Caught, again.  I have a bad habit of wanting to take on the very complicated project (remember the green pleated kirtle anyone?) without having done enough practicing of prerequisite skills.

I blame skipping a grade in school – it inflated my confidence.

I’ve been working on the shift for the Furleger portrait, and the gathers are being frustrating.  The ‘fitting on myself with no help and no figure dummy’ is being frustrating.  I’ve just figured out that I’ve sewn the front gathered panel an inch to the left on the neck yoke, and it will need to be ripped off and resewn, and all the gathers keep moving about, and, well, it’s going in the corner with the pleated kirtle, to wait for Some Other Mood.

But I have a tremendous case of Finishitis, and I want to get another one of these bags off my wall.



Each one of those bags is an unfinished project.  I’d really like to get the number down, since there are some other unfinished projects that I haven’t admitted to, that aren’t up there yet.

 

Here’s one I just took down.  This is more linen I bought at Gulf Wars, olive this time, but this is the real stuff, handkerchief-weight.  It creases right under my fingernail, and I can pull a thread and get strong lovely gathers.

I think I’m going to make this into a shift undertunic.  It’s really going to be a shift.  I need shifts now, and I need them to be linen, and I need them to be fairly simple or I will go nuts.  So this is going to be a t-tunic shape, with a square neck, just like the white cotton one that I wear now in winter.  But it’s going to pretend to be an undertunic, in that I’m going to let it show with half-sleeves, since it’s colored.  If I let myself machinesew it (which I won’t!) it would be done in a couple hours – why oh why! do I have to aim so high?

I think I can get away with this, because I’m going to make a bathhouse singlet that will possibly show as white at my neckline, and that will perform the ‘shift’ function of being the undermost layer that is necessarily white.  Then I can get away with nice lightweight linen sleeves, in this colored fabric that is not too dark, and not be stuck with too many layers in the heat.

I still need a linen kirtle though.  Or overdress.  Sigh.  The garb construction just never lets up, does it?

I did make myself feel a little better by finally putting away the Pile of Garb and Event Stuff, and all my garb, feastgear, and bedding fits easily in the big wooden trunk.  So there.