Simple Crafty Life

Men’s to Boy’s

Okay, you may not be old enough to remember the band “Boyz II Men” and thus get my woeful pun, but it’s too bad! I went there anyway!

This is the story of a Men’s collared shirt that found new life as a Boy’s collared shirt, just in time for my son’s Year 6 Farewell dinner.

We start our disassembly here, with this size 41 shirt.

A rotary cutter makes short work of separating the sleeves, collar, cuffs and yoke from the main body of the shirt.

By laying the side seams together and creating a fold at the centre back, we see it’s possible to cunningly cut a size 9 shirt from the main body.

Yes, even if it means piecing together the front facing!

Each sleeve yields up one back yoke, and one mini-sleeve each.

The offcuts yield enough fabric to make a short section of bias binding, or a pocket (or two).

And of course there are always scraps to audition button holes!

We can re-use all the buttons and have enough for two short sleeved shirts.

This shirt was so much fun to sew. I loved every moment of it.

Partly because the fabric is sleek, cool and a dream to touch (some kind of smoothed shirting cotton) and comes from a professional quality shirt (Van Heusen).

But mostly because I tailored the heck out of this shirt.

The pattern is the Thomas Shirt by Felicity Sewing Patterns: the method of construction is professional and the instructions are comprehensive. I was able to sew a completely seamless bag yoke! 🌟

I made a couple of alterations to the shirt, mainly to avoid using an overlocker (serger). I much prefer to see clean seam finishes in a garment!

Photo showing a flat-fell seam and a tiny curved shirt hem.

I added extra seam allowance to the sleeve and side seams so I could flat fell the seams (like they do on professional shirts).

Check out that teeny tiny shirt hem!

I used a light-weight fabric instead of fusible interfacing inside the collar and to line the facings.

This meant I could hide all the raw edges (by seaming and then enclosing the edge) which looks fantastic.

Yes, this is the inside of the shirt. Pretty slick, huh?

I set the rounded sleeve cap into the complete armhole (classic set-in sleeve technique) because the sleeve cap was pretty curved and needed a lot of easing.

I wasn’t convinced I could flat-fell the armhole seams so I used bias binding (cut from leftover fabric) to do a fake flat fell / bound edge hybrid.

The bias binding is a little too wide and looks a little clumsy, but it’s close enough!

Seriously stylish.

William chose the contrast button holes, and I used the same thread to attach the buttons, too, in a cross style.

That last buttonhole, turned horizontal? That’s to help the buttons stay closed if you tuck your shirt.

At the end of the day, I can’t stop running my hands over the inside of this shirt. I’m really proud of this make.

[Inside the shirt] Can you spot the join in the facing?

Remodelling an unfortunate sewing project

I’ve recently taken out my sewing machine, dusted it off, and tried out some new patterns by indie designers. I love the print-at-home phenomenon!

In the last two months I’ve sampled:

the Plantain tee (free), by Deer & Doe,
the Datura top, also by Deer & Doe,
the Alice top, by Tessuti,
the Thomas shirt, by Felicity Sewing Patterns, and
the Airelle blouse (again, by Deer & Doe).

It turns out that I’ve been pinning most of these patterns on Pinterest since forever!

Let’s talk today about the Alice top, which turned out not to suit me at all, and what I did to recover this project.

What I was hoping for

I wanted a way to use up this Revelry “Snap” voile (by Cloud 9) that I bought on impulse at a Spotlight store (back when driving over an hour to a fabric shop and browsing in person was actually a thing).

I hoped that the voile would work out because this review for the Alice top came up trumps (also a very amusing read). After reading about the yoke stretching out, I figured using a more stable linen with a contrast yoke would be a good idea, so I decided to try this alteration of the pattern.

Everything I have read says that voile has “good drape” and so it should have been suitable for this top. But I had some doubts.

Cotton voile is very tightly woven, folds crisply, and is quite sheer. I was nervous about using it without a lining, but I figured that gathering the blouse section would sufficiently hide my underwear.

The experience of sewing

I enjoyed getting started with the Alice top. I appreciated the way the paper pattern was pieced together, and the hand-drawn nature of the pattern made it feel very “mine”.

I liked that the seam allowances were marked at most corners with notches! I don’t like having to search the pattern instructions to find out how much seam allowance is included on various edges.

I also really liked that some allowances were small (necklines) and some were larger (side seams) so I could be frugal with fabric but still have enough to make an alteration (or a really tidy seam finish) if I wanted to.

Once I got up to fitting, things became less fun. Mostly because I couldn’t judge how things would fit in the armhole area until I had basically constructed the fully lined armhole…thingies.

Picture of a cap sleeve that is too tight showing wrinkles where the fabric pulls.

Once I attached them to the main bodice…

…the top was too tight under the arm!

I tried removing some of the fabric and leaving the upper part unaltered, to create a kind of cap sleeve…

…but I had unwittingly created a Star Trek maternity uniform!

(Why does my head look so small here?)

Finally I ended up ditching the armhole thingies altogether and doing a bias-bound edge to cover as much flesh in the armhole area as I could.

The finished product was quite wearable, so I called it “done”, but I didn’t really like it. I took some photos, praised myself for the awesome French seaming, but generally felt a bit lacklustre about the result.

Why didn’t it work?

For a start, choosing white for the yoke was a mistake, especially a very opaque white. I don’t this is a good colour for me, or at least not for a round high neckline.

Secondly, this type of top (gathered over the bust) in voile (a fabric that didn’t have as much drape as was needed) was not a great combination because the gathering caused the fabric to stand away from my body shape.

It looks rather like a slightly stylish mosquito net, I think.

The top didn’t suit me, and wasn’t flattering on my body shape. Erk!

What next?

A few weeks went by, and I made up a different pattern (the Airelle blouse) in another Cloud 9 voile which has turned out to be my new favourite top.

Yay! It is possible to sew something that suits me in voile!

What’s more, the new blouse was not too sheer, and is dreamy to wear because of the lightweight voile. An idea began to form … 🤔💡

What if I took apart my Alice top and removed the gathering? Could I turn the gathering into pin tucks, maybe? Could I use the dart shaping from the Airelle blouse for a more flattering look?

Out came the seam ripper (I call this a “Quick unpick” because that’s how it was marketed when my Mum taught me to sew, in the 1980s!).

Here’s my attempt at imagining what the top would be like without gathering, and filling in the armhole area with some leftover voile.

Not bad (better, anyway) but still not fantastic. A little frumpy, still.

I pulled out my pattern pieces from the Datura and Airelle tops and started comparing them to the bits I had leftover. It came to me (slowly, not at all in a flash) that the Alice top is most like the Datura in shape. Perhaps I could just cut a new yoke using the Datura pattern?

…and then the penny dropped that I could change the colour of the yoke!

The remodel

I sanity checked that I could re-cut the blouse section into a new set of body pieces for the the Datura top.

Yup!

I then cut a new yoke from a warm grey-brown linen (a colour called “Atmosphere” which you can no longer get, but I think “Drizzle” is a close match).

I made a full pattern to make it easier to lay out for best use of the fabric. Cutting these on the fold would have been really challenging!

The rest of this project was essentially sewing up a Datura top, but I made some modifications to the pattern before I started.

First up, I rotated the dart slightly so that it was perpendicular to the yoke (a little more “French dart” and a little less “straight dart”).

I also left the yoke unlined to give it a closer weight and transparency to the voile body sections.

Hello, Summer! ☀️

The neckline and armholes are finished with an all-in-one binding / flat piping using the bias-stripped I salvaged from the original project.

The final verdict? A smarter, more flattering top that I love.

What do you do when you sew something that you just don’t like? Does it kill your mojo for future projects? Do you end up doubting whether you understand fabric properties at all, like I do? Choosing fabric is surprisingly hard!

Ba…by goats, do-do-de-do

So, remember last time, when I said we had some adventures with our two new goats? The goats we brought home thinking, “One day we might breed these goat with a buck?” The goats we thought were not … already pregnant?

Yeah, those goats!

Surprise! Adorable baby goats! OMG squeeeeee!

We now have four (four!!) more goats, taking us to a total of six, which I think anyone would call a herd of goats. How on earth did this happen? Let’s go back in time and re-live this little adventure, shall we?

January

Our goats arrived at the end of November, and took the whole of December to settle in. In mid-January, we look at Scarlet and think, “Does she have bloat? She looks a little … rotund”.

February

By late February, we suspect that Scarlet is either pregnant (wow!), or has some kind of a tumour (eep!), and decide to call out the vet.

The vet laughs, but promises to bring the ultrasound to have a look (apparently spotting goats in utero is a bit hit-and-miss).

The ultrasound shows at least one spine, and three dark patches. We could have up to three kids in there!

“Shut the front gate!”
Our vet, upon seeing the ultrasound

But when is the due date?

Now we start guessing when we can expect to welcome some baby goats. The gestation period for goats is 145 to 155 days from mating, which had to be earlier than the day we picked up the girls (27 November).

If we add five months to that date, the latest we can expect kids is around 27th of April.

The penny drops that we’re going to be delivering baby goats pretty much any time in the following two months.

March

Now follows a period of frantic goat midwifery up-skilling, wherein we discover:

Many ways goats will show they might be ready to give birth “soon”
Many ways goats give birth normally (oh, wow, videos)
Many ways goat births go wrong (gulp)
What to put in a goat birthing box (towels, gloves, Betadine, dental floss, torches etc.)
Many opinions about how to prepare for birthing, such as should you shave the doe or not? Should you keep the kids separate, or not? Keep the kids with the herd or not? and so on, endlessly.
What makes a good birthing stall and how to build a safe pen for kids.

9 April

The kids are not yet here. How long now?

Scarlet starts to wallow (elegantly, because she’s a goat) and generally take it a bit easy.

We get pretty intimate with her udder, feeling her tummy and generally photographing things in an attempt to discover if maybe this is the week the magic happens.

12 April

Does Keira look a bit … football-shaped … around the middle? Do you think?

21 April

Well, hello super-sized udder. Looks like today’s the day! Clearly (and there’s really no mistaking it) Keira is going to give birth today.

What?? What??

Both our goats are pregnant. Both of them.

We get out the birthing box and watch for signs of labour.

Midday

It’s about lunchtime when I decide not to wait any longer, and to go get that Covid-19 test I booked in for, or I’ll be stuck in isolation if we have to call the vet. Keira is just fussing, and Scarlet is not really giving many signs of labour. I have time.

At 1 pm, I’m leaving Goulburn base hospital when I get a text from my husband. Scarlet is having contractions 1:15 apart.

I’m still twenty five minutes from home.

1:23 pm

I tear into the driveway and leap out of the car. As I dash into the goat pen, my husband reaches in to help Scarlet with her last push. Out drops our first kid!

This next bit is a blur. We watch Scarlet start to lick her first baby clean, not wanting to interfere too much. Scarlet is tired from the birth, because she pushed for at least 15 minutes (which is a decent time, for a goat).

She rests, and licks. Keira fusses and wants to come in and look. She’s jealous.

1:50 pm

Scarlet shows signs she is pushing again. The very next push, and we have our second kid! This time, I get it on video.

Baby number one is still not very clean, and Scarlet isn’t inclined to deal with the new kid yet, so we get in and swap them over. Once she’s licking him (it’s a boy!) we know we’re away chuckling. Scarlet is happy we’re here to help, so she licks us, too.

We spend a bunch of time towelling off the first baby (it’s a girl!) and generally helping them take a bit of milk, and our confidence grows.

Is there going to be another baby? Could be! We wait until Scarlet delivers her placenta, and then we decide we’ve all been amazingly clever.

Afternoon

Keira enters her birth stall about 2:45 pm in the afternoon. Scarlet’s babies are settling well, and we’ve seen a little bit of self-feeding happening, which is amazing.

By 4 o’clock, Keira decides to go back outside and dig a nest in the dirt. Scarlet eats her placenta. Yeah, that’s a thing.

By 6 o’clock, we figure it’s been a pretty darned exciting day, and we have to eat dinner, so one of us runs out for veggie burgers.

6:30 pm

It time to check on Keira: it’s dark, and really quite cold: 4ºC.

The last stage of Keira’s labour happens before we know what hit us. One baby arrives (a boy) and about four minutes later, we have another (a girl).

We are right there to towel off the babies, because it can’t be fun to be all wet and sticky when it’s not much above zero, can it? And they came so fast!

Keira gets on with it like a pro. She’s decided we are her babies too: she licks our hands and her kids, and she licks and licks and licks.

After twenty minutes the kids are parcels of fluff, they are feeding, they are well. We did it!

Well, there you have it. Surprise goats. It’s been absolutely wild.

Totes ma goats

Two goats in a box trailer filled with straw and covered with a tarpaulin

I am guilty of making a terrible pun here, but what can I say?

How do you tote your goats?
In a box trailer filled with straw!

Say hello to Scarlet and Keira!

Scarlet is a matriarch with a chill attitude; Keira is Little Miss Adventure.

Keira climbing on top of some fallen wattle tree branches — Scarlet: just chillin’

Both goats are Australian Miniature Goats, which means they are descended from feral bush goats with a bit of Cashmere and Angora mixed in. This type of goat is often called a Cashgora (but ours are also mini, about 55 cm at the shoulder).

Keira eating a hedge whilst walking on a lead — Hedges are delicious

Goat (Keira) and person (me) selfie, with a bright blue sky behind us — Hedges are delicious

We brought them home in a straw-filled box trailer on 29 November last year, full of trepidation and excitement, but woefully underprepared emotionally!

It turns out the getting-to-know-you phase with goats is a rollercoaster ride (who could have guessed)?

Goat pen: the concept phase.

This shed shares its back wall with our chicken shed, and we were using it to store firewood, tools, and odd and ends. We figured it would be the perfect size for a couple of miniature goats, if we enclosed that grassy area with a yard.

To prepare ourselves for this adventure we did a fair bit of reading about keeping goats, and decided to use electric fencing (netting) for their day pen. We weren’t convinced this would be safe enough to deter wild dogs at night, so we wanted something a bit more … constructed … for their night pen.

By the time our girls actually arrived, we had the shed cleared out and a yard with 120 cm high chicken mesh installed (remember: our goats are mini, less than 60 cm tall at the shoulder). This matched what we saw at the goat stud. Enough, right?

Yeah, totes.

For the shed itself, we re-used our old fence gate from Berowra as a door, plus some school fencing (welded and very sturdy) to put a front onto the shed. It was much like this:

However (and this turned out to be significant) we didn’t have that top section of wire netting between the fence and the roof.

Can you guess what happened on the very first morning?

Yup! Our goats used the inner rails to parkour their way over that fence and escape into the garden, and ten minutes later, onto the road. Luckily they were too nervous to venture far, and they came when we called them (and shook their grain bucket).

I don’t think I’ve ever been so stressed in my life!

Fast-forward just a few days, and Stephen and I had managed to upgrade the initial yard to become Fort Knox:

Goat yard under construction with a ladder, rolled wire netting and star pickets strung with tensioned wire. — Hot, hot work.

Completed goat pen with double-height wire netting around the yard held up with black star pickets. — Hot, hot work.

We added another 90 cm of wire netting above the first fence, matching the height of our chicken coop — two metres in total, which is at least three times the height of our goats!

The girls, however, did not like sharing that shed.

At all.

The next couple of weeks were characterised by skirmishes between Scarlet and Keira as they sorted out who was going to be “top goat”. Every water bowl and hay feeder was the scene of a battle. Keira would frequently get butted in the side by Scarlet who was not amused by sharing a large shed with … well anyone else at all, really.

Spoiler warning: Scarlet is the “top goat”.

Two weeks and quite a lot of grey hair later, we realised we needed at least two of everything: water bowls, feeders, shelters, and most importantly: a divided sleeping place!

We detached the welded school fencing from the front of their pen and reinstalled it as a hurdle to divide the shed into two stalls.

Ah, peace.

Having figured this out, the girls called a truce, and we were able to relax a bit. It turns out goat psychology is quite amazingly complex, and nothing we read had prepared us for this!

Now they have settled in, and they are both so loveable in their different ways!

Over the last seven months (oh golly, that went by in a flash) we have had a lot more adventure, but most of it has been super fun, and everything we hoped for. More on that coming soon!

Looping gif of Scarlet scratching between her horns using my husband's knuckle as a scratching post. — **Scarlet loves scritches!**

Table Loom Experimentation

Picture showing a table loom with a hand pointing to the top beam

Hi folks! I’ve been spending much of my two week vacation time playing with my table loom, and sampling for a new project–a tea towel twill “gamp” (a sample for different twill patterns and colour combinations).

Twill sample weave — First sample: 22.5 epi in a 15 dent reed

Unlike the last time I warped up a table loom (to weave these tea towels) I’m finding this process incredibly frustrating.

Is it me? Is it the loom?

I’m going to say it’s a little bit of both. I’m definitely not too experienced at weaving, especially the warping of a loom! But this loom is not as easy to use as the one I borrowed for the tea towels!

Picture of my Jack loom showing how the lever pulls threads down

My loom is a “Jack” type, which means each shaft moves independently of the others, controlled by a lever.

I lock some shafts into the “down” position in order to make a shed–an opening through which I can pass the shuttle.

So, what’s going wrong?

I can’t get a clean shed.

A “clean shed” is one where you can easily pass the shuttle (containing the weft) between the top and bottom threads. With a clean shed it’s easy to see that all the threads are correctly “up” or “down” according to the pattern.

Ideally all the threads would march tidily across the width of the loom, with no threads dipping down or up to interfere with the movement of the shuttle.

On my loom, some threads are not pulled far enough down when I sink the shaft, which causes them to snag the shuttle. It’s also really hard to see whether they are just loose top threads, too.

The shed opening is really small.

Urgh, this is a pain in the butt, combined with the other shed issues I’m having.

✔️ a small shed places less strain on the warp and weft threads.

❌ a small shed is even smaller when using a reed (with the loom’s beater) because the widest part of the shed sits behind the beater, instead of in front where I need it.

❌ a small shed needs to be really clean in order to pass the weft. If the shed is uneven, there’s less “wiggle” room in order to get the shuttle through.

The top of the shed is saggy.

So saggy, in fact, that I have to manually lift the top threads up in order to pass the shuttle.

There’s not much of an advantage to use a loom with shafts if I can get the same experience as using a heddle bar–It’s quite slow to manually adjust the shed with every pick of the weft!

Warp threads are breaking at the back beam.

This started to happen en masse when I added more tension to lift up the saggy top shed. 😞

A Jack loom places an uneven tension on the warp threads, pulling the bottom threads much tighter. This is because the bottom threads travel further (dipping down and then up) than the top threads, which stay horizontal.

What I really want is for the top and bottom of the shed to have equal tension!

Experiment #1–Use heddle rods

The first thing I tried was ditching the shafts altogether and weaving without them, using heddle rods instead.

My aim was to fix up the uneven threads that popped up into the shed and make it possible to pull the shed open wider by manually tugging on the heddle rods.

What’s a heddle rod? In my case, it’s a water colour pencil to which I’ve attached heddles in one long continuous string.

Laverne Waddington’s tutorial for making continuous heddles is invaluable if you want to try this yourself. I suggest you check out her site, because she’s a master weaver when it comes to Backstrap Weaving (and this technique is also useful if you have a rigid heddle loom and want to weave with multiple shafts).

What did I do?

I pushed aside the existing heddles and removed the reed. This gave me a larger space to “knit” the heddle rods, and more room to pass the weft through the shed.

Once I got going with the sample I then lashed each heddle rod to the matching shaft so I could use the Jack levers “as normal”.

✔️

Observations

Using this method I could skip threading the heddles and sleying the reed, which was … quite nice.

It took me less time and was easier on my back.

I really liked being able to knit the heddles under tension, having chosen which threads to use with a pick-up stick.

The threads ended up more even (horizontally) on each shaft. This made me realise that my old heddles stretched unevenly (yup, they need replacing).

This method works only because the loom is a “Jack” loom, pulling threads always in one direction (down, in my case).

I missed using the reed (which helps maintain the width of the weaving). I struggled to maintain the appropriate width when I was weaving the sample.

Once I was weaving, things were slow. This approach still had problems with the top threads sagging into the shed, due to the mechanics of the Jack loom.

✔️

Final verdict

This worked okay, and I preferred the weaving set up phase.

However, it was slow to weave, and I still couldn’t get a clean shed due to the uneven tension (floppy on top, too tight on the bottom).

My heddles need replacing with something non-stretch, and very even, like Texsolv heddles.

6/10

Experiment #1 sample

I wove this sample without a reed. To separate the threads I used a “coil rod”, which you can see in the image below.

The selvedges are tablet woven, starting off with one tablet in each selvedge.

It was tricky to weave because the single tablet flopped around, and each selvedge had a different shed position to the main weaving.

I added a second tablet to each selvedge with opposite threading direction which helped a bit with the floppiness. I think I’ll go back to a standard floating selvedge for my next sample.

Sample weaving for experiment number one showing tablet-woven selvedges and variable widths of weaving. — Sample, cut off the loom

Experiment #2–Change heddle “eye” height

I figured one good way to balance the tension between the top and bottom of the shed was to raise the “resting” threads up to the “top” position in the shed.

Then when the shafts are pulled down, the shed opens out evenly into a diamond shape, placing equal tension on the top and bottom threads.

This is apparently how the David 2 Louët loom works (here’s a fantastic review by Kelly Casanova about this loom).

Retrofitting

Low–I have to replace some heddles anyway, and this doesn’t require changing anything else about how the loom works.

✔️

Scaling up

I can’t use purchased Texsolv heddles (easily) because these come centred vertically in the shaft.

This means I’ll have to make all my own heddles (groan–hundreds of them!) if I go with this approach.

❌

Observations

This kinda worked, but kinda not.

It was a fiddle to work out a good “eye” position and get set up to create the heddles. I don’t think I nailed the measurements.

Once installed on the loom, the replacement heddles moved the top threads up by about 3/4 of an inch.

Unfortunately, when pulled down by the Jack lever, the bottom threads only dipped by 1/2 an inch.

This made the shed opening only 1.25 inches! Which is way off a comfortable opening (should be double that!)

✔️

Final verdict

I’m not so keen on this approach.

I didn’t quite get a balanced shed (top to bottom) and fussing with creating the heddles was a PITA.

I’m not convinced I could do this properly in order to get a larger shed with the shafts I have.

Making these fussy heddles by hand sounds very tedious and time-consuming.

3/10

Picture showing the top half of the shed, a total of 3/4 inches — Height of the “top” shed–3/4 inch

Experiment #3–Convert to Counter-balance

A well documented way get even tension on the top and bottom of the shed is to use to a counter-balance loom action.

A counter-balance loom works by raising and lowering shafts in pairs. When one shaft rises, the paired shaft sinks.

This pulls evenly on both the top and bottom of the shed.

Bonus points for being historically the way most looms worked for the period I like to recreate!

Retrofitting

High–at minimum I’ll need to:

take the springs off the top of each shaft and install a roll-bar or pair of pulleys to attach adjacent shafts together
make it possible to change which shafts are paired up
unhook the bottom of every shaft from the Jack levers
Find a way to raise / lower the shafts the right amount to create a nice wide shed

Ideally I’d also install a top roll bar (so I can lower both shafts in a pair if I want, e.g. for plain weave). This would require some wood-working, though!

👷🏻‍♀️=⚙️

Scaling up

I can use purchased Texsolv heddles which are super easy to install.

I could even add more shafts (although making my loom into a proper 8-shaft loom would require carpentry so I could fit all the roll bars vertically stacked).

✔️

Observations

I did a dodgy retrofit of the first two shafts as a proof of concept, which was pretty successful (see my video below).

I got a lovely 2.5 inch open shed, even with the heddles I have currently installed (which appear to be about 8 inches tall).

Changing sheds was relatively quiet (although not fiddle-free) because the Jack loom springs go “Squeeeeak” with every lever pull. The counter-balance loom is quieter (check out the video to see)!

I’d like to use a full-width roll bar (rather than a pulley) because the roll bar seems cheap to fit, and solid (or, I suspect so at full width). Something like a broom handle or thick dowel will do the trick!

✔️

Final verdict

Hell yeah!

I think I can replace the jacks with light-weight alternatives so that I can operate the shafts from the side of the loom.

Or I could drill holes in the castle (the top-most beam) so I can operate the shafts with a cord flipper gadget.

I could even add more shafts (although making my loom into a proper 8-shaft loom would require carpentry so I could fit all the roll bars vertically stacked).

8/10

Experiment #3–the converted shafts in action

Next steps

Well, I’ve run out of holiday. 😞

The next thing I want to do is purchase new Texsolv heddles for every shaft, and install them.

Then I’ll fit a better (read: less shonky) roll bar for the first shafts I converted, and compare the weaving experience against the remaining two shafts (which are still set up as Jack shafts).

You’ll hear more from me when I get that going!

Tree change!

Now for something completely different — we’ve moved to a rural property!

Our new place is 2 hectares (5 acres) on the edge of the Southern Highlands—south of Sydney, in the cooler hills, with a drier, more temperate climate.

And what an amazing place this is!

We have a large amount of space in which to grow a lot more of our food:

A net-covered garden is essential to avoid birds eating everything

Plus a beautiful dam:

And a huge variety of wildlife:

Can you see the Joey in the pouch of the Kangaroo?

We’ve been settling in over this last year—and what a year it has turned out to be:

A crippling drought had us in its grip at the end of 2019, drying up all the dam water for the first time in many years. It was heartbreaking to watch the landscape and local wildlife suffer through this.
Then the bushfire crisis escalated in our area just before New Year’s Eve, devastating the neighbouring town of Wingello. Thankfully, we came through unscathed.
In January 2020 the kids and I spent a lot of time evacuated until it was considered safe to return, whilst Stephen and our eldest came back periodically to keep the garden alive. The kids had maybe two weeks back home before starting at their new school.
At this point, things were looking pretty bleak!
Finally, at the end of January we had some rain–by early February we had so much rain that the area was flooded, and we were cut off for a week from the main Sydney road (the Hume). It was impossible to grumble about this though, we were all bemused and so relieved to have the water!
Then the 2020 school year launched (switching schools is always a major challenge, and exhausting). We had about four (?) weeks of school and then everything shut down due to COVID-19–and the world tumbled into a new era.
Our eldest brought her fledgling music teaching business to us, leaving Sydney behind to teach remotely from our bakehouse for the rest of the term.
I stopped going up to Sydney to work in our office, and since then, it’s been 6 months of Zoom meetings. So. Much. Zoom.

No filter! A dust storm prior to Christmas

However, once the drought broke, things really started looking up!

Especially now that it is Spring, and I’ve finally taken a couple of weeks of holiday time from my job!

We’re planning to plant out the vegetable garden, establish an orchard and (soonish) add to our livestock:

with ducks (I’ve always wanted ducks!), and
goats–as pets, and maybe for milk!

I’m excited about what the next year will bring, and I hope you’ll enjoy seeing more of our new place!

Documentation for the London Hood

Just a quick note to let you know I’ve just published a rather extensive article about my London Hood recreation. 🙂

Those of you interested in medieval garments might be interested to read about:

the construction stitches, particularly the “singling” that was described by Østergård in Woven Into the Earth,
the tablet weaving,
making the buttons and button holes,
plus a whole stack of references and documentation about this project!

If you find any broken links, please let me know!

A London Liripipe Hood

I’ve joined the ranks of many re-enactors who have decided to make a replica of a London Hood — complete with a silly “liripipe” tail!

This project kept me busy with a number of different skills, so I might break this down into sections, with more detail in additional posts.

I initially drafted this post last year and failed to publish it as I fussed over making a “Series” out of it. Bah! Out with it already!
Jess

Making a pattern based on historical (extant) finds
Construction walkthrough
Detail: Buttons and button holes
Detail: Tablet woven edges

How about we skip ahead right now to the eye-candy?

My main goals for this project (apart from finally having my very own adorable hood) were to have an item that provides:

good rain protection,
warmth in windy conditions,
reasonable sun protection for my eyes (autumn / winter / spring), and
reasonable visibility.

This hood ticks all these boxes!

First up, it’s comfortable in all but the rainiest of conditions. The wind can get inside the face of the hood a bit unless I button up tight. With my Birgitta’s Cap underneath (at an event) or a woollen beanie (at home) I am super snug.

What about rain protection 🌧️? Surprisingly good! I’ve worn this as I walked to work (about 25 minutes) in heavy rain, with my orange coat. I only got wet in my inner clothing at one shoulder where the cape of the hood directed water down a seam line in my coat.

Downside? The linen lining got very wet, wicking up from the cape hem. If I had my time again I wouldn’t line with linen! It took ages for the lining to dry (at work, on our coat hook) and made it unpleasant to wear back to the train station at the end of the day. But the wool outer was merely damp!

My main happiness with this hood is that the face opening keeps its shape: this means it doesn’t flop in my eyes, even in light rain! The visibility is pretty good, as a result — with no sun in my eyes.

I have to peek out when I’m crossing a road, though!

The buttons are somewhat adorable (my daughter says they are like “little pompoms”), and are not too awkward to button up. It was initially quite weird, but I’ve now got the hang of buttoning down from the chin without ending up with an odd button hole at the bottom!

I wear this hood everywhere. Since I drafted this post, I’ve worn this hood to work, every day, for about 6 months (autumn, winter and spring). I get a few funny looks, but mostly I can’t wear this anywhere without at least one passer-by saying:

“Oh my god, I love your hood!”

Sewing skirts from scratch

A couple of years ago I started taking a series of Craftsy (hey what? now called “bluprint”!) classes to learn how to make my own sewing patterns, using flat pattern making methods. The first class I tried is called “Patternmaking Basics — the Skirt Sloper” and is taught by Suzy Furrer.

I’ve finally managed to create my first pattern, and I’ve sewn two new skirts!

My inspiration was an old midi-length skirt that was handed down from my Mum — it’s a lightweight linen, with pleats, but is very much too large, and I’ve worn through the fabric in a couple of places, especially round the zip.

I chose to create a similar skirt, since I clearly loved the original! The one thing that was always missing with this skirt, though, was pockets!

The first skirt I made is in blue linen (the colour here is “Blue Bonnet”, which is my absolute favourite hue — a lovely medium blue that is almost teal).

Pieces of the yoke and pockets
I chose to make the pockets in a contrasting fabric
Inside the back — contrast yoke!
The finished blue skirt

I am 100% happy with this skirt!

Perfect fit, since I drafted it for my shape exactly (and managed to get this right!).
Great choice of fabric weight (medium weight linen, which is a good dress weight, and not too sheer without a lining).
Fabulous colour, obviously. 😀
Nicely sewn together (if I do say so myself — I tweaked some details for the next one, though).
Perfect amount of fullness from the inverted box pleats.
POCKETSES!
Also, the pockets are comfortable, deep, and nicely placed for my hands. They are not wimpy pockets!

This was such a success that I immediately wanted another one — this time to fill the colour-gap in my wardrobe left by the worn out beige / natural linen skirt (my original inspiration piece I mentioned previously):

Again with the contrast pockets
Lined with yellow linen, they are like a little pocket of sunshine!
This inside is finished with a voile lining
The final beige skirt

This time I used a heavier weight linen (which I had in my stash from making my viking garb). I didn’t have enough fabric left to do the full box pleating, so this time the pleats are knife pleats, and there is less fullness in the skirt.

I top-stitched the bottom of the yoke this time, as well as the top. I think this looks more “finished”.
I cut the yellow pocket lining on a crazy grain-line, since I only had just enough to cut each piece. This worked really well since the straight grain is along the line of the pocket opening. This stabilised the pocket opening very nicely — it won’t stretch out, now.
I lined the skirt with a cotton voile, which feels very nice when I’m wearing it. Overall, the skirt is heavier, and feels like it would be warmer on a breezy day.

I feel like there are many ways this could be made up — I could put a zipper on the pocket opening to make a more “secure” pocket (if I felt like stashing my keys and then doing hand-stands, perhaps!)

I could also put some tablet weaving trim onto the base of the yoke, or again, onto the pocket opening. Much food for thought! For now, though, theses two will do me until I start to wear them out.

Weaving is the Bee’s Knees! Well … Feet.

Shine and shadow play over the coiled belt

This year I acquired a book I’ve been wanting for a loooong time: Applesies and Fox Noses — Finnish Tabletwoven Bands, by Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen. This book focuses on tablet woven bands from Iron Age Finland, with patterns from, and inspired by, extant bands from the period.

It’s an amazing book for a beginner, or an experienced weaver, alike!

I got stuck in straight away, choosing to weave one of the easier patterns, called “Bee Feet”, or in Finnish, “Mehiläisjalkoja“.

This band was a lot of fun to weave. I’m not a novice — I’ve made other bands before, and experimented with developing a pattern from a historic band — but it was a delight to go back to a simpler band for a change!

This pattern is a short repeat, so it is easy to pick up and put down! I enjoyed practicing keeping my tension stable between sessions so that the width of the band was more even, and the shapes in the bee feet were consistent. There’s always something to learn!

The band made up into a belt
Shine and Shadow
The start of the belt, with buckle

I made the band up into a belt, to be worn my my youngest daughter at Rowany Festival — our favourite yearly historical re-enactment event. She chose the colours to complement her yellow tunic, which (hopefully!) will still fit next Easter.

The band itself is woven from Cottolin, and with 40% linen content it still manages to have some lustre when it is “cold pressed” — after washing the band, I roll it flat with a stone rolling pin! This gives the band some shine.

I’ve already warped up a second band from the book (destined to be another belt, or possibly some trim for my son) called “Fine crooked knees with small applesies”. I chose this for the gorgeous pattern, but I could easily have done so from the name!

In case you think I simply weave off tablet woven bands without thinking about it, here’s a more accurate picture for how I start:

Establishing a pattern on a new band — not always easy!

Believe it or not, I simply started the pattern with the cards one quarter turn in the wrong position, and it took me three repeats before I worked out how to set it right!

I think it’s amazing how the clarity of the pattern can suddenly establish itself, especially when using high contrast colours like these. I’m really looking forward to seeing this band when it is finished!

One final note. Last week or so I showed you some photos of our summer garden, as it started to establish itself. Check out the tomatoes now! We have fruit forming already. Yum!