Five Things Makes a Post
Back in my LiveJournal days, we said, “Five things makes a post.” If you didn’t have enough to say on any one topic to make a post, you could roll up five smaller topics and call it macaroni.
(This was in the days before Twitter. Ah, how I miss them.)
So, my five things:
Roisin Kiberd’s article “The Internet of Estranged Families“ is out, and it’s delightful. Not least because she interviewed me for it. Go! Read!
I figured out how to adjust the tension on my serger, which is the missing piece I needed to actually use my serger. Turns out that you need to lift the presser foot before adjusting the tension. WHICH MAKES PERFECT SENSE, YES, OF COURSE, WHY SHOULD A COMPLETELY UNRELATED LEVER CONTROL THE TENSION PLATES AAAAAAUGH. But now my serger is obeying, and I’m serging everything. I may never do a period seam finish again.
Next step: Figuring out how to change the tension so the stitches from the left needle, the ones that create the actual seam, are as tight as sewing-machine stitches would be. Right now I sew with the machine and use the serger to finish the seam, which is one step more than my lazy ass needs to do.
After that: Figuring out how to do precision sewing when the serger is set up to prevent you from having any earthly idea where the needles meet the fabric.
And then: Figuring out how to pin fabric for the serger. Sewing machines pass over pins easily, but sergers have two needles AND A BLADE, which means that for a pin, the serger is like a temple room out of Indiana Jones. And every time the pin loses, the temple-builder has to pay money to fix the swinging blades and restock the poison darts.
I finally got Burda Pattern 7977! After much fussing and dithering and being told by the Internet that it wasn’t in stock at Joann’s, I checked the drawers on a whim, and it was there. I feel oddly accomplished for something that I could have done weeks ago by handing money to Amazon. BUT. It’s done! I have it!
The sleeves are indeed early period-shallow, with only a slight curve instead of the convoluted arches and concavities of modern sleeves. The downside is that the shoulder seam is well off the shoulder. Once I get the rest of the dress to fit I can modify it. I think. Maybe? It’s more complicated than tilting the curve of the armhole to meet the right point on the shoulder, but I’m in denial about that and plan to stay there for a while. For now, I have a pattern to use to get started on period sleeves.
Viking male garb is extremely comfortable, even when you miscalculate the crotch curve of your poofy pants and can’t cross your legs as a result. It turns out that poofy pants create an air pocket around your legs, so you have your own waist-to-knee AC even on hot and sweaty days. And if you make them poofy enough you can add extremely un-period pockets, and no one will ever know.
I updated the lists of female and family names from Haiti, and decided the data on male names was ready for the world. Enjoy!
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Serger love. Pins? You’ll stop pinning eventually. I just pin really far in, if needed, to keep the layers from shifting. I don’t do precision sewing on the serger. For anything that requires precision, I finish the edges first and then use the regular machine. I do serge set-in sleeves, but I set them in the round. I do that anyway because I *feel* like they hang better, but I could be wrong and I have tendency to have strong opinions about the *right* way to do things, based on tradition rather than evidence.
If you’re worried about the sleeve off the shoulder for 7977, maybe try shortening the seam via the middle and widening the neckline, rather than addressing it at the shoulder or the armscye. I don’t know if it will work, but that will save you having to pivot anything. I am pretty sure I did some futzing there in my original fitting as I am relatively small of chest and thick of middle compared whomever they use as a model to draft patterns. I do find the proportions for Burda to be generally more realistic though. I also raised the gores so they started at the waist for me. I’m definitely less statuesque than the Burda models.
Also, Swedish tracing paper is the bomb. I highly recommend it for messing with patterns. I usually get it from amazon or ebay.
Thanks! Recently I discovered freezer paper–sooooo much better than brown paper–but am always on the lookout for something better.
What magic happens to make you need to stop pinning? What superpowers do you develop? Tell me, please! I thirst for these wonders. I spend more time pinning than sewing.
I thought set-in sleeves were always set in the round. Are there patterns that tell you to set them in flat? It sounds like it would be easier to pin (hah!) and sew, but as you said, there’s tradition there, and traditions in textile work usually exist for a reason.
That’s the thing about textile work: It’s been around for 10,000 years of recorded history and an unknown span of time beforehand. It’s OLD. Cloth woven today is essentially identical to cloth woven 10,000 years ago. We can play with fancy weaves and dyestuffs all we want, but it’s all warp and weft, thread up and thread down. Natural-fiber thread spun today is essentially identical to thread spun 10,000 years ago; it’s all the physics of friction intensified by twist, and even 21st-century science hasn’t created directions other than clockwise and counter-clockwise. You can spin identical thread with an automatic machine, with a spinning wheel, or with a rock with string tied around it. And when you combine all of this into a garment, you have only so many options, and you can manipulate the cloth in only so many ways.
Admittedly, we didn’t learn many of those ways for a long time. Cloth was too precious to muck around with. But the late middle ages and early Renaissance saw an explosion of tailoring methods, and by the 1500’s we had done just about everything that can be done. Since then, we’ve just been tinkering. So if tradition says that X way is the best way, there may well be 500+ years of experience behind it.
(Which doesn’t explain why it’s all SO GODDAMNED HARD TO LEARN. WHYYYYY)
If you’re worried about the sleeve off the shoulder for 7977, maybe try shortening the seam via the middle and widening the neckline, rather than addressing it at the shoulder or the armscye.
I’ll remember that! My only reservation is that based on the photo on the package, the sleeve may rely on the drop off the shoulder to get a comfortable angle. Hopefully that’s not the case, because tinkering with the curve of the sleeve head is terrifying.
I also raised the gores so they started at the waist for me. I’m definitely less statuesque than the Burda models.
Plus there’s the modern fondness for dropping the fullness of the skirt below the swell of the hips so the hips appear slimmer. Flattering if you’re shaped like that, but ladies not naturally blessed benefit from poofing the hips out instead to create an hourglass shape.
(That’s what makes Ottoman Turkish garb so fun. The Ottomans wanted ALL THE BEWBS and ACRES OF HIPS. This, I can supply. They also didn’t care for boning, so there were no corsets to contend with, and even their concealing appearing-in-public robes buttoned only as far as the waist, so the skirts had plenty of ventilation and freedom of movement. Plus? They didn’t care what size you were. Levni, the great 17th-century court painter, painted palace beauties who were everywhere from a size 6 to a size 24. They preferred ladies who liked an extra scoop of rice with dinner, but really, whatever you had, they liked. And that’s reflected in how flattering the clothes are.
(The mystery is: In an empire where beauties aspired to have some junk in the trunk, why did they not invent center rear gores? Tight gowns are desperately unflattering to the posteriorly endowed unless they have a little extra room in the back. None of the extant robes have this. Did they not mind the strain? Were women wide-hipped but flat-butted? It’s one of the question marks hanging over this vanished empire.)
TBH, I’m probably not going to use the pattern much past the bottom of the armscye. It would be wonderful if it fit, but it’s guaranteed not to be big enough through the waist, the gores are going to be placed too low, and the skirts are going to be too long. I’m also guessing–behold how much examination of the pattern I’ve done–that it doesn’t add center front or back gores. Fortunately, all of that is easy. It’s just the $%#@ sleeves that I can’t do on my own, because sleeves defy physics.
Most modern “easy” pattern instructions have you set the sleeve into the armscye and then run the seam from wrist to hem. I feel like this gives an awkward little fold under the arm, but most people I know that have learned to sew recently do it this way and look at me like I have three heads when I explain setting in the round. I’m self-taught and used a lot of dusty old thrift store books to learn, so a lot of what I do is fusty traditional stuff (with a mix of stuff I just kind of figured out on my own and is probably not right at all).
I just find that the seams don’t shift as much with the serger. I still pin a lot for the regular machine though. I sometimes even baste.
I did Persian for awhile, after I developed a lanolin allergy. Also our events are hot as heck. I don’t know why there are no rear gores either, except that I find that the whole trapezoid gusset/gore combo seems to be very flattering if you sew bias to straight. I do have junk in the trunk but Persian seems to be roomier than Turkish and the fabrics a lot softer, so perhaps that was the answer.
There are no back gores on the Burda but, as you said, that’s the easy part. I don’t draft at all really, except for strict rectangular, so I have no idea how sleeves is formed. My patterns tend to be frankensteined and then I transfer it all to the Swedish tracing paper if I want to reuse the pattern.
Persian is definitely roomier, but the ideal was the opposite of the Ottoman: a slim, breastless, hipless shape with sloping shoulders. Cannot do. I suppose I could ignore the ideal and make it look like I want it to look, but after learning the layers of Ottoman costume, Persian makes my head hurt. There are how many layers? And they’re all long? Except when they aren’t? Does not compute, reboot and try again.
Haha, yeah. The undercoats tend to be shorter, but the order really doesn’t seem to matter overly much and they could be worn on top. I had a lot of reversible stuff so I could minimize my war wardrobe (I stick to one culture/era for an event). I was fairly breastless (but the meno fairy brought me some so not so much anymore), and was pretty thin at the time, especially by SCA standards (size 8/10). Again, not so much anymore.
I had a terrible time with bodices. It turns out that you really need to have a certain chest: waist ratio to get them to work. I was pretty rectangular and no matter how much drafting and fitting I did, I couldn’t get it to work. So early period/ME, it’s had to be. I tried really hard to do an Italian working class wardrobe, but nope.
Aren’t there some Turkish coats with a waist seam? Or is that all later? I did the big Topkapi exhibit when it was here and drew out a lot of the seam placement. It was all trapezoidal gores, but it seems like I’ve seen some seams in the art (but again, could be later).
Oooh, Topkapi exhibit? Envyyyy. I’ve heard tell of coats with waist seams, but haven’t seen waist seams in any extant pieces. I’m limited to what the English-speaking Internet has to offer, though, and that’s mostly male caftans designed to add bulk.
Post-period stuff is gorgeous. The fancy hanging sleeves in Levni’s paintings, for instance, and all the closely fitted Albanian pieces made of geometrical panels joined with masterworks of gold embroidery. In-period they presumably had some of that detailing, but our main sources are undetailed bazaar paintings, and caftans meant to be seen from a distance. Siiigh.
Let me see if I can find the program book. I can scan some stuff or maybe even convince myself to send it to you (I’ve been trying to part with my SCA books — I’ve done pretty well with organizing my other stuff but books are hard). I know there are women’s caftans in there, but they may be slightly out of period.
I found the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Palace-Gold-Light-Treasures-Istanbul/dp/0967863902
Hey there! I’m a lurker, brought out of the shadows by the tasty bait of sewing. 😀
So, about stopping pinning. That happened about the six-year mark for me, but I don’t sew all the time, either. It’s really a sewing skill thing, not a pin-basting thing at all.
You’ll eventually get to the point where the error introduced by the pins is greater than the error introduced by whatever method you’re using to sew the seams. At that point, you’ll either a) roll with it or b) save your pins for really difficult curves and find a new method.
My best method at the moment is marking the pieces really well and occasionally using a small binder clip if I really must, or pinning well inside the seam allowance (I mean, maybe two or three inches into the body of the fabric) for things like princess seams that will slip if I turn my back on them for half a second.
TL;DR don’t worry and keep going. You’ll get there!
Thanks for the encouragement! What does it take to get to that level of sewing skill? Tinkering on my own has helped me lose my fear of certain things, but it hasn’t done much for my actual abilities. I feel like I’m not improving so much as failing at a higher level.
I’m not at a super high level, but for me at some point things just seemed to click and become more automatic. Just recently I sewed some super stretchy stuff for the first time (for the theatre program) and I was so freaked out before starting, but once I did, it was no big deal because so much is now instinctive. It’s just plain practice, I think. It’s a cliche, but some of my biggest lessons have been due to giant failures. My daughter put in a zipper backwards on her first big project and my response was, “Yup, that’s how you learn not to do that.”
And thank you once again for pointing me to this pattern! Who knew Burda had historically accurate anything, much less a type of pattern that historical pattern companies skipped?