Fleece to Frock-Black Welsh Mountain sheep -project Wrap up

The last time I updated this project was during the Pennsic 42 Display post, but I wanted to give my final thoughts on the project. Now that I have started working on the follow up to this project I am finally going to put this project to rest.

I hesitate to call this project a "failure", even though I was not able to achieve my goal of creating a dress from raw fiber.

Many mistakes were made in the execution of this project, but in the long run I cannot consider it a failure because so much was learned in the process.

Here are the obstacles I encountered that caused the project to be abandoned. These lessons were learned the hard way and of course now looking back it seems that I should have known better. At least I know the same mistakes will not be made next time.

1. I really underestimated how much fiber I would need to create the yardage needed to make a dress. When I started this project I was not a weaver and had no idea how to calculate the yardage needed for a warp and weft. I also had no ide how much yarn I could get from a single Black Welsh Sheep's fleece.

2. Fleece quality varies A LOT from sheep to sheep and from flock to flock. Wool from fleeces need to mixed together BEFORE you spin if you want to get a homogeneous yarn. I tried to spin more yarn from a different fleece and the quality was so completely different from the first one.

3. Black Welsh Sheep are really rare and it is super hard to find fleeces for sale. Fiber festivals really favor white sheep fleeces. Most color fleeces I found came from Shetland sheep, or Jacob sheep. I have never seen a Black Welsh Fleece for sale at the festivals I go to and the one Black Welsh breeder I met never sold the fleeces before, they just had them as meat sheep. I need to find a good source of fiber before I try to make another garment from Black Welsh Sheep (and I really do want to make another one).

4. Since this was my first A&S project I was super excited to get started actually making the dress so I started wool prep and spinning before I started the researching textile construction. BIG MISTAKE! I learned way too late that I should be using singles for the warp and weft and the yarn I was spinning was way too thick to be anything but heavy duty outerwear (or a rug). Also in the 14th century combing was much more popular than carding which was the fiber technique I had done. Now that I have several years of A&S projects under my belt I know it is much better to do the bulk of your research before starting construction. There are many important decisions you need to make before starting and often once you start working it is too late to change the way you are working.

When I was done weaving and fulling I had about 4 yards of 18 inch wide fabric which is not nearly enough for the dress I had planned on making. I am not going to lie, I was crushed when I realized the project couldn't continue. It was months before I could even think about what I was going to do with the fiber I had created. I still haven't really finished sewing the hood I made instead. I still need to add the buttons, and I will probably make some kind of pilgrims bag to go along with it.

I displayed the unfinished hood at the Known World A&S Display at Pennsic 45. I spent so much time explaining what went wrong, and what I would do differently that I decided not to display this project anymore. I have started a new dress project (I call it Fleece to Frock II ). This time I am doing the research up front. I have 6 big beautiful Jacob Fleeces washed and ready to be combed. I will be happy when I finally finish up the last bit of the hood and bag and I can put this all behind me and just enjoy the finished product of this very long journey. I am happily looking forward to starting a new project with hopefully a better outcome.

14th century Heraldic Dress

I haven't been very good about posting my projects but I have them all organized and will start putting them up one at a time, no matter if they are finished or not. Here is a list of what I have waiting to be put on this site:
-day board cooler
-fleece to frock
-silk banner painting
-Turkish court garb
-Ottoman embroidery sash
-mudthaw embroidery

Today I am going to show my 14th century heraldic dress. This dress was dreamed up about 5 years ago when I took a fantastic spinning class called "spinning with a purpose". The class was taught at Twist Knitting and Spinning in New Hope PA by Judi Lehrhaupt. It was in that class that I first imagined spinning my own silk embroidery floss. Also in that class she stressed the importance of making a plan for everything you make and keeping the plan, drawings and samples in a 3 ring binder while you were working on it. She of course was referring to spinning projects but I had already started keeping track of how I made my garb and even have a book I keep with directions. This was something I could really use.
I wanted to do a heraldic dress with my Hubby's arms on it. His heraldry is a real pain in the ass (excuse my language) and I had long ago made a heraldic dress with my heraldry which was designed simply because I thought about having to sew it in the future.

 At some point I should put here his technical specifications of his heraldry, but since it is not my thing I will skip it for now.  Here is a picture of Frederick in an old surcoat (that needs updating too) with our very young son and you can kind of see his shield with the heraldry on it.

 

You can clearly see he was not thinking about someone having to sew it when he created it. In any case he really appreciates it when we all go to the field in his colors and I had long ago promised to make us all heraldic garb and silk paint his banner so we could go to the battles with him at Pennsic (silk banner painting is finally in the works).

I decided since this would be mostly a hot weather dress that silk would be the best choice for the dress and I ordered raw silk in green and white and started making drawings and samples of silk embroidery floss. Initially this was going to be a full scale A&S project with documentation and everything. I was even going to hand sew the dress, I figured might as well since I was going to have to do the applique and embroidery by hand. This was in 2009 after I had been laid off from my job and I was working on my tie dye business and I had a great craft studio in my basement. I started sewing the underdress and the silk painting didn't go well before Pennsic (I didn't have the right materials) so I decided to shoot for getting it done by the following year.

Well life had other plans for us and one thing lead to another and the unfinished underdress and uncut raw silk sat in a tote bag until I took it out a few weeks ago.

I decided that before I cut anything else I needed a new body pattern. My measurements have changed quite a bit and I am embarrassed to say that I wasn't making the sleeves on my 14th century dresses with the seams in the back so I needed to start from scratch. Thanks to the help of my medieval mom and sewing muse, Lydia,

we measured me, made a pattern and she showed me how to get a sleeve pattern with the seam in the back. My way of making sleeve patterns just didn't work.
I decided to scrap the idea of making this and A&S projects since I have already started my fleece to frock project( more to come on that later) and since I had already had this sitting in a bag for close to 4 years, I didn't want to wait to do more research before I started sewing. I also scrapped the idea of hand sewing the dress and also scrapped the half sewn underdress since it was from the old pattern and was made out of broadcloth. I ordered some very nice linen to use as the underdress and I will be doing the parti coloring the opposite way on the underdress (green on right white on left, the dress is reversed) just to be cute.

I cut out the pieces for the dress and sewed the white part together completely. I will not do embroidery on that part. I am still not sure where I will applique the green scale(s) of justice. but that doesn't need to be figured out just yet. I will be lacing the dress up from the back and the sleeves will be sewn so no buttons will be used. I am going to applique crenellations like trim around the neck, bottom and center seam of dress. So I cut the white center piece 4 inches wider so I can just turn that into white applique crenellations. Unfortunately after I finished the neckline crenellations I found an awesome tutorial for doing applique which would have made it come out much better. But that is OK. I decided not to make this an A&S dress so it just needs to pass the 10 foot rule for looking good. I just have to keep telling myself this!

Here are the pictures of the green half and white half of dress so far with neck crenellations done. (with bonus pug picture)

front of dress (notice added width for crenellations)

Back of dress

Green front (side and sleeve not sewn in to make embroidery easier)

back of green side with my helper Nala.

 

I know that doing the embroidery would have been easier with the dress pieces not sewn together but I did it this way so that I could line up the scales better and I wanted to have crenellation neckline also done to help with placement.

I started the embroidery on the sleeve. And even though I did sampler I didn't do a sample on green cloth and I am not overly happy with the results. part of the problem is that I am using hand spun silk. This of course adds a coolness factor to the garb along with some more authenticity but despite my mad spinning skills my floss is not uniform at all. I think I have overcome this obstacle somewhat in my embroidery and since the final dress will have a whole lot of scales on it, I am hoping that 10 foot rule really helps me out.

I am doing the main body of the scale in laid and couching stitch and the cross arm and the pans in split stitch. I will get a more close up picture when I am happier with my results ;)
So on and on I need to go with embroidering before I get to the next step. The biggest question I have before me is "should I put a lining in the dress or not". I keep going back and forth. I feel that the dress should be lined since I am embroidering it and it will help give the silk more structure, but I really don't want to add another layer of fabric to a dress that will already have a linen under layer and will be worn at Pennsic. Plus the dress will flow beautifully without a lining at the bottom. I suppose I will just have to wait and see how it looks when finished.
I am by no means and expert when it comes to research on garb and I although I feel I am an advanced sewer, I still have a long way to go on my research knowledge. One thing I have learned and still have a hard time with, is that looking at extant pieces and embroidery and the like, is that things are not as straight and even as we expect our textiles to be. It is hard to get embroidery to look perfect when it is done by hand with hand spun silk. Not everyone had expert skills and materials. We are so used to machine made textiles that things that are handmade and not perfect look "sloppy". I am trying to get over it. I will never get to be an expert if I don't try. We all have to start somewhere so I am glad I took the A&S pressure off this dress. Getting myself back into sewing after years of not making fancy garb was hard enough. More to come as things progress.