1180-1210 Crown Tournament Commission - Part 5 - Daniel's Over Tunic

The Cut and Assembly

Unfortunately as time is getting closer to the deadline, I've noticed that I am taking less and less photos of my projects as I am rushing to complete them. This is a habit I'm trying hard to break as it only takes me a few seconds to snap a picture and I really should keep them for the sake of updating this blog. 

Since the last post on the over garments, I have cut, assembled, and stenciled out Daniel's over gown and under gown. The over gown was cut from the same pattern as the under gown, however it was shortened to just below the knee, the sleeves were shortened to just above the elbow, and the sleeves were drafted to be larger in size so that they bag.

The collar opening for it was a keyhole instead of the slit neckline that was more popular on the women's garments. In the future I will narrow up this neckline opening some. I still have a tendency to want to cut the keyhole circle part too large. I think it's because I always manage to forget that the slit part of that style will allow a significantly smaller neck hole to go over the wearer's head. It was then lined and faced in gold silk, the same as Ennelynne's, and hand stitched down so that there is no visible stitching. 

Ennelynne and Daniel came up for a visit last weekend and so I did a lot of preemptive pinning and put Ennelynne to work learning how to hand sew. She did all the finishing work along the bottom hem of Daniel's under gown, and my *wonderful* boyfriend helped by doing the finishing work along the bottom of the over gown. I was forced to make promises that no photographs would reach the public eye in exchange for his assistance. 

Ennelynne, however, made no such concessions ;-) She later reported that hand sewing was indeed less terrible than she originally thought, and actually quite relaxing.

See her smiling? Hand sewing actually isn't the worst thing ever!

Stenciling

The next step to this, once both pieces were assembled in their entirely was to begin the stencil work on them. I had originally planned to specially design stencils for the bottoms of these garments, however time did not permit that and some of the tools I had for stencil cutting performed less than admirably. I opted to use a pre-designed store bought stencil that was in a design that we all liked.

Stencil work on collar finished

The stencilling along the collar took about an hour from start to finish and was accomplished by simply taping off the parts of the stencil that I didn't want showing through. The color in person is much more of a garnet red, and the gold is flecked with pinks and oranges.

This design will later be beaded on all the points and then will be considered finished. A pin of some sort will be worn at the top of the neck opening to keep the V closed. 

I used a different brand of paints than originally purchased for this. When the silk dyes were ordered, I tried the Jacquard Lumiere fabric paints as they had a much better reputation for holding their color when laundered. I'm fairly certain this will still be a "please return to Ella" for laundering piece, but I'm more hopeful that it will survive a trip in my front loader on a delicate setting. 

I then pulled out all the black dyes to pattern the bottom of the under gown, and to add in red to the bottom of this over gown. The process was very repetitive - put down stencil, sponge paint, carefully remove stencil, let paint dry, repeat. I'll spare the details and just toss in a few photographs :)

The bottom of Daniel's under gown

The bottom of Daniel's over gown

Both layers together

I had originally planned for this to be the end of the stenciling on this piece. On second thought, I may go back and add either red or gold stenciling to the sleeves of Daniel's over gown. That decision will be made tonight based on how much extra time I have. 

~E.