My first A&S competition is done!

Well it is all over. I have survived my first A&S competition. While I debated with myself long and hard about if and what I should enter, I did end up submitting five entries. These are all items which I have at least mentioned here in the past. I am proud and a little embarrassed to say that all five entries scored a first place and are now eligible to submit in the Kingdom A&S competition.


The five entries I submitted are as follows:

Blacksmithed Round Jaw Tongs
Division III - Ironworking and Tool making

Late Period Ruff

Division II - Costume: Single Component

Plain White Linen Shirt

Division II - Costume: Single Component

The Suit: A 16th Century Man’s Red & Black Outfit

(Consisted of Leather Doublet And Slops, Black Flat Cap, Leather Belt And Pouch, Red Silk Sleeves, Red Worked Chemise, Leather Cannons and Black Linen Tights)

Division II - Costume 1451-1600

 

Wrapped Buttons

Division II - Costume: Accessories

All in all I am quite pleased with the way things turned out. It was rather a hectic day though. I judged four entries throughout the day while also having all five of my entries judged face to face. Due to the fact that I'm not big on speaking in public, I found the face to face judging very stressful. I found myself feeling very queasy most of the day and I never did fully calm down until I was back at the hotel. I think next year if I submit entries I will not volunteer as a judge. Trying to balance my nerves with the nine items I was either judging or being judged on was very tiring.

My biggest shortcoming was my documentation. I suck at it. I hate it. I consider myself an artist and not a writer. I love to read, love to research, just hate the process of having to be a good research paper author to get a decent score. While that still sticks in my craw, I have already started planning for the pentathlon for next year. Let's just see how well that year of stress goes.

The Ruff is done!

Well I'm pretty sure I won't be doing that again!  I finished the ruff finally.  Normally I don't keep really good track of the time I spend on projects.  I later get asked "how long did that take" and I honestly have no idea.  This time I kept a good log.  I wrote down start and stop times each time I worked on it.  It took 48 hours to hand stitch this period-ish ruff.  The ruff was based on a combination of Janet Arnold Pattersn of Fashion 4 ruff numbers 22 and 23. Here are images of those ruffs.

 

Here are some photos of the completed ruff.  I am actually very pleased with the way it turned out.  It looks as much like the photo of the extant garment as I could have every hoped for.    

He'res a photo of the ruff tied closed.  I used a copper ring I made from some electrical wire to make the ring.  I stitched the ring into the ruff so that it could be tied closed. 

Here are some close ups of the copper ring and the wooden awl I used to make the hole.  I also took some some cotton string and finger loop braded it.  I used the braded string to tie the ruff closed.  I also attached loops of the string to the underside of the ruff (similar to the extant garment) which are to be used to fasten the ruff to the high collard doublet.

Now that it is near three in the AM, I must off to bed...

The ruff has been re-pleated

Well after messing it up last time, I have finished pleating the ruff.  Now I have to sew it onto the neck band.  As it turns out I had 66 feet of material to use in the ruff, but I only needed about 62 feet.  I had to cut off an extra four foot section.  I couldn't get the pleats any tighter.  To fit my neck properly I guess I only need 62 feet of material?  Heh?  Who knew I had a 62 foot neck.

Let the pleating begin

A couple nights ago I spend another four hours working on my ruff. It is coming out rather well I think. Now with all sixty-plus feet are assembled I began working on the pleating. I trimmed the length of the ruff to an even 5 inches. I then took a pencil made for marking material and marked every ¼ inch along the length. That turned out to be over 3,000 tick marks that had to be made. I then proceeded to put a stitch through each tick mark as the first step in the cartridge pleating process. It came out OK. Well, sort of OK. After pleating and then standing in front of the mirror with the ruff for a while I decided that I needed to tighten up the pleats. While attempting to tighten the pleats, I broke the binding thread and it all came apart. Luckily I took a picture of the ruff before that happened. The result looks much like the image from Janet Arnold’s book. I am happy with that, but now I have to pleat the whole thing again. Last night I spent about an hour beginning to pleat it again with a much heavier type of thread.

Ruff - 14 of 14 parts assembled

Well, after a rather sleepless night, while watching Elizabeth R again, I finished joining all fourteen sections of the ruff. The cartridge pleating will begin this week. I’m glad that the 63 feet of ruff is fully assembled, but now as I look at the details of the stitching I’m not all together pleased with the quality of the butted seems. It appears that it should pass the 3 foot rule without any problems, but upon close inspection I don’t feel that the piece will be A&S competition ready. As it turns out the piece is based on an extant garment which falls outside of the time period anyway. Since A&S judging criteria require the piece to be prior to 1600 this will just end up in my wardrobe and not on the judging table. Maybe I’ll make another ruff of an earlier period some day. I really like the look of this style. Too bad, so sad…

The end is in sight

After a productive sewing guild last night I am near done assembling the sections of the ruff. There are 14 sections and so far 13 have been assembled (that’s about 58 feet!). If all goes well I will begin the process of cartridge pleating the ruff sometime next week.

Ruff - 1/2 way done assembling the 63 foot strip

Well, now that I have 14 section done, I started the assembly task. I have 7 section combined for a continuous 32 foot section of linen. So far, it looks ok. Each seam I do I like better. There are a ton of things I would do differently now that I’ve gone through this process once. I’m about 30 hours into it and it looks like about another 15 (or less) to finish it up. That’s a lot better than I expected. I’m a little bummed though. I’ve been researching, or trying to, and I just can’t find any reasonable example of this sort of ruff before 1600. Technically it isn’t period, so I guess this fun project will never see the inside of an A&S faire, unless I’m wearing it as I walk around.

Ruff - 14 of 14 sections done and now assembly

Well, at about 2:30 in the AM, yup, in the AM, I finished the last of the 14 sections which needed to be hemmed. That’s 21 YARDS of hemming done. The estimate of time was, well, way off. I think my progress speeded up the further I went. The rolled edge actually looks better and better as I went along too. Go figure, the more I made the better I got. I guess that’s the whole point of the depth challenge though, right? I started assembling the pieces. That’s tedious. The selvage edge on my linen is rather rough and fringy looking. I have to trim it straight and then press it nice and flat. I’m trying to but the edges together by only catching about 2 threads of the selvage edge. I’d like the joint to be as clean as possible. This will likely be the most difficult portion of the assembly. Yup, I anticipate that this will be even tougher than the 500+ cartridge pleats required.

Ruff - 13 out of 14 and almost done hemming!

Spent another 3.5 hours hemming last night.  I think I'm getting better and better at this, go figure!  I now only have one section left to hem and then I can begin the long fun process of joing the sections together.  I think I currently have something like 25 hours into the project and 19.5 yards of hemmed ruff.  I've taken to watching Elizabeth R, for inspiration while I'm sewing.  Well, partly for inspiration, and partly because our cable went out during a storm and I had to watch a DVD if I wanted to sew in front of the TV.  That is my favorite place to work on hand stitching projects.

Ruff - 11 out of 14 sections and couting...

Well, this past weekend was a somewhat productive holiday weekend. After spending some good quality time with the kids each day I was able to sit and watch movies while hand sewing for about 4 hours a night. Nothing dramatic, but I now have 11 of the 14 sections hemmed. I hope to start connecting the sections by the end of this week and cartridge pleating by within 2 weeks! I've only done a few small samples of the joinery as proof of concept, but butting selvage edges up is rather tough. To get a nice clean, flat lightweight seem on the modern linen I'm using is harder than I thought. The period images obviously have cleaner, tighter selvedge edges than the linen I have.

Ruff - 6 of 14 sections complete

While reading through Janet Arnold’s book I fell upon a small print of a tailor at work. I don’t have the book here, so I apologize for a lack of details. The image portrayed a tailor at work sitting cross legged upon a small stool by the window. Apparently that was the tradition. Tailors were known for sitting cross legged while working. Sitting by the window makes sense as there was better light there. Anyway, I gave it a try last night. Usually I sit on an upright chair. My work is on my lap, the TV remote on one side, a vessel with the day’s beverage of choice on the other. Last night I tried sitting on a small stool on the floor. I placed my work on my knees and stitched that way for a while. Strangely enough I found that I stitched much faster. So much faster that I actually finished TWO sections of the ruff last night. Stitching progress was about double. I believe I have about 27 foot of hemming done thus far. I spent some time cutting out the remaining sections and ironing, but the actual sewing seems to go much faster that way. Fun experiment! It was a little tough on the back, but I believe I’ll give it a go again. Maybe those dudes actually knew what they were doing? Ya think?

Ruff - 4 of 14 and counting

After spending a couple hours working Easter dresses for my girls I decided to take a break and hand sew. How fun! Finished another 54 in section of the ruff which brings the total to 4 of 14 done. That’s about 18 foot of hemming done.

Ruff hem is 3/14ths complete

Well, the ridiculous ruff is coming along slow and steady, but faster than expected. I've now gotten a rhythm down and seem to be able to hem about 25~27 inches per hour. That sounds slow, but have you ever tried doing a 1/16th in hem with stitches that small? Well, I was able to produce another 88 inches of hem last night which brings me up to 159 inches of hem done. Ultimately I will be joining 14 sections together. They will be combined by butting the selvedge edges together. I have completed 3 of the 14 sections. I've leaving the butting together for last so that I don't have to sit and work on a hem while dealing with 60+ foot of material on my lap.

The ruff has begun

After about 6 differant attempts at a rolled hem I figured out a way that at least appears satisfactory.  Its rather tough to get a nice flat rolled hem which is only 1/16th of an inch wide.  At sewing guild last night I was able to get 72 inches done of the hem.  At the current rate I'm going it should take somewhere between 37 and 40 hours just to do the hem.

New project beginning tonight

Well, I have officially decided to start a new project tonight. You must realize that I have a ton of stuff already in the works, but I’d like to start just one more thing. I attend a sewing guild at a friend’s house once every other week. I need to cut some material tonight and begin something so that I have a project that I can easily pack and bring along. I like to do hand sewing when I’m packing to bring somewhere. Lugging sewing machines around is just not fun.

I’ve been thinking about making a ruff for a long time. I’ve also been thinking and (as of yet have not decided) to enter something into an A&S competition. I thought that someday I might enter something, so why not start thinking of a slightly more period piece now. I found 2 different ruffs in the Janet Arnold book (Patterns of Fashion 4).  

I think I’m going to make something of a combination of number 22 and number 23 from her book. One ruff is made with the selvage edge on running along the outside, the other butts the selvages together and does a 1/16th inch rolled edge. Since the ruff requires 20+ yards of material, buying 10 yards of material just to use the selvage just doesn’t seem practical. Also the selvage edge on most linen these days isn’t quite so tight and pretty as it would have been back in the day. I plan on making the rolled edge using 42 inch wide light weight linen. I’ll likely either use silk or linen thread to make the hem. I’ll run some samples tonight and see which looks better. That means I’ll have to butt 18 sections together and roll the edge on about 63 feet of material. I imagine this will be quite a long project. I plan on keeping a log of the time just to see how insane I really am. I am predicting that it will take about 60 hours to roll the edges and another 20 to finish construction. I’m guessing 80 hours of hand stitching overall. Let’s see how close I come. The book indicated that the original ruff had 570 cartridge pleats into a 16 inch neckband. Sounds like a decent challenge for a FIRST ruff attempt. I spent a couple hundred hours on my first hand stitched outfit, so this should be a nice break.