ball rolling, so it should be easier to just continue. I will post about that separately. Right now there seems to be a good chance I will be very happy with it when finished.