Monthly Archives: December 2008

Thanks to Mode Historique for the great tutorial on “Fabulous French Hoods.” Which helped me immensely while constructing my own French Hood.  Personally I think it looks great, and it received a good deal of positive feedback at the Texas Renaissance Festival.

To facilitate more efficiency in my sewing room, I decided to pre-cut several projects.  This is due to the undeniable truth that I, as a seamstress, take longer and make a bigger mess when cutting out a project, than when sewing it.  By cutting out projects during the weekend, it gives me time to clean up after myself, and organize my projects, making for a more efficient use of week day time, when I only have an hour or two, per evening, to work.

Having pre-washed a large quantity of “tissue linen”, a light weight linen cotton blend, I drafted up a quick high necked smock pattern and a “blouse partlet” pattern, which is one of my products on my new website.  Both patterns were cut from the linen, bagged, and labeled. 

In addition to the shirt and partlet, I also removed my old gold damask forepart from it’s underskirt so that it can be trimmed and ornamented.  The forepart will have snaps attached, just like the green and red medallion brocade forepart, so that it can be attached to my brown linen underskirt.  The cotton from the old underskirt has been “harvested” to line the newly decorated forepart and the two pairs of matching sleeves that I also cut out, from the remaining damask.  There will be one set of plain curved sleeves and one set of paned sleeves.  All will be trimmed with some serpentine upholstery gimp that I dyed down for an “antiqued look.”  The pieces, lining, and trim were also bagged and labled.  All of the pre-cut projects were placed in a crate designated “Future Projects.” 

When the pit is re-designed with the new storage system and sewing table, there will be a designated place for the “Current Project” so that I can store the item and pieces of the item, when not being used.  This should eliminate time spent looking for missing components, again helping with time management and organization.

I would have also cut out my new corset and farthingale, but the linen and coutil need to be prewashed.  So that was put on hold for next weekend.