Having made the logical leap that things never match exactly, I've managed to work up this motif from the Mammen dig. It takes rather a bit more card twist than previous work I've done, and with the time I've had to backtrack for having missed a card it's taking rather a long time to work each motif repetition, but I keep reminding myself that I can only do better for working hard on it.

Seem to have had a breakthrough in designing card weaving patterns with spirals. Somehow I'd expected things to line up everywhere, and that's just not the case. The brain weasels are protesting the break in the line that connects the two spirals into an "S", but they'll just have to live with it. The design is offset by one, so that everything will weave evenly--pics when I weave up an example. It's either have it off by one in the very centre of the motif, or have it off by one at every corner, or use an odd number of cards! I'm sure people who actually buy books with designs in would know this already, but I'm really only extrapolating from extant textiles and working it out on squared paper.

I probably ought to start working up my turning diagrams in Excel or another spreadsheet programme so that I can easily see the effects of deleting cards and/or shrink the motif while maintaining aspect ratio. It's just easier for my brain to work from scratch using a pencil.

Have more than 125 cm done today. I'm using the same technique as I used with my red dress lace, but I've put the loose warp ends onto bobbins (my first attempt got horribly tangled because I didn't plan sufficiently), which hang to create the necessary tension in the warp.

We're going to Coronation on Saturday, so I'm going to show the scarletworked shirt in the A&S display (since we had to give the EK A&S competition event a miss). I've put together five pages of documentation, which with illustrations might lengthen to 8 pages. I think I've managed to justify my choices concisely, and I've treated it, as with my previous SCA documentation, like a slightly-less-formal journal article. Am not generally worried about my documentation; I know I can do research.

Am not entirely certain how I'd like to display the shirt. I do have a dressform, but that sounds kind of creepy for a man's garment, plus I don't want to transport it. Shall probably just lay it out on the table.

The lady in charge of the display has encouraged me to include some of my spinning in addition to the shirt, though. Might bring along the teeny thread I made, and maybe one or two balls of yarn, if I can whip up documentation before then.

They still need to be shrunk/fulled/felted in the wash, but they're complete, and comfy. Made them ankle-height, so that they're nice with my ghillies even in summer.

Since taking this photo earlier today I've managed to catch up the lower sock with the upper, so I've both heels done. All that's left are the ankles, and I'll have another finished pair of socks.

Am looking forward to another quick project using up some cut velvet scraps salvaged from some worn out clothing. Any tips on hand sewing with velvet?

thirteen_letter is so lucky that this shirt is too big for me, else I might be tempted to keep it for myself. ;)

Have all the pieces together again, having done them in a second iteration of the insertion stitch seams--though I have yet to do the actual interlacing. Have also done most of the buttonhole stitch outlining of the shirt in general, so there's really very little left to do on this shirt.

I think it looks fantastic.

There may be three separate panels, but I'd like to think this collar looks pretty spiffy.

Am considering redoing it, as I've gathered unevenly (didn't notice until the last 10 cm or so) and the edge left inside is awkward. I do still like how it looks, but I think it could be a bit better.

Still need to embellish the front slit with buttonhole stitch, but that's for another day, when I'm not expecting company. Does the bottom edge of the collar look like it needs edging, too, or is that over the top?

Progress is obvious, at this point, for which I'm grateful.

Have finished and attached the new collar panels to the rest of the collar. They look a little strange up close, but less so from a bit further away. Still berating self for making the original too small. Will get photos of that once I attach the collar to the body. Have also sewn the shoulder seams that weren't in the original, and inserted the neck gussets.

Have mostly been putting together the sleeves, though. As you can see, at right, I've taken liadethornegge's suggestion for hemstitching, though with a variation. The very wrist end of the sleeves had a bit more fabric left over, so I've edged it a little differently to minimise the visual impact by drawing out threads at 3 and 7 threads away from the embroidery, but only hemstitched the outer (doing both looked kind of funny--ought to have drawn two neighbouring threads--learn and live). Like I mentioned earlier, each cuff was too long, but rather than unpick Holbein stitch or cut the embroidery, I've just folded the edges under to keep structural integrity. It's edged in buttonhole stitch.

I'd thought to gather with an obvious thread because the original Pemberton portrait has little speckles where I assume the cuff joins the sleeve. Gathered the ends of the sleeves by stitching to the count of 6 threads, then pulling the fabric to be the same length as the cuffs. Tied off, ironed--and whipstitched the cuff over the gathering thread because it didn't look that much like the original. I think the stitching is just decorative, now, rather than functioning for gathering. Oh, well. Also whipstitched the sleeve to the cuff on the inside, too, as this particular cuff doesn't fold over to hide the "wrong" side, like the cuffs do in the Warwick shirt. My embroidery is too reversible to hide the wrong side.

The underarm seam I'd intended to be interlaced insertion stitch, as I'd heard from the WMS, who have sent me a .pdf of their accession records that is quite descriptive of the shirt in question. Have made the stitches too close together for anything more than single-herringbone stitch to look good, though, which is somewhat awkward and cause for unpicking my attempt at double-herringbone without the interlace, but it's still pretty shiny.

Have sewn the ties on a little prematurely, just to give you an idea what the finished sleeve will look like. I'm rather happy with it, even if I've deviated from my plans by rather a lot at this point. May need to call it something other than Warwick, as I've really not used many of the Warwick techniques for it.

I've finished all of the constituent pieces that go into the shirt. The front/back of the original was all one piece, but in order to use my fabric more efficiently I cut mine slightly differently.

Have tracked down the original at the Warwickshire County Museum, and requested more information than they list on their site. Pending what they tell me, I may not edge the individual pieces before sewing them all together, as "interlaced insertion stitch" does the job of outlining the seams pretty well on their own. Also, need to consider whether thirteenletters would want the bobbin lace of the original, or whether I might finish the front opening differently.

Oh, how spiffy is this? I took liadethornegge's advice, drew the fourth thread out from the embroidery, and hemstitched the edges. The result is, indeed, quite sexy.

As of Sunday, in Knoxville and still rather addled by flu, I was rather afraid of cutting into the linen on which I'd embroidered, for fear of disrupting well over a hundred hours' worth of work. Well, I got over it. It wasn't until I got back to NJ that I really figured out hemstitching, but I have since finished the collar, and it looks absolutely lovely.

Have hit the snag/fuckup for this project, however. In embroidering, either I'd gotten my measurements a little strange, or I'd simply figured someone else would solve the problem, as I seem not to have appropriate sizes for each of the pieces. The collar, e.g., is probably around 10/12 cm too short to go comfortably around his neck, while the cuffs are each about that length too long. (Yeah, I don't know what I was up to.) Am solving the cuffs by just tucking the excess under and not worrying too much about it, but I may have to add length to the collar by some means. Whatever I manage, I'm sure it'll eventually look like a feature. ;)

Back all those months ago when I was doing up scarletwork collar and cuffs, I'd been anticipating that incorporating these reversible pieces into a shirt would be someone else's problem. Silly girl--ought to have known better and thought this through!

Because the design I'd worked with was from an English miniature (done by Holbein, but never mind that) I figured I'd go with the Warwick shirt, since Jane did up such a gorgeous version. She used a folded-over strip to secure the pleats at the collar and cuffs, though, and her collar/cuffs weren't reversible. Dilemma. Never having had to cope with reversible collar and cuffs I can't quite get my head around how best to get them to play nicely with the rest of the shirt.

Am probably going to do as Jane did, and finish each individual constituent piece of the shirt, complete with outlining, then attach them all together with that sexy-looking insertion stitch. I may be able to get away with adding the collar/cuffs with less visual jar that way, but that still leaves the problem of how to gather the collar and cuffs. From quite a bit of squinting at the source miniature, am now thinking Mrs. Pemberton's collar wasn't entirely reversible, while the cuffs seem to have been, so that's most unhelpful to the problem at hand.

Worst case scenario, I think I've left enough space between the motifs to fold over if I have to, but it'll be close at best.

ETA: Lia did something similar to what I'd like to accomplish for the collar of her Sture shirt, but I'd have to get my head around it.

Bother. I may need to make two extra ties, too.

There's finally enough light to shoot, today.

I like the result, definitely.

Having installed an aiglet on the lace today, I've put my finished dress to the test by wearing it about the house. The lacing went much, much more easily with the aiglet, and will take about half the time as sewing the dress up would. The lace and eyelets look handsome together, though the seam no longer extends straight down my front (oh, well) but curves around the breast a bit. The top of the lace doesn't need much in the way of securing, so I've just used a slip stop and tucked in the end; the loop left makes me want to hang something pretty from it, but I think that's the Viking aesthetic coming through.

Tried to get a photo of the finished seam, but it's dark as twilight out (it's lashing down rain) and none of the light in the house (or the flash) is good enough to get good focus...except for maybe the task lights, and they're down in the cellar for the great hole.

Lots of work, hopefully worth it.

Over the past several days, I've turned out about 1.75 m of tubular card woven red cord for a dress lace. I used 12 Z-threaded cards with two opposing strings in each, turned 180º forward each turn, with a warp twined left to right.

I like the result. The cord is has both good tensile strength and a bit of stiffness. The weave is rather elegant, though a bit too tiny to capture with the not-great macro setting on my Kodak. The look is surprisingly modern, nearly like rat-tail cord, but the coefficient of friction in my cord is higher, and it doesn't slip so freakishly easily as rat-tail cord, which I consider definitely to be a feature.

To anchor the bottom of the cord inside the dress, I've used a slip knot that tightens toward the end of the cord to form a stable loop, and passed the working end of the cord through that loop. This created a rather easy way to fix the cord without worrying that a knot would pull through the eyelet and cause social difficulties at awkward moments (because Murphy's an Irishman, and if there's a poster child for sod's law, it's me).

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to lace the dress the whole way up with the new lace, yet, as the knot at the end has been difficult to get through the eyelets; I've already broken one of my lovely bone needles trying to poke the knot through this many holes. Am hoping to drive down to South River* tomorrow to get a metal aiglet that will fit the tip of the cord, so that lacing the dress will not, as I feared last night, take twice as long to lace as it did to sew it shut every time.

Overall appraisal--should be great, with the right technology.

*Grannd Companies is advertising etched silver aiglets for extremely reasonable prices, and they should be less than an hour's drive from here.

Have finished all 71 hand-whipped eyelets, and the dress laces nicely. Not entirely certain how I ended up with 71,* but that's what fit along the opening, and I can't complain too much. During test-lacing there was only a slight bit of gapping between the two bottom-most pairs of eyelets, which may simply have been due to having laced the very bottom backwards; shall see if this corrects itself with truer lacing. Otherwise, devreux' recommendation of cm spacing was spot-on, as the edges butt nicely together. The lacing itself lays a little more regularly than is shown at right; I was dodging cat claws, as I hadn't shoved the excess lacing into my dress to keep it from enticing catly mischief.

...which brings me to several questions.
1. In order to lace myself in comfortably--i.e. thread the lace loosely for 10 holes, then tighten for support--I'm going to need about 180 cm of lace, which is probably around half a metre longer than I really need for the finished lacing. Does everyone else just use a shorter lace, or do you hide the excess somewhere (and how, for bog's sake)?
2. What's the best way to anchor the stationary end of the lace?
3. catlins2busy, you'd mentioned top-down lacing being more useful for those of us who are well-endowed; was this just in the later-period dresses Her Excellency was making?
4. Also, I need to figure out the optimum lace itself. I've done my practice lacing with a bit of scrap cotton 2 mm in diameter and 2 m in length, and while it will stay laced without even knotting the top pair of eyelets together, it does not come undone easily at all. Want to experiment with a lace done up from the same thread with which I whipped the eyelets, and from Crowfoot et al., I've come up with the idea to do a tubular card-woven lace, with 12 cards threaded each with 2 threads and given a 180º turn each iteration. Has anyone experimented with cord-making this way, or does everyone use either finger-looped cords, or boughten string?

*I have a theory that involves the sheer mass of my rather abundant cleavage bending the fabric of space due to gravitational pull, but it remains just a theory.

The fact that I haven't finished the eyelets for my red dress has been preying on my mind, but I wanted to do it correctly, and this meant a little bit of research.

I'd designed the dress to have straight seams, following the c. 1395 Kent funeral brass of Lady Cobham, but the funeral effigy of the Countess of Warwick, dated c. 1370-1375, is a little bit closer to the date from a number of the other elements of the dress, which broadly date from 1325-1365. I'm under the impression that a lot of the mid-14th-century dress interpretations out there are Warwick-based--and I tend to prefer less widely-disseminated interpretations of dress (see my latest 10th-cen West Norse outfit!)--but I have a good photo of the effigy and can't complain too much, I suppose.

Catherine Beauchamp's dress is spiral-laced, with the same number of holes per side (26 visible per, but her arm is in the way of some). The bottom-most and top-most pairs of eyelets are parallel, while the rest of the eyelets are staggered evenly up the front closure. I think I'll be sewing the eyelets in the manner described in Crowfoot et al.'s Textiles and Clothing, offset about a cm apart though I've never been exactingly precise in my other spaced closures.

Any suggestions on how best to know what size to make the eyelets, though?

(Note to self: this is starting to look an awful lot like the dress on the effigy of Philippa of Hainult. Maybe attempt the headdress, too?)

From the warp threads left over after I made my latest card woven band, I started on a pair of socks in yellow and a couple shades of red/orange, as I've mentioned in stickn_with_it. Am doing these in Oslo stitch like a lot of my recent naalbound projects. Having tried the Uppsala heel variant in my last pair of socks, I think I'm going to go back to the York heel. Not using the needle my Dad made me, this time, as the stitches are tiny (deceptively not so in the photo, but they are).

Am debating how high to make these, once I turn the heel and stitch up the ankle. May try knee-high socks like the pair from 12th century Switzerland, even if they need cross-garters to stay up.

Frak. Have sewed the sleeve in, and I need to redo the shoulder as there's...poofing...in odd places. And I mean worse than an early 80s power suit. Frak and double frak. I wish I had someone to help me fit, as I just keep wasting hours on these sleeves. Damn my need to tailor.

Or I could wear it as-is to the next event I attend, as no one will see the shoulders anyway, and fix the shoulders later.

But I'll know they're not right. And they might rub funny. Aaaah, I should do it right.

Do I have time? Possibly. Could I borrow a machine?

But I might give the machine gremlins, and I love the fact that all my garb is hand-sewn. And all I need to do is re-cut the armscye. Which means re-sewing the shoulder seams so they don't come apart.

Aw, frak.

Have finally cut out pieces for a new white underdress from...a rather unidentifiable white fabric. Multiple inconclusive burn tests. I mean, it chars and doesn't melt, so it's something natural, but the smell of the smoke is somewhere not quite like burning hair and not quite like burning grass. Still can't tell, but the weave is pretty, with a tiny bit of shimmer, and it wrinkles like nothing doing.

Have been going on info from Inger-Marie Holm-Olsen's excavations in Vestland (which, if some SCAdian internet sources on Viking textiles are to be believed, is actually in western Norway--hah!) and advice from Þora, though information on Norwegian Viking-Age clothing is...scant, at best. From what I can tell, tailoring at the time was somewhere around my current skill level, with a number of shaped seams and set-in sleeves. Thus, I've essentially done the Skjoldehamn tunic with a little more tailoring. The sleeves will be a little long over the back of my hand so I get some of the appropriate wrinkling seen in contemporary art. Rounded oval neckline as from the Oseberg facings.

The godets are together and installed centre front and back. Shoulder seams and neckline are done. Sleeves with back gussets (like the Moy gown--I've no evidence for gussets over the scapula in Viking textiles, but they help with the shape of sleeve I've made) are sewn together and cuffed. Unfortunately, I've lost a couple hours' worth of work having set in the right sleeve inside-out. Buh. Correcting this morning, so hopefully that's my fuck-up for this project.

Am considering exterior seam-finishing for this project. A number of outer garmets from the Viking Age have seams sewn in contrasting thread, or small braids sewn over the seams. So have have sewn with a thread of nearly the same colour as the fabric, but once I get structural cohesiveness I may try some different seam finishes. Shall still have to do some interior finishing as I worry that this fabric will ravel with too much stress, but it's something to think on.