2nd May 2004

Well, the kirtle is basically finished and wearable and has had it's first outing. It's looking much more lived in now. It's pretty grubby, and there are a couple of scorch marks near the hem where hot coals from the fire fell on me. This, by the way, is why I'm adamant all Kentwellies should use pure wool not a wool/synthetic mix: wool singes and goes out when it gets burnt; synthetics bubble and carry on burning. That's bad news.

So, how did it work out? Generally pretty good. It fits well, I'm happy with the overall look, and it's pretty comfortable. I'm going to be writing some thoughts on how things worked, what I would do differently next time, and how I plan to finish this garment off. Some of this will only make sense in conjunction with the pictures, which are up in the gallery.

The Bodice

The bodice, of course, was where the big boning experiment happened. I have mixed feelings about the cord substructure. It was certainly very comfortable (sufficiently so that on one extra cold night I slept in the thing) and it felt comfortably snug and supportive. However, after four days working - bending, lifting and stooping - it's developed a horizontal wrinkle. That isn't neccessarily inauthentic - remarkably similar wrinkles can be seen in The Fruit Seller by Campi, for example - but I don't like it.

Secondly, the issue may be with the nature of the work I do: I'm wearing this for long days, doing hard manual labour, where I'm often bent over scrubbing, chopping or lugging about jugs of water. I doubt the Renn Faire crowd abuse their clothing to quite the same extent!

Thirdly, I've deliberately cut the arm-holes quite snugly. The wrinkling is worse when my arms are by my sides, so I'm wondering if the sides of the bodice are a little too high, and are being pushed down, causing the wrinkling.

So the first plan is to widen the arm-holes slightly. Fortunately this is simple enough. It's just a question of snipping the stitches holding lining and wool to substructure, trimming the blue linen interlining to where I want it, and then sewing the outer layers back down again.

If that doesn't crack it I'll consider replacing a length of cord with a cable-tie, and see if that does the trick.

The Skirt

I'm suprisingly pleased with the skirt. I was worried I wouldn't have enough fabric to make things hang right but that doesn't seem to be a problem. I think the addittion of the gored panels really helped, because the skirt does have a nice flow to it as I move. And yet it's not so full that it gets in fires and is a general nuisance.

I'm also pretty pleased with how piecing the fabric worked out. The odd diagonal seam can be seen in the top left picture in the gallery. I don't think it's particularly obtrusive and, actually, I think the frugal use of fabric it demonstrates adds to the period feel of the garment. So I'm happy with that.

The Sleeves

My main concern at the moment is that the sleeves look rather out of place. They're a very light weight twill weave grey wool, and I love them, but they're simply too posh-looking for this kirtle. I knew that when I put them on, but it was too cold to go with out. So my first priority for the next event is to make myself a new pair of sleeves.

I do have a very small piece of a rather unique fabric. It's stuff made on the manor. That means it's hand-spun by my predecessors in the wool-shed, and woven on the great loom up there. It's lovely stuff, quite soft but rough, and it'll be great knowing, when I wear it, it's been taken from the sheep to the garment exactly as it would have been.

At the moment it's a sheep-cream colour, with the occassional band of sheep-grey where some of that spinning got mixed in. Which is fine, but a bit blah. So the first stage is to dye it. I don't want to use a modern dye on this stuff, of course, so I've ordered some walnut bark from Fibrecrafts. I'm hoping it'll give me a good chocolately brown which will work really well with the yellow of the kirtle, as well as hiding the dirt.

7th May 2004

Dying the fabric

So I spent a few days dying the fabric before I went on holiday. This, in theory, should be a fairly simple process: make a dye bath by soaking then boiling the walnut in water, simmer the wool in the dye bath, rinse and dry. Of course, being me, it was more convoluted than that, and involved covering pretty much the entire kitchen with dark brown liquid. I really should clean the kitchen floor, now.

So the first stage was to soak the walnut. I know from my time on the manor that it walnut releases colour best when it's soaked overnight, so I put a good couple of handfulls of it in some water in a large jam pan, with every intention of leaving it to soak.

After a couple of hours, I noticed that the soaking water was going dark brown. By this point I was bored and fidgety, and wanted to get on with dying something. So I boiled everything up, and got a black-coffee coloured liquid. It's at this point I realised that I didn't really want little bits of walnut all over my fabric, so I should probably have put them in a bag before putting them in the pot. It would have probably been easier if I realised that before the walnut was hot and soggy, but that sort of planning has never been my forte.

So I cut the leg off an old pair of tights and wrapped a sieve in it. Using an old ladle, I scooped water and walnut bits into the sieve. Then I took of the tights-leg, now full of walnut, and tied a knot in it.

I flung by fabric into the dyebath, simmered it a while, then took it out and rinsed it. By the time the water had rinsed out I'd got a colour that could best be described as beige, and a light beige at that. Disheartened, I hung it on the line, shoved the walnut-tights bundle back in the pan, and went to bed.

The next day was a working day. Since work doesn't really understand the needs of reenactors, that meant I had to leave the pan alone. In the hopes of extracting more dye from the walnut, I brought it up to the boil, covered the pan, turned off the heat and left it to soak in the cooling water whilst I did the earning money thing. At lunch, I nipped home and did the same thing, this time replacing the walnut with the cloth.

Another boil in the evening, this time whilst cooking dinner, produced a piece of cloth the colour of cappuccino. Pretty, but not what I had in mind. I left the cloth and the walnut soaking in water overnight

By this stage, it was obvious that the dyebath was lightening. Quite where that dye was going, since it didn't appear to be affecting the cloth, wasn't clear. I decided that, since the walnut was cheap and I had plenty, I'd boil up some more. This time I remembered to put it into a pair of tights before boiling it - a much less splashy experience.

I repeated the soak/boil walnut/simmer fabric cycle a couple more times. This was pretty boring and, as I didn't want to leave the gas oven unattended, meant a long time in the kitchen. I took the laptop down with me and wrote an essay plan sitting on the kitchen floor, whilst watching the walnut simmer. I haven't told my tutors about that particular bit of multitasking!

A couple of cycles later, and my fabric is looking much better. It's a chocolaty colour that is actually remarkably similar to the kirtle lining, and the good news is that the odd black lines are barely noticable. Frustratingly, the dye bath is the darkest it's been, too, and there's nothing left I want to dye. So I've stuck it out in the shed with the aim of bottling it and keeping it. If it doesn't all evaporate before I get round to it, that is. I've given the fabric a good rinse out until the water runs absolutely clear, and hung it on the line to dry it. It's amazing how much it lightens as it drys. So now all I need to do is press it and start on actually making the sleeves.

22nd May 2204

Adjusting the bodice

Adjusting the bodice turned out to be a much simpler matter than expected. I unpicked the seam at the bottom of the armpit, cut a strip half an inch or so deep off the interlining and sewed the wool and linen lining back into place. Voila! No more wrinkling. The whole thing is sitting very much more smoothly and it's more comfortable, too, because it doesn't restrict the movement of my arms so much. So that's a success.