September 2025: Measure Twice, Or Twenty Times, Cut Once
September Goals
Garb:
Sof’ia’s Spanish outfit (camisa, gonete, vasquiña, cofia if I have time)
Prep a muslin of the sobresaya pattern so I can start embroidering that in October
Start my rabbit hole project on hair nets for a traveling project
Classes:
Record and post the Grabby Hands class
Lofty goals for September but we’ve made really good progress on a lot of them.
Sof’ia’s finished gonete and vasquiña
Sof’ia’s gonete and vasquiña got completed on schedule as planned. We ended up not making her a camisa or cofia, but instead giving her the opportunity to try some of mine out first before we committed to a style. The gonete and vasquiña turned out so stupid cute, and both were completed right on schedule. The gonete is made from a very plush sage green wool and the vasquiña from a heavier black wool with pretty light blue ribbon trim. The black wool was such a delight- I had exactly enough for her skirt and waistband. The downside here is that it’s a bit heavy for tie on fastenings, so we’re going with modern skirt hooks instead.
The exactly perfect quantity of wool for this skirt…
My forced commitment to the hand sewing life has been underscored. I have come to the conclusion that I’m just not meant to be a sewing machine person, and that is a-ok with me. I will live. And I will hold a grudge.
The hairnets were equally, if more slowly, promising. It feels a lot like learning how to knit all over again, for all that I learned to knit 20 years ago. The structure of the knot, the tension, and the slow progress from rectangular flat piece to round flat piece to round usable piece to round embroidered usable piece is a soothing one. I’m starting out with some stash yarn to get used to properly counting my stitches and forming the knots with reliable shape and tension. I did acquire myself a satin pillow to use for my net making adventures and will probably end up investing in some nice wooden tools to take it to events in the not too distant future, but it’s a really comforting craft. I look forward to my first usable hairnet project.
The first usable hairnet I make will need some fingerloop braid to help give it its structure as a circular piece, but I have yet to dust off that particular skill. It would be nice to be able to make something a little decorative to go with it when I get around to doing so. I’ve got a beautiful teal wool yarn that I think is going to be my first real hairnet piece after I finish up with the last of this off-white for practicing.
Slow but inexorable march towards competency in netting
Grabby Hands also went really well for a first run! I'm really glad I decided to develop the class and I hope that the students found in helpful. Bea has encouraged me to make a worksheet for it, and I think I would really like to. It’s a class I think would be hugely impactful as an in person class with show and tell opportunities with the pieces I made. Depending on where next Summer University ends up, I will possibly try to offer it then or maybe sooner at a local event.
At University, I did take a class on beginning recorder which was enjoyable. I’ve wanted to add appropriate music for my persona to my project repertoire and the recorder is a nice portable instrument that I think I could manage. I mostly remember how to read music, though I am woefully out of practice, having not used the skill since violin in middle school. I haven’t jumped on it yet, but it’s on my list for maybe over winter projects.
Yom Kippur is right at the beginning of October, so I’ve decided my “distract myself from fasting” project is going to be trying to paint my device onto some glasses. While prepping for possibly needing to paint lacing rings for the Juana in white project, Billy and Charlie suggested this enamel paint brand. I’ve never painted with enamels, so I wanted to do a tester project before I committed to using them on a big project. Heraldic feast gear felt like a good enough excuse. Depending on how ambitious/successful I’m feeling, I’ve set it up to have my device on two opposite sides of the cup portion and potentially some twisty stoats on the base. I’ll aim high and see where I land most comfortable.
Herod’s Banquet by Pedro García de Benabarre, 1473-1482
On the Juana project, a lot of my month was spent on the survey and really getting into looking at the art. Which is unfortunate, because it means I have to challenge a previously held belief of what a garment could be. It’s a healthy process, but is going to pose a real challenge to my fabric choices. Upon looking at some sobresayas and verdugados, I have come to the conclusion that the white dress Juana is wearing is probably her verdugado with a black stomacher. Just the way that V front sits along with the other examples of sobresayas, I just don’t think the panel dress I want makes sense in that context. I still want to make it, but I think that’ll be an after this project.
All this to say, I think it’s time for an earlier than planned verdugado test run. There are some things I’m looking forward to about it: I’ve wanted to learn more about pad stitching for a while, since none of my previous projects have required it but I think the shape of this dress will and I’m excited to test my theories about the skirt construction. There’s a couple ideas I’ve been playing around with for the verdugos and my current theory for the skirt itself is that it is also a series of rectangular panels with triangular skirt gores to make the rounded cone shape that most of these skirts are. The painting to the right is really the reason for this theory, particularly the two women in the lower left with the solid colored verdugados. Several other figures in Benabarre’s series on Saint John the Baptist support this theory for solid colored verdugados. Salome herself (in the gold and black) doesn’t show this sort of piecing approach with the pattern on her dress, which would be an absolute triumph of pattern matching, so it’s still up for debate but it’s decidedly a valid approach to achieving that shape. It should still be gathered into the waist, so there’s some fullness there to adjust for as well.
All told, this realization could be worse. It could have come after I started cutting into the special wool I have. It just goes to underscore that really studying your sources and challenging your own beliefs about garments is a critical piece before you start designing and implementing a project. I do intend to make some adjustments to the Grabby Hands handout to account for a better understanding of the outfit as well. I wasn’t thrilled with the initial recording, because the audio is very echo-y, so I may end up re-recording that too at a later date.
Now, what am I going to do with the black fabric I intended for the verdugado initially? Dunno! I may make a sobresaya of some sort. I could do the split panel sobresaya with the solid front I had originally intended, though I think that would negate the impact of the goldwork on the wool verdugado. I don’t really have any projects on my Project List that are solid black projects. This is inconceivable for a Spanish persona but that’s what it is!
October Goals
Garb:
Prep a muslin of the verdugado pattern.
Test potential verdugo fillings/stiffening agents.
Keep working on hair nets, try to get a round one done!
Classes:
Start reworking some of my previously un-recorded classes for possibly offering at Winter University.
Other:
Paint glasses.
