This was supposed to be a sewing blog.....

It occurred to me recently that the name of this blog would generally suggest that it's supposed to be about.......erm, well, garments. The last actual entry about clothing, however, was (hold on a moment while I check) oooohh, a really long time ago (hmm, you'd think I'd find something in the archives somewhere, wouldn't you?).

So, to fix that, and bring this blog back into the realms of actual costumey stuff, lets take a look at the frock I'm making. It's generally being known as the Beaded Frock of Insanity, but it hasn't driven me completely mad yet, so it may have to become the Beaded Frock of Moderate Foolishness.....

So this is the frock. Painting is by Lucas Cranach (the elder), The Virgin Glorified, 1520, or thereabouts. This is the only image I have found of this painting, so I don't know what colour it would be, although from viewing a great many other Cranach paintings, I would guess red and gold, or gold and black. The fabric I have, though, is teal, with a printed pattern in antique silver/gold. I dyed some white velveteen until I got as close to a complimentary teal as I could (and wasn't that a trial and a half). This velveteen is a brilliant backdrop for the pearl beading. The pearls are 3 and 3.5mm plastic ones from Photios Bros. I had intended to use glass ones, but the variety if sizes is very narrow, and they start getting really expensive really quickly. In period they most probably would have used seed pearls, although pearlised glass beads were available*. I started on the sleeve cuffs first, because once these bits were completed, I could make up the cuff. This could help serve as inspiration for the rest of it if I thought about giving the whole thing up as s bad joke.

Here's some of the beading in progress:
The velveteen guards are basted onto a plain weave white cotton, and the patterm was drawn on the back. I discovered, quite by accident, that if I used a fairly firm pressure when drawing out the pattern on the back of the velveteen, the design was kind of etched onto the front. This was perfect, and made it really easy for me to follow the pattern layout. The beads themselves are strung onto a linen thread (which will hopefully prove to be unbreakable) and then couched down. This means that the pattern was nice and straight, and didn't take anywhere near as long as sewing each individual bead down. That certainly would have been a short road to insanity......

Here are the rest of the cuff pieces.

And the completed items, sorry that the one that I'm actually wearing is a bit blurry - it's actually really hard to take of photo of your own arm.....

The bottom part of the upper sleeve is also completed, I'm now working on the guards for the bodice. Well, I would have been, except I'm now actually writin

g about it. Ah, procrastination!

*I don't really remember where this info came from. Like a great many things, I read it somewhere, and I also saw an SBS doco on the history of pearls which had info on pearlised glass beads. Unfortunately, "I remember seeing it somewhere" is not a good documentation tecnique. If I ever actually find some real info on this that I can use to back this statement up, you'll be the first to know.