The Emergence of Plan B

So the Wednesday before Midsummer I decided I hated the overdress I was working on. Idk what the problem was, the colour, the fit, the fabric weight. I think I'd either just been staring at it for too long, or I realised that I wasn't going to have enough time to finish it as well as I'd have liked to and didn't want to waste time trying.

I spent Thursday finishing the underdress, including sleeves, handsewn buttonholes on said sleeves and rabbit poo buttons. *Note to self, never ever allow rabbit poo buttons to hang out with each other, especially when you have left a tail on each one for easy attachment...though it looked cool, knotted buttonball of doom (tm) was decidedly frustrating.

This underdress is of course the sort of underdress you can't possibly wear without an overdress so I had to come up with a plan B if I didn't want to feel like all the sewing I had done was going to waste. And so the quickie sideless surcote was born.

I used some very light weight and rather nice I must say "redwood" coloured linen from www.fabric-store.com. Technically it was Lachlahn's Christmas present to be made into something for him but hey he doesn't mind, the extra I bought covers it and it is rather nice I must say. I think this weight would make excellent shirts. The sides and neckline are bound with some scrap cotton linen leftover from a doublet and the hem is bound with a wide band of cotton drill. Everything is machine sewn but hand finished - seams are flat felled and the binding is slip stitched down, except on the hem which is all machine - it was getting rather close to the event. I would like to get some more linen to replace the bottom guard, or at least unpick the visible machine stitching and re-do it by hand.

To take a step back and talk about the pattern...basically I just laid my cotehardie bodice block on the folded fabric, marked out to the hem flaring it a bit and cut it out. I then used the leftover scraps that came from the bodice end of the fabric to make gores, 2 each side. The whole dress only used about 1.5 metres of fabric, as I was able to use the width as my shoulder to floor. Once I had sewn the shoulders and gores together, I threw it on and eyeballed (with help) how wide I wanted my gates of hell. While doing this I accidentally mucked up the neckline, which was solved by a patch conveniently hidden by a bit of a design in chain stitch (which you can kind of see in the pictures if you squint). Unfortunately I had to do this twice - the first time I did it I was all chuffed about having patched it and finished the embroidery only to realise that it was, patch, embroidery and all, on the wrong side. Unpicking embroidery is extremely demoralising.

But it was all done, just in time, threw on some accessories and wore my hot off the sewing machine new outfit to a feast themed "Oh, this old thing" *headdesk* How like me to interpret the theme in a way that means I still get to make new garb :P The linen was lovely and cool in the heat and I very much enjoyed wearing it.

It is nice to have another sideless surcoat as my other one, while lovely, has a considerable train and can be a bit cumbersome. Its also nice to have something so quick and easy to wear with the underdress which had a lot of work go into it until I regain my motivation to finish the "unspeakable green saggy baggy frumpy thing"

On the underdress itself - a few months ago Ysmay de la Mor came over and did a patterning workshop, which I attended. We used the instructions from La Cotte Simple and got some good results. I made mine up using some white linen which at first seemed rather heavy and scratchy but with handling became lovely and soft. It is a four panel dress with four gores that start sort of hip level ish. I used hinge sleeves to get the tightness but am still not quite happy with the way they fit. It laces up the front. The most important thing about this dress (well, I think anyway) is that it is 100% hand sewn, yay. I used backstitch then flat felled the seams using slip stitch. The seams are incredibly strong. I used a facing around the neckline which finished and strengthened the edge and provided support for the eyelets. It laces up with a round fingerloop braid which I wrapped with thread on the end for easy threading.


Finally a shot with Aimee whose cute Italian was also new for this event ^^