Tablet Woven Garters - Finished!

I have been working on my first piece of tablet weaving in the evenings while watching TV with the family. It was probably not the best time to be working on a project that needed a bit of concentration in order to keep the pattern straight. I made more than one mistake along the way. I looked at it as a learning tool... having to turn back the cards and unweave.

The thing I really need to work on is getting my selvages smoother. I am just not sure if I am pulling too tight or not tight enough. It will come with practice I am sure.

The other major lesson I learned was to always allow for more warp then you think you will need for the project. My poor husband got recruited to hold the loose ends of my warp for my last eleven turns as I didn't have enough warp left to tie a knot and still turn the cards.

But, here they are... my first tablet woven item... garters! Now I just need to make stockings to go with them.


For the A&S 50 Challenge these will be one item under my Persona challege (linen garters) and also one item for my skills challenge (tablet weaving).

I have also started researching period German recipes for my third A&S 50 Challenge. I have found many that I can make and feed to my family to test them out. Once I have tested a recipe I will add to a cookbook doc which I will print out at the end of the challenge for display.

A&S 50 Challenge - My Personal Challenge(s)

Ok, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the A&S 50 Challenge and exactly what the challenge meant to me personally.  There are so many options (even within the three major options posted on the site) to choose from.  It seems that the mantra of the people involved in the challenge is, "It is what you make of it."  Which of course means that it is different for everyone and that the challenge is to challenge yourself.

So, all my thinking has got me to this end... I will be doing three sets of challenges!

The first will be to have 50 new things that I have personally made that my persona would have owned and used (under option 3 in the official challenge).  What this means is that the 50 things must have been created by my hand even if my persona, Elsbeth, would not have personally known how to create it herself but still would have owned the item.  This will include individual pieces of clothing, sewing tools, cooking equipment, household items, books, etc.
The second challenge will be 50 new skills that I learn along the way (under option 2).  So, these are not necessarily skills my persona would know how to do but things that I learned here in the mundane world to make her world more real.

Finally, my third challenge will be to research and make 50 new recipes that my persona would have routinely made in her home for her family.  I may stretch this a bit to include baked goods which were not often done by the home cook due to lack of ovens in the home.  Baking was usually done by the town baker.  Still if it was an item that my persona would have purchased to serve at a family meal I will be including it in the challenge.

So, that's it, my personal challenges.  I am so looking forward to getting my list started.  Look for additional pages to this blog to track my progress.

A&S 50 Challenge

While researching different areas related to my persona, Elsbeth, I kept seeing references to an "A&S 50 Challenge".  I wasn't sure what it was all about but after seeing it on many Scadian's sites I decided to look into it further.  I was very excited to learn about the ongoing challenge to create 50 new things by the 50th anniversary of the SCA in 2015.  You can learn more about it on the A&S 50 Challenge website.

There are Three Kinds of Challenges:
The Depth Challenge -
*50 of any one type of thing, in order to push your skills and knowledge to new levels (how broadly you define this is up to you)

The Breadth Challenge -
*do/make/learn 50 new and different things (how new, and how different is up to you/your group), or,

The Persona Challenge - 
*making/learning 50 different things that your persona would know, have, or know how to do

Since I am jumping back in the SCA with both feet and starting at square one with my persona I will be attempting the Persona Challenge for sure.  It should be pretty easy to think up 50 things that are new to me that my 15th/16th century persona would have known how to do.  Some broad categories will include clothing, embroidery, weaving, knitting, hygiene, cooking, etc.

Yeah!  I love a good challenge!

In future, when I complete a project that will be part of the A&S 50 Challenge I will add the tag "50 Challenge" to the post.

More original artwork of aprons

The Fountain of Youth (detail) by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Pyramus and Thisbe by Hans Baldung Grien, 1530.

But the image am so excited about finding is the one below clearly showing smocking at the top of the apron of the women cooking!

Camp scene of Charles V- Zeltlager Kaiser Karls V. vor Lauingen, 1546.

Next Project - Garters

I know I haven't finished the apron yet, but I am waiting on some linen thread to do the hem with so it has been set aside for now.

That allows me the time to play with some new things that came in the mail today from Halcyon Yarn...

A belt shuttle, as the Inkle Loom I got for Christmas did not come with a shuttle, and two dozen tablet weaving cards. 

I also ordered four mini spools of linen warping yarn (the black is on backorder).  This linen yarn is Newport 16/2 Linen in the 300 yard cone.  It is a dry spun yarn that has a nice sheen to it.

With all these new things to play with I started on my next project - garters to hold up my future stockings.  The plan is to use this small project as a learning tool for tablet weaving.  I plan to use my Inkle loom to weave on.  Some people often refer to this as a "TWinkle loom" when tablet weaving is woven on an Inkle loom.  Whatever one calls it, this will be my second weaving project ever and my first tablet weaving... we will see how it goes.

The Apron - Smocking Finished

I finished up the final rows of smocking stitch tonight while watching a movie with the family.  I just love how it came out! 

Smocking done, gathering stitches still in place.

Gathering stitches removed, loosely layed out.

Stretched out to finished width by help of my son.

The Apron - Day 2

Today's goal was to get my apron pleated up and I managed to get it done too!

There are a couple of ways to create pleats in your fabric.  If the seamstress was very accomplished she could simply eyeball the distance between basting stitches... I am not that accomplished.  I need a tool to help me get perfectly even basting stitches.  The two most common options available are iron-on dots that can be found for purchase on-line or using a sheet of plastic canvas (used for 3-D needlepoint projects) to measure out the dots.  Since I happened to have a large sheet of plastic canvas in my stash of craft stuff, that is the option I used.

I aligned the long edge of the plastic canvas sheet with the basting row I put in yesterday (for my straight cutting line).  Using a #2 pencil, I made a dot in every third square across and down for a total of seven rows.  I plan to only smock 6 rows but it helps to have nice straight pleats to work on when smocking so having an extra row is helpful.  When I filled all the squares in the plastic canvas I lifted it and repositioned it further down the length of my apron.  It took four placements to cover the 60 inches of the fabric to be pleated.  Here is what a 9 inch section looks like fully marked...

I used a black quilting thread to make my basting stitches as it is a strong thread that resists breaking when gathered into the pleats and the high contrast in color helps with placing the smocking stitches later on.  Here is that same nine inches after basting...

And finally, here is what the whole 60 inches of fabric looks like after drawing up the basting stitches...

Next step is the make the smocking stitches.