Aurora's Cloak : Finished

Fits perfectly! Just grazes the floor, so the 8" grow stripe leaves plenty of years worth of wear, yet. I tried it hilariously on my husband (comedy) but he declared it VERY comfy and wants his own made of velveteen. That would take... a lot of velveteen.

Anyway, Aurora loves her cloak, says it's very warm. Exactly what I was going for! And I can't say how glad I am that this mink collar finally has a home. It's been kicking around in my sewing box for eight years. GET A LIFE! (It has.)

The purple looks glorious with her Sansa Stark hair.

It Wouldn't Be a Project...

...without cat hair.

Moving Along

So Aurora's cloak is almost done. Obviously as you may have noticed by now, I really do straddle a line between fantasy costuming, and what would be period. For example, I'm pretty religious about using only natural fibers in my garb, with a rare allowance for blends if they're comfortable and good looking. But I'm as willing to use cotton, which is not period, as I am silk, wool and linen, (which would all be perfectly accurate.)

My designs are somewhere between Pre-Raphaelite and accurate, and honestly, I'm okay with that. If I have a desire to do something historically accurate from the ground up, I will, but most of the time I'm satisfied with just looking fantastic. I'll put the work in, it's not that. I'm not one of those people wandering around in an unhemmed poly-cotton t-tunic and jeans, fuck that noise. I'm going to look like I tried, and tried hard, but so long as the SCA doesn't have accuracy restrictions (like one would see in a typical reenactment camp) I'm not going to lash myself to perfection. I would rather see brilliantly executed fantasy than poorly executed period any day of the week.

I've got a massive fabric stash to use up, and use it up I will.

The point of this diatribe is that very obviously this cloak is not period, the velveteen is cotton, the pattern is Kinsale (late 19th century) if it's anything, the stripes are so Rennie, and everything about it just smacks of fantasy. But I'm okay with that- I'm great with that! I think it looks great, and that's what matters to me.

So all that's left to do now is add the mink collar, make the button loop, and sew that and the button on. I'm not 100% pleased with how the grow-stripe got stitched down, it's a little lumpy here and there in the front, but she's six and if she has this cloak on she'll either be a) in the dark, or b) running around (these two things are not mutually exclusive.) So I don't think many, if any, will notice that.

I got all of this done in 4 episodes of Lost. Awesome.

In other news, I've been cannibalizing all of my old underkirtles and overkirtles into over-and-under-kirtles for her. This lucky kid is going to be awash with silks and linens and all kinds of lovely things.

Gertrude

Gertrude. She's my 2003 Janome New Home My Excel 15S. She's named after my great great grandmother on my mother's side who immigrated here from Amsterdam. This is possibly the best machine I've ever, ever used. Okay, I've used one that's better, (thanks, Harvey,) but I think I generally prefer the guttural noises of heavy, greasy metal parts working in sync than the mosquito-like whizzing whir of the newer, fancier machines.

Anyway, I've had this machine for nine years, and I love her. I've sewn every piece of garb, every project, everything on her and nothing has ever gone wrong.

Until a few months ago, when something I did ... did something.

"CLACKBANG!" is never the sound you want to hear your sewing machine make.

Anyway the first thing to go wrong was the feed dog assembly- it stopped working. My husband fixed it, and oh was that ever brave of him. But while fixing that, he managed to completely throw off the timing of the hook and the pickup and oh no. We had to take it in- I wasn't about to make five people's worth of garb entirely by hand. No sir.

$151 later, my machine is running smooth as silk, with umpteen little out of whack tweaks fixed and boy did it set me back, but then I have to think about it like this; would I have paid $17 a year to have my machine in good working order all the time? Well then, there it is. $151 well spent- I guess.