Requiescat in pace

I have sent the first assassin outfit off to its new home.

Some of the decorative features I have documented already but since my last post I still had some trimming to do.

The lace on the back and front lace I sewed on by machine but the sleeve and sleevehole braids were attached by hand.

It was tricky sewing the trim onto the sleeve because the sleeve was already sewn up and attached to the garment. I ended up doing the stitching on the ‘right side’ of the sleeve with my left hand and the stitching on the 'wrong side' with my right hand.  The braid has a seperate cord running along each side and I connected the cords as I attached the braid, one side at a time.

There are many rows of straight string trim on the skirts which were all done by machine with a zigzag stitch. I used an invisible zipper foot to guide the string. The scrolling and other fancy bits had to be sewn by hand.

Once all the trimming was done the outfit went together fairly quickly.

I decided to have the doublet and jerkin do up with ties and the front flap closes with clips, which are less historically appropriate.

The hood is lined, which I have never done before but I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out.  I gave the lining some anchoring stitches to the outer fabric at the peak of the hood to stop the layers separating.

To make the sash I sewed three widths of red cotton together with flat felled seams. I hemmed the long sides (by machine, because I had an attack of sanity). The short edge is finished with satin stitch a bit in from the edge, and I frayed the fabric down to the satin stitch to create the fringe.

I was so excited to finish this. While I was making it there were many moments of panic when I became convinced it wouldn’t fit or would look awful but when I finally put them all together it worked. It was a big job and I think it turned out pretty well.

Assassin’s Creed belongs to Ubisoft.

Blue dress

One of my cousins chose for her present a traditional fantasy style dress. To my shock and delight, I found a pattern that matched exactly the designs she had shown me.

Anastasia medieval dress pattern from Laura Marsh designs.

The pattern went together easily, but I would recommend checking the length first as while the pattern ‘as is’ fitted my cousin it was too short on me, although we both wear the same size. I can’t comment on the instructions because I never look at the things.

I found a lovely thick knit (called scuba knit) for the main fabric but the print was harder to find. I wanted a design that would look not out of place on a faux-medieval dress and I needed a fabric that would go with the blue I already had. The fabric I ended up using has a lovely print but it is printed slightly askew to the weave and the fabric was also a lot thinner than my main fabric. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any other remotely appropriate prints, so I went with the less-than-perfect fabric which does look very nice.  I cut the panel very carefully, not on the fold to better manage the slight skew, and it ended up not causing much of a problem. 

The pattern said to face the neckline, and while I usually eschew facings I thought maybe it would be different for knit fabrics. It wasn’t; the facing didn’t sit right and the lovely thick fabric showed all the stitches needed to hold the facing in place. I expect that will be the last neckline facing I ever do, unless there is a very good reason.When the dress was worn, the centre panel gaped a bit at the neckline. This was fixed by putting a box pleat in the centre of the neckline, which had the happy side effect of forcing the wonky facing to sit right. So in the end, all was well. The lightness of the patterned fabric also proved useful for lining the sleeves, which would have been very heavy if lined with the blue fabric.

I made the each lacing loop separately and hand stitched them into position before sewing the seam to ensure that they stayed in place. They were all placed according to the pattern, but I think if I made this again I would move the back ones upwards a place or two.