My Pink Pet Kirtle

I know, I already posted a tidy list of things to be finished, but since then, I've actually worked on a couple of them! One of these is my Elizabethan Kirtle. It is inauthentic, wrinkly, pink, and has distressingly rebellious shoulder straps, but it's rather my pet project (I designed and drafted it entirely on my own - the dresses that I manage to complete after this process I am inordinately fond of). Above is a picture of my boning channels. I originally machine-stitched the channels, but since I have a thing against most visible machine-sewing, I handstitched over it with pink 'twist', using a stem stitch.

Yesterday, I pinned this kirtle to my dressform. Unfortunately, my dressform is wider and less 'squishable' than me, so the back edges don't meet on it. On me, though, they close entirely, which is what I was aiming for. I haven't got they eyelets put in yet, but I intend to put them in for spiral lacing. I've never tried spiral-lacing on anything, and I figured I might as well try it out on this! Hopefully I'll get them in by the end of the month.

Finished Blackwork Cuff

I've finished one of the cuffs! Actually I finished it a while ago but couldn't upload the pics to my computer. So here they are. Boring, I know...

The ties I wove myself, with help from a lovely tutorial that I found onThe Tudor Costume Site. They're white cotton DMC embroidery twist. You can see my box-pleated cuffs in these pics (I am inordinately proud of that box-pleating). The cuff seems a bit thick *sigh* but I think it'll do.



And now, a positively thrilling picture of the shirt so far. This shows how I'm assembling the sleeves/cuffs. I finished the edge of the sleeve, and finished the cuff entirely, and soon (yup, soon) I'm going to cartridge pleat the sleeve into the cuff. I have never before done cartridge pleating, so I haven't done this yet. Chicken, I know. But I will get it done!! I will.

First attempt at Blackwork...

I've finally attempted blackwork! I've been wanting to make an Elizabethan shirt with blackwork on it for a while. Blackwork just looks so spiffy. So, I found a couple of patterns at the Blackwork Embroidery Archives, and I set to work. The one I ended up using is called Quatrefoil (I think this means something like 'four flowers'). Everybody I asked told me to use the leaf pattern for my collar and cuffs, but I love the sharp look of the quatrefoiles. I just finished the cuff stitching about ten minutes ago, so I had to run stick them in the scanner and post!