Buttons!

The watchcoat that I started last year is finally finished. It was mostly done for last Festival, but didn't have any front fastening so I was just wearing it with a belt. It was still tremendously warm and useful for throwing over tights and shirt early in the morning.

I've been doing the buttonholes slowly throughout last year. I'd been avoiding making the buttons until I found a source of small wooden discs the size I wanted. Turns out that making covered buttons is not as tricksy as it seems and has provided me with something to do while home with the flu for most of this week. The end result is, I now have a watchcoat complete with buttons and buttonholes.

The buttons are made from wooden discs (about the size of a 10 cent coin) covered in the same fabric as the coat. Because the fabric is wool and rather thick the shank of the buttons is fairly wide, but it doesn't seem to affect how the buttons do up or sit when done up.

The button holes were hand done (in button hole stitch of course) using a matching wool thread.

Only remaining thing to do is decide if I want to put a stay tape in at the back or just let it be belted in.

I plan to make another watch coat in the future, but probably not before Festival. I have promised to help my fabulous stunt double make one before Festival so she does not freeze.

We're off to Woodstock: When banners go wrong

After attempting to deal with the dye bleed (spot clean, re-gutta, re-dye) I then got dye bleeds in different places so decided to just live with it.

The Final Frontier for the banner project was steam fixing the dye. I'd bought steam fix dyes on the advice that they produce the nicest colours without loosing the suppleness of the silk. The instructions were to roll the silk up in brown paper, then coil and place in a steamer (standard vegie steamer in my case, which I was assured works fine). The big warning was "Don't let the silk get wet or it will end in tears".

So after a long quest for brown paper (harder than you might think - I eventually found some rolls at a Newsagent for "covering school books"), I was ready. I rolled my silk up in the brown paper (I had skinny rolls so had to use three long strips that overlapped), coiled it up in the steamer and put it on to steam.

At this point it would really have been a good idea to:
a) read the instructions on the bottle of dye a bit more carefully
b) not attempt to do A&S projects while having the flu (impairs judgement no end and my brain had gone slightly squishy after running around town looking for brown paper, but at times like this you never remember that perhaps you should not be doing anything that needs good mental acuity)

So the instructions on the bottle were "after painting onto silk, let dry for 6 hours then steam for 1-3 hours". I mis-read and steamed for 6 hours.

Remember the warning about don't let the silk get wet while steaming? I'd been very careful about making sure the steamer basket didn't touch the water in the base, but 6 hours in a steamer produces a lot of condensation and the rolled up brown paper silk parcel was a tight fit.

So, it got wet and the end result was a banner that would be perfect if we we're off to a Woodstock re-creation society, but not quite the look I was going for.

The reason why the dye must not get wet during the steaming is that steam fix dye, once fixed, is fixed rather permanently. The instructions said to wash in cold water to rinse out excess dye, which I did. I then gave it a soak in "run away" to see if that would possibly remove the dye and leave the gutta. That dye is pretty firmly set. The photo above is after all the soaking.

It did not end in tears, however. Mr B had done a little banner down the narrow end of the banner in the spare silk and that end didn't get as wet so it only had a few little splotches. It looks nice and the colours came out really nicely.
So we'll chalk this one up to experience and go back to the drawing board and start again and get a larger steamer this time and read the instructions properly.

Silk banner project

I've loved the look of the various painted silk banners around Lochac, particularly the heraldic standards. They look very elegant fluttering in the breeze at tournaments. Silk painting is uncharted territory for me, but armed with good advice from those who have done these before, I've given it a go (after much procrastination and "project starting" avoidance)

Phase 1: Designing the standard

This was simple until I realised that the standard was going to be about 0.6m x 2.5m. The phrase "now just trace your design onto the silk" became a bit more of a challenge. Fortunately Mr B has access to printers at work that will print A0 sized paper (bloody huge). He printed the basic template so I could fill in the design, which he ended up doing most of the drawing on as my powers of geometry had failed me. The design is simple in that it only has my device elements as I don't have a badge or any other affiliations. The motto was also a bit tricky and involved a web search for latin translations. I went with "Semper Eruditio", which translates as "Always Learning". I figured it would be apt for the first banner attempt.

Here is the completed design on paper.

Phase 2: Transferring the design to the silk

The silk I've got is 8 mompe twill. Still quite light, but with a bit more of a sheen than the regular stuff. Good thing is you can definitely see through it for transferring designs. Mr B and I discussed how to do this and ended up with taping the paper design to the lounge room floor and then taping the silk over the top, using the tape to tension it out. The other option was stretch the silk out on the frame first then drop it onto the pattern, which due to the style of frame was not going to work unless we hacksawed bits off the frame. The taping on the floor method worked fine. I used a 2B pencil after discovering the patterning pen bled a bit too much.

Silk taped over the paper design.

Phase 3: Stretching the silk on the frame

This was the bit I was most nervous about and it turned out to be the most straight forward. The frame is made from Dexian angle (stuff used for shelving), kindly donated by my Dad. The stretching is done with oodles of rubber bands and safety pins. Once the corners were done, the rest were simple.

Silk stretched on frame.

Phase 4: Painting the gutta resist

This was bloody tricky. I don't have either a steady hand or great eye for detail so that probably didn't help. I had bought a tube of gutta and neglected to realise that you're mean to get a metal nib to attached to the end for fine lines. I figured I'd be right as I wanted fairly thick lines. Trying to draw a straight line while leaning out over stretched silk which does a mini trampoline affect under the bottle was an interesting experience. All I can say is that from 10 yards away the lines don't look as wobbly. Just don't look up close. I also got really sore from kneeling over the design. We decided half way through to bring the frame inside as it started to spit with rain and the back veranda isn't that waterproof.

Gutta mostly done (except for the motto).

This shows where I had a bit of a wobble too far with the gutta on one of the stars and needed to do some frantic blotting.

Phase 5: Painting the dye

I'd decided to go with steam set dyes on the advice of Hunydd as they come out nice and bright and don't make the fabric go stiff. I also received sound advice on just dotting the dye on and letting it spread up to the edges. Good advice. This stuff really does spread over a wide area quickly. Most of it went well, except for the middle purple segment where the dye made it past the resist.

Dye painting in progress. Found lying down much easier to keep a steady hand.

Dye completed.

Dye bleed on middle segment. Not sure what to do about this. The blotting with water just seemed to make it worse and I was using the cotton pads on each side method. Any suggestions on fixing this are welcome.

So that's the progress to date. Phase 6 will be getting it off the frame and attaching the silk fringe and the pole casing for the hoist. Then I'll start on one for Mr B.

Blayney's Shade Pavilion

When Blayney came back from his last trip to the USA, he was impressed with the simple and effective "BC" shade tents that are common in over there at SCA events. We'd also been having a few discussions about having some more period looking shade at tournaments and wanted something large enough to accommodate us and a few friends. Thus was born a cunning plan to make a "BC" tent. The BC apparently stands for "Battle Cruiser" and is one of those things that made it into the SCA lexicon in the states ages ago and has stuck.

Dragonwing (USA company) make and sell heaps of these things amongst other pavilions and also are kind enough to have patterns and instructions up on their website.

Originally the plan was to have the pavilion ready for 12th Night so we could enjoy the funky new event format in style. Mr B managed to get it finished in just under 3 weeks, however we had an unexpected hitch when the 12th Night stewards announced that the site was limited in the amount of pegged pavilions that could be erected and they had already reached that limit. So it looks like the new shade pav will stay home.

Still, it looked impressive enough in our backyard so I'm putting up a few home happy snaps of the pavilion here to share. I must admit up front that I had nothing to do with the design or construction of the pav. Blayney did nearly all of the work, with Bleddyn doing some work on the poles.

The pavilion is made from cotton twill. It isn't waterproofed. Ideally we were after a poly/cotton blend, but this was what we could lay our hands on in a relatively short time frame for reasonable cost. Blayney made the poles, ropes and pegs as well. The poles are octagonal timber and slot together (3 pieces for the centre poles, 2 pieces for the side poles). It is about 20' x 15'. We'd wanted to make a 30' one, but couldn't get enough fabric in the colours we wanted. We're also going to make some floor coverings and other bits and pieces to make it comfy.

On the whole, I think it turned out great and I look forward to getting to use it at an event at some point.