Several months ago while my sewing machine was in the shop, I got the wild hair to hand sew a set of bodies based on the extant effigy pair. A friend draped some cotton muslin around me and I used that to sketch out pattern pieces based on the ones in The Tudor Tailor . I used the pieces to cut out some remnant linen and some cotton canvas given to me by the same friend who did the draping. Even though I had canvas at home and had thought of getting linen canvas, I have problems saying no. It raveled if you even looked at it funny, so I added a line of straight stitching along any unbound edges on top of herringbone stitching. Months of stitching 1/4" wide boning channels with linen thread and watching Modern Maker videos on YouTube taught me a lot about hand sewing even though I've been doing it since elementary school. Double lines of stitching might have been overkill, though. The contrasting colour might make any mistakes or sloppiness...
A friend with a late period Italian persona was elevated and so I decided a mere two months beforehand that I was going to knit her replicas of the silk stockings in which Eleonora di Toledo was buried in 1562. I had no real goal in mind other than pretty silk stockings that were reasonably historically accurate. As they’re very well studied, I looked at patterns drafted up by other re-enactors, such as Dame George Anne of Æthelmearc OP, and compared them to high resolution photos of the originals as well as Richard Rutt’s section on them in A History of Hand-knitting . The modern interpretations were accurate for my purposes as I intended to shape them to fit the recipient rather than making carbon copies, although I did mix methods and came up with my own version. Looking at commercial yarns used by those who’ve knitted them before, I went with Ashford Silk 20/2 since it was available at a local yarn shop. The silk was undyed and the recipient’s favourite colours were silver and pur...
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