Writing

Of the four “bedrooms” in our house, only one of them (the master bedroom) is being used for its intended function.  The other three are offices for John and myself, and a sewing/guest room.  It is really mostly a sewing room.  The “guest” part is a futon from my grad school days that spends 90% of its time in couch configuration with swaths of cloth draped over it.

It is John’s sewing room.  The sewing machine and tables and thread and accessories and everything are his.  He sews.  I do not.  If pressed, I might be able to manage fixing a button, but that is it.

Occasionally I have been able to wheedle him into making me some piece of SCA garb, but I have not historically had too much success in that area.

This year I have a lot of stuff that I want to have, garb-wise, before Pennsic in August.  This year, John is making me make it.  He reminded me that every so often I had been known to say something along the lines of “one of these days you ought to teach me how to sew”.  (I have to admit that I never really 100% meant that statement.)  And he determined that this year would be the year.

So.  (“sew”.  Ha.  I kill me.)  I ordered a whopping great bunch of linen, and I am making 3 early-period (14th century ish) dresses and two late-period (1500s or so) Dutch/German-style puffy pants for fencing.  I am not even going to try to make a new fencing shirt or doublet, even though I could use both, having but 2 pair of reinforced fencing shirts and a single doublet.  I think that for those I will just suck it up and go to Gipsy Peddler or some other clothing dealer at Pennsic and just buy something.

Anyway.  I am learning how to sew and that has been my afterwork project for the past couple of weeks.  Right now I have one dress finished (though I still need to clean up some of the hems on the inside and iron it) and the pieces for the two others cut out and hemmed.  Maybe I will get them assembled by the end of the weekend.

Yesterday I managed to re-fill a bobbin and then re-thread the sewing machine by myself.

The dresses aren’t so bad.  Pretty simple, pretty much all just straight seams.  I cannot say the same for the pants.  I am not enjoying the pants, and have decided that I hate doing pleats.  I am also concerned about the fit, but John says that I should just trust him, as he has made pants plenty of times before.

I don’t mind doing the dresses.  But I really wish that John would just do the pants for me.