Green Viking Hood

I made my lovely husband, Mr. Bellamy, a viking hood (kinda.. I cut it, pinned it, then he got excited and decided to hand sew it himself :D). As you might have read from my previous post, I had an army blanket cutting mishap; this is made from the wool scrap. I followed this tutorial here, but had to tweak it slightly since the mister is a larger guy. I just made everything a few inches bigger, and cut down the gussets until Mr. Bellamy was happy with the fit. He hand sewed the wool using a mustard cotton embroidery thread.

This was probably one of the easiest patterns to do. It's seriously only a rectangle, with two square gussets sewn into it.

 

We'll be adding linen trim along the bottom edges, and a possible lining. I also want to embroider a Vegvísir, (nordic compass) on the right hand shoulder; while not period, the vegvisir is a good for the vagabond Mr. Bellamy, and is easily recognizable as norse.

Green wool apron dress

Well, my pattern came in the mail today! I'm pretty excited about it. I looked a long time to find something that was suitable (it seems most patterns have the dress gores going into the armpit instead of the shoulder) - it took me like two days worth of internet scouring! To be honest, I got this idea from looking at Armstreet's "Ingrid the hearth keeper" - you can tell it isn't exactly a period cut, but it can pass the 10 foot rule.

Here's my project supplies! The wool more green in real life, I'm planning on modifying the pattern so that my dress will lace up the side. It's not document able, but it is practical. I also plan on doing applique at the hem line, similar to this.

Since I haven't had my measurments taken since I was married, I'm going to have to wait for Mr. Bellamy to come home and help with that before I get started.

3/26

I got my measurements taken care of =^,^=  the hubby had some apprehension about measuring me, so we ended up going to a tailoring shop down the way. It actually was a man's shop! so they didn't quite know what they were doing with me lol. I told Mr. Bellamy this would be the case, but he didn't believe me. ;p All's well though, he was able to get the idea and we were able to proceed to step two!

My offspring was reluctant to fall asleep tonight, so I had to put him to bed several times and cut out the pattern in spurts. I ended up making a small change to the pattern by not including the V cut out. I might do that to the final dress, but at this time, I'm unsure - mostly because the pattern calls for a lining to help the front panel keep it shape - the wool would make that very bulky. I don't believe that I'd need the lining there anyway, but I want to be on the safe side.

Since my fabric had a prior life as an army blanket, it's of slightly odd dimensions. I'm roughing out placement so avoid fabric waste - when I realized that I have no idea where my pushpins are. :/ I'll have to put this on hold for tonight, and hopefully work on it more tomarrow!


3/30

So. In a series of unfortunate events, I miscut my fabric. T,T I now have source similar fabric - which I might do by finding a white blanket the same weight as mine, and dying it. I've looked at several other army blankets and they don't appear to match in color, or weight :/

and so, the adventure continues. 

We go a viking!

I have been in a funk deciding on my new garb. My husband and I took a long hiatus from eventing, had a baby.. but now that things are settling down, I have to ask myself.. what shall I wear?! After several moves, most of my garb has disappeared. I was extreamly torn between wearing italian cira 1490, and viking.

I have a crazy hard time drafting patterns (I tried making crib sheets for my son's crib.. and it went wrong in every way. My math is quite bad, to say the least), so I was leaning towards italian as there are several patterns that can be modified to be reasonably historic. But then, while thrifiting at St. Vinnies, I stumbled upon a wool army blanket. It doesn't sound that appealing on paper, but it screams, "GARB!!!" For only $18, I got about 2 yards of  100% virgin wool in a reasonably period green.

I originally wanted to make my husband a tunic, but he has insisted that I go ahead make myself something.. the fabric seems like it would lend itself very well to a viking apron dress - and since Egils is only 2 months away. I guess that's what I'll make.

Now.. you might remember. I said I was bad at drafting patterns. Well, I decided to cheat. >.> I find a modern pattern that I can use as the base for my viking dress.