Naalbinding

At this moment we are very busy. Usually September is the time that things slow down. But this year we still have many events, mostly viking, to go, four to be precise. Our "normal" live is hectic as well, I am amongst other things in autumn cleaning mode, so there is little or no time left to spend on costumes.
At this moment I am working on a peplos (tube) style dress, based upon the Princess of Zweeloo dress. The fabric that I am using is grey broken diamond twill linen, her costume was made of white diamond twill linen. For the rest I intend to be as accurate as possible and I need to do more research before I proceed working on it.
The other thing that I, really should be, working on, is a victorian boys coat in grey wooll. It was almost finished when I discovered that the back of the coat looked really akward, and I haven't found time, energy or courage to try and find out what's wrong and how it can be corrected. "Sigh"
Here are some small things that I did finish and turned out nice.



This was a gift for a friend, who loves textile crafts. I used as many different colors and techniques as I could. The pouch was made with nalebinding, the cord through the pouch was made with fingerlooping. The wool and silk where all dyed with natural dyes.



Finally! I've got two pairs of socks. But I am not done nalebinding for a while as my son has outgrown his two pairs of socks... Well no rest for the wicked ;-)

Victorian necklace

For a couple of months I have been working on a victorian jet necklace, collecting vintange and antique beads, looking for period descriptions and actually making it.

If finally deciced to make this:


It is a bead necklace from De Bazar (A Dutch Magazine for Ladies), 15th of February
1875.

Making a necklace seemed pretty easy to me, but was much harder than expected. Especially as the description then weren't as detailed as they are now. I guess a Victorian Lady knew how to make one of those things. Also the right tools, thread etc are much harder to find than back then. Never the less I am quite pleased with the end result, eventhough I know with more practice it probably would have turned out much better.

Vacation 2009

I finally put the pictures of our historically themed vacation in Great Britain on-line. Read more about it here

Mittelalterliches Burgfest at Burg Winnenthal, Germany

Finally a picture of my natural dyed viking costume! The apron is dyed with union skins and sewn by hand with silk. The tunic is dyed with madder. I am pleased with how they both turned out. I also dyed the silk kerchief myself with union skins.
This picture was taken early in the morning when it was still relatively cool, later on it became more than 30ºC. And then ofcourse I wore my linnen tunic without sleeves.



This evenent was really well organized and people where really nice, but as I don't speak German I wasn't as chatty as usual ;-) I took the opportunity to work on nalebound socks for myself using scraps of wool I had lying around.



I didn't finish them complety, I still need to make the heels of both socks, but I am never the less quite pleased with myself.

More pictures of this event on our website: http://www.muninn.dds.nl