maciejowski dress diary

Shift-y Notes Hi! Well, the shift (also known as chemise or smock) is nearly finished - I've got to decide on arm length, pin and sew up the hem, bind the neckline and I'm done. Having flu has VERY little to recommend it but at least I could keep sewing most of the time. A little more about the shift? Okay. It is based on the pattern described by in her 'period t-tunic' pages, with a big dose of help from who describes making a shorter but extant tunic. I played around with the dimensions given my own size and the fabric I had - 100% linen with a thread count of 19 per cm - and came up with a very comfy long sleeved tunic which has front back and side gores. It is extremely full and pretty (if I say so myself). If I have time I will scan in the plan that I drew up - let's just say that graph paper is very useful.

The seams are all handsewn with Gutermann silk thread - pleasant to sew with and more documentable than polyester. Next time I hope to find linen thread which I can dye but this silk was in my kit already. I used the 'seam and fell' type of seam - basically the garment is sewn first on the outside using a tiny overstitch which flattens out. Inside, the seam allowances are trimmed unequally, so that the large side can be folded over and stitched down. Again, I tried to minimise the stitching visible from the right side. The result is very pleasing and strong - no worries about fraying - but is quite time-consuming. The most difficult part was manipulating the fell part of the seam around the under-arm gores. This can be seen in the pictures in the 'Mac construction images' page.

19 May 2004 I've uploaded some images of the shift construction. I found the hem was a bit odd, with gores sticking down below the straight sections and it was waaaaay too long. I decided on a length and then just drew a straight line along. I've pinned up the hem and am using a very small hem stitch to catch it up - so far it's looking good. Hopefully I've worked out why the hem was strange before and have remedied the layout of the cote. This will be cut in a linen-cotton blend (saving a bit of money unfortunately) although I've got some 100% wool gabardine twill to make the real thing out of later this year.

1 June 2004 Okay so it's been a while since I wrote anything here, but I was busy finishing off the alterations to my first project so I had /something/ to wear at the Traquair Medieval Fayre on the 30 May. You can see me looking very comfortable having my photo taken on the 'My first project' page. I also added information on how to make a very quick veil and wimple - I found lots of other people had information on veils, but I needed something like "Veils and Wimples for Dummies". Anyhow, that's not the subject of this page, so back to the topic! I worked out why the shift hem was all skew-whiff - This is very important and although I thought I had the construction thing sorted, but they are not working: the gores of the green dress are about 10cm shorter than the 'body' sections so I don't know anything! Stick to the pages of people that know stuff, like Maggie or Kass.

CUT YOUR COTE... 1 June 2004 The green cote is going well apart from having cut the gores about 6cm too short: I thought it was how I could avoid the weird hem I got on the shift but nope, I just have to cut inserts for the gores to make them long enough because this gown has to be long enough to pouch over the belt. Oy! More in the next few days.

1 July 2004 The green cote persists... The sides are all done, the gores are all in, now for the flat-felling. This is going to take a while because of other work commitments but I hope to get the sleeves done before August. The linen-cotton blend is quite good to work on but not as nice as pure linen in terms of holding a crease (YES, there are times that is a good thing). Note to self: recant on the 'never' sewing long seams by machine... On the plus side, it does look /really/ nice and is scarily big: it better drape right is all I can say.

8 September 2004 I do hereby promise to finish this @#&$£! gown before the Second Coming! I'm going to have it next to me in the evenings so that spare moments can be used to finish the long seams and I'll do a pattern for the sleeves next week, once I've shortened the sleeves of the shift. Honest.