The weaving and award medallion projects will have to be pushed back one.
Depth challenge item #11 of 50 is a black wool Viking apron-dress, entirely handstitched with handspun thread and a bone needle: white for the running stitch on the seams, yellow for seam finishings and hemming, and blue for sewing and affixing the shoulder straps. It is not quite actually finished — I skimped on seam finishings so I could wear it at Summer’s End; I want to at least fix that, and probably redo the shoulder straps – but it is finished enough that it’s been worn successfully. I used Vigdis’ pattern, and it was reasonably successful, though by either a body type mismatch or a measuring mishap (I measured three times, darnit!) there was SIGNIFICANT excess above the waist. It didn’t come to where I expected it to, it tried to come to above my shoulders!
Took about three weeks: I see I plied up the thread on August 24, and it was a few days before I could actually cut the cloth. (A Thursday afternoon, if I remember correctly.) But it was wearable on September 13.
Notes: The shoulder straps were actually sewn up and sewn on at Summer’s End; the back ends of them need to be repositioned outward. The back center seam may be strained a bit where the gore ends; will have to look into that. I noted a mention on Thora Sharptooth’s page of a seam finish that was sort of ‘run and fell, but only folded over once’ — my mother and I mused over that, and wound tacking down the seam allowance across the seam, then overcasting it. This is a best-guess attempt at the finish and really needs looking into further. (However, I’ll need to spin more yellow thread first, since I’m very nearly out.) And I need to make sure I have scissors with me if I use this seam finish in future: the biggest problem I had was that the seam allowances were not themselves even, so tacking them down couldn’t be.
But when the goal was simply to prove I could handsew a dress?
No complaints!
