It felt strange to wake up today, in a new year, but any moment I feel at ease is a moment I let happen, and be thankful. So I’m looking at a day of gently encouraging myself to think about my projects with a bit more kindness and appreciate that they are not easy, but they are fun, and I have a really good base to all of them even if progress is stalled on some due to needing a few more supplies (tape casings for the Marie Antoinette hoops for example so I can store them safely between wearing.)

My entire North Rhine wardrobe is getting an overhaul, so they have been pulled apart to have necklines, hems, and linings changed.

This is being remade into this, a bit earlier than my now 1540s wardrobe but this fit and neckline is in range.

I have never gotten a nice photo of this dress sadly- as it is for summer and it’s frankly hot and stuffy and this photo is very distorted by whatever my camera was doing at the time! But I do think the tube sleeve look works. It will require a fair bit of careful planning for the lack of a CF seam in skirt and bodice.

This stained glass portrait may depict something else, and I seem to have dropped the reference. There are big gaps I need to fill in in this timeline to be fair.

If this seems familiar it’s because this figure is from the Quentel Modelbucher but was also copied into other modelbucher in other languages. I have all the copies of her, and other women clearly in dress of Cologne.

These tube sleeves are also worn by children of the same decade.

As I have so little of this red left I’ve tried to overdye fabric to match, but can’t. so I’m making the liste deeper (the wide guarding at the hem- often fur, but in some cases velvet.)

And my original inspiration portraits.

It is hard to tell, but this portrait definitely shows the list is higher than her knee!

And you can use the narrower guarding here to work out how high this liste reaches as well!

This gown is proving to be very hard to sew, I have used a very plush velvet for the guarding. So the entire skirt needs to be basted in parts.

And there is some piecing that may need to be very carefully aligned as well.

I’m also tidying all my accessories, and rebuilding my linen gear. I think I need to adapt my Lengberg chemises a bit as they do a lot already, but I think I can adapt them even further to suit my area.

It just needed to get rescanning and a different PDF reader.

I will webbify it once I have a rest. I may have to go A SWTOR-ing (Along The Mountain Track) tomorrow. Or actually midnight 🙂

I was going to spend some of today transcribing (lists of headwear) or playing SWTOR and I can’t.

My entire life didn’t just pause this year, it went backwards in many ways. And in ways I have not been able to recover from.

It’s possible to be grateful for what I have, while being so aware of how very different it could be. And will be at some stage again.

I’ve not had a great time finishing projects this year. I keep switching to my short and/or easy projects but when I can’t finish them, I wind up in a worse headspace than before.

If I’m struggling to cover the legs of my frog purse, I say to myself, how can I possibly work on my pearlwork? How can I possibly put the lining into my gowns? How can I possibly figure out how to break down my larger projects into smaller when I have utterly failed so much in so many ways?

The secret was to put my jewels back together for my Anne of Cleves. This set has taken me so long to paint (24 hour drying between layers, then they needed baking carefully) and to even find and afford all the parts.

But they are done. 36 in total. I can make two more, and I think I will.

It took two days to wire them, in short bursts. I think what made it truly work is that I was able to wire the flowers first, and each one was a distinct unit through both passes of the wire.

So I’m also now able to look at the rest of the jewelry today (the big daisy pieces, and the rainbow collar.

But I also have been using a few days, with more days in between to be fair, to cut skirts for my Juelich dress and Cranach dress.

And I did use my understanding of the extant garments to pattern a really nice toille for the Cranach and today I made a toille for the sleeves that I really like. The actual painting is frustratingly two shades of oranage! But I’m making it in pink because it does look spiffy in pink.

The two dresses use nearly the same pattern. I used my half circle skirt in gores to cut the front of the Juelich dress, then overlaid the “front” and “back” (they are the same shape) so I could get another 8″ at the side of each waist which then created I think anouther 16-20′ at the hem.

What’s really handy is that you can then pin the bottom layer of pattern and use the upper to fold to match the shape of the pattern that flows over the edge of fabric. And then you can either pare the excess back or extend it based on how much fabric you have left over.

I did mess that up for my first pass, so I got a little extra to cut a new skirt front for the Juelich to be as full as the Cranach (but the direction of the pleats will give it a very different look.

And so I have enough from the original skirt panels to gut the massive sleeves of the Cranach.

I think I did indeed manage to time both pain relief and steroids to prevent a flare, and with minimal side effects. Though yeah.. prednisone makes me a bit.. over active so I wound up not sleeping until about 2am.

But today I have cut the replacement skirt panels for my Julick gown meaning that yes indeed my favourite Cranach frock is back on the cards!

But in pink and black. Yeah. Very excited.

I am still pacing myself. I have to. I need to get my book updated as I update patterns.

Super nifty to find all my Spanish tailoring patterns ready to go.

But I have a little more tidying and record keeping to go.

This year has brought a lot of stress, and with it has been a need to stay not just up to date but be proactive. So this has taken a lot of time and focus.

On top of that is a long trail of undiagnosed and uncontrolled fibromyalgia and after a few years I have started to be very stressed by what normally is my joy. It started with me trying to push through fatigue and making decisions in cutting and sewing that have had to be undone or left me wasting materials, through to now where I am putting off or avoiding working on my projects as I have learned that I will make mistakes.

I have been working on this. I really have. But it’s not a simple situation so the solutions are not simple.

I can’t stay in one position for long so I do indeed switch tasks. But then that doesn’t let me settle in. I don’t really have long enough to transition between skillsets.

And if I move from say tidying files at my PC to a little lightweight hand sewing, to cleaning, by the time I come back to tidying files I may not remember what system I was trying to sort by. I need to rest a lot, so that separates each round even further.

So by now I’m full of doubt.

Doubt also has a habit of seeping out of context and into everything. So yes at this point I’ve started second guessing everything.

Oddly though I’m still somewhat positive. I just wish I had more time in which I could work on every aspect of health I need to.

I can focus on my Cleves frocks as well as research. One of the patterns I am working on is how best to use my Sator Cranach fabric for my Anne of Cleves dress (the Bruyn portrait.) It’s really wide fabric, and I think I can get the three rows of skirt banding cut from a specific section, but I really need to figure out the direction of the weave specific to the portrait.

It’s somewhat easy to find a lot of painting by Cranach to find the prefered direction- very easy. But Bruyn? Much more difficult. Given the painting was missing for about 70 years that’s understandable.

It’s just very difficult to figure out the direction for vertical guards. The hem, fine, but the skirt opening? I’m not sure.

It seems very wasteful to stick to vertical to vertical and horizontal to horizontal. I do at least have the Mary of Hungary dress with the clear direction of the brocade. Only around the neckline, but it does support my theory.

I’m using other extant garments for these, so I need to get all that documentation sorted too. There are some nifty linen and hat items that need to be transferred to my new site and catagorised at that. Posts or pages? Tags or Cats?

So. Rest and recovery and then time to get a copy of the Cranach design put into a digital scale copy of how much fabric I have and then I can figure out where to cut what. I have a gorgeous saree made with metal yarns I am so tempted to overdye black to see what I can make from that. I should be able to just use the Procion, I am not sure if it is rayon or silk. I can do a test with a bit of bleach as silk will disintegrate within minutes.

If it works it may wind up the better choice with the velveteen.

And I need to wash all that fabric. Might start with the velveteen. Then calico. Then wool. I’ll have figured out how much wool I need by then I think.

Yesterday I was able to have my second pulse of Rituximab- it’s getting really difficult finding a vein that has a nice clear 3-4cm straight- and wrote a lot while I was in hospital. A. Lot. A lot a lot.

All about clothing of Cleves.

I had also sorted my pattern book patterns, with my personal ones, to work out the order of my book, and I’m so much happier with how to go about that.

So today I got the rest of my mini patterns in one folder- all garments I have made, some patterns finalised, some rough as heck- and another folder of all my reasearch notes for costumes- including more rough sketch patterns- and finally my pattern book into another folder.

It’s a lot of work but it makes sense now.

My velveteen for my next pink Cleves gown arrived, as did the block of beeswax (yay! I can clean my bee shaped beeswax and keep it as it’s so pretty) and have already repaired our doorstop- a rhino made from heavy corduroy.

SO EXCITED!!!

I’ve been so overwhelmed by my own unfinished projects that it’s taken a fair bit of work to focus. Especially as fibro yesterday took several different approaches to pause it enough to prevent a full week flare. I might have managed it? But I’m about ready to take my glasses off and carefully not prod my eyes.

So I have managed to get both short chemises cut down and partly sewn ready for stitching the collars and waist bands.

I’m using some extant garments and also some images to make these. Where I have deviated from both is a reduction in the material in the back. This is in part due to trying to reduce heat and partly to reduce bulk.

The neckline of my new Cleves wardrobe is a shallow V in the back and wide at the front. So this means the linen undergarments don’t need to be full except where they are exposed. So this is at the front neck and at the wrists.

I’m happy with my reasoning on this, but I really want to actually test drive the idea over the course of an event.

All my linen and support gear is being rebuilt. Again based on a mix of extant garments and imagery, but also text. The documents I have, mostly shared already, tend to be much easier to use to figure out garments made from shell fabrics- wool, silk- with a few garments named after fabric- sarrock- while linen garments are rarely detailed.

This has though been useful in many ways.

But it does mean a bit of guesswork.

So far I’m very sure on a lot, but the “little” chemises could be interpreted in a few ways. “little” is used a lot (“-gin” suffix) but in many ways. Usually for a child, but all over the plac e in garments. And also in jewelry.

So I’m hoping I can pop between my written sources and my own garments, and my pattern book this week when I can.

Resting is frustrating when some parts of me are keen to go, go, go while also being bordeline pain in many others, and then with fatigue as a haze everywhere.