New Years Resolutions

Yeah, um, this blog has been relatively dead.

I have no real good excuse. I could pretend that my sewing machine was getting worked on since my last post (gasp, that was on OCTOBER 16th!). Which is a lie. But not a complete lie. It did spend about a week at the sewing machine store for its yearly checkup...still, 1 week of no machine does not pardon me for almost 3 months of no sewing... Sewing again sounds like a good new years resolution, doesn't it?

Something to placate the masses (the masses which probably gave up checking this about 3 months ago...). Here is adam's cloak fabric: He decided on a dark green. Its woefully synthetic velvet, but damn, it feels divine, and the price was right. I'll be couching this bad boy. The black beside it is the silk that will be used in much of the rest of the costume. I need to find a cheaper black to line the velvet with, cuz i can't afford to use my beautiful black silk on the INSIDE of the cloak.


Here's my little confession: This project came to a screeching halt when i realized I had NO idea how to draft a man's doublet/jerkin/jacket/whatever-you-prefer-to-call-it.
I tried. Really I did. I had about 3-4 goes at it. Then I gave up. I tried enlarging and altering a pattern straight out of PoF, but it didn't quite go as planned. For one thing, I accidentally enlarged what was a CHILD's pattern, and then we had to really REALLY enlarge it. Oops.

Then, on top of my inexperience with men's garb, my hubby is an...interesting...shape. He is a little barrel of joy. Which is to say that his shoulders and stomach and hips are all about the same size round. The standard conical kinda pattern drafting did not work for him. And I was having a lot of troubles with arm scythes and collars (his neck is so SHORT--yup, barrel of joy).

Anyway, I've made up my mind to progress as follows:
I'm going to do a big old practice round. This means a new blog, as it will be a completley diff costume. I'm gonna work up a "simple" flemish man's garb, just to get a handle on sewing for a man--general shapes, etc.
The bonus is that he will have a get-up to match my flemish, and that I already have all the fabric I could possibly need for this (big swaths of linen as well as dirty/peasanty colored wools and stuff). So it will be "cheap".

I also think i'm gonna just bite the bullet and buy a commercial pattern to start from. I think it'll be easier to alter this and make it period than to come up with my own pattern from scratch. I've "been there". And I was quite unable to have "done that".

In the meantime, I feel perfectly capable of starting on his green velvet cloak. I have a lot of couching to do. And well, cutting out a circle cloak shouldn't be TOO difficult. Knock on wood.