Bataan Death March of Sewing report
Feb. 8th, 2005 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serindeor, How I Spent My Weekend, What Am I, Some Kind Of Retard?
This was an SCA event called Fields of Gold, which was primarily a time pressure competition: your team of up to 6 people has from 10pm Friday night til 4pm Saturday afternoon to create a complete period (for the SCA) outfit. Now, the reason we were going to go to this in the first place is because our friend Briony was getting a (well-deserved) award at the Royal Court that was going to be held there, but once I realized what the event WAS, I mailed Beth and said "y'know, pretty much everything we do is the night before anyways, we're perfect for this." (Mistake #1.)
Now, Beth couldn't be on the team, since she is a Laurel (that is, top-rated in her artsy field), but she could sponsor a team and help us out beforehand. And a team we assembled, which was me, Kasia, and three ladies I didn't know personally but who are on the needle-arts classes list that we run; none of us save me and Kasia had ever worked together before (mistake #2) and they were all, primarily, embroiderers, giving us two actual garment-makers and three embroiderers to make a whole outfit (mistake #3). Compounding our difficulty in getting our act together was the fact that late January, as the Gentle Reader may have noticed, has been a fucking nightmare for me, and was not much better for Beth or for one of our other team members. So our organization was not All That and a bag of chips.
By Sunday last, we'd come up with a project to play to our strengths: making a dress for Kasia's three-year-old daughter Angelina based on a 1551 painting of Maria de'Medici. So it's really small scale, which means faster, and is a lot with the embroidery, so that will show up the talents of our embroidery farm. One of our embroiderers liked the idea of doing a partlet (that's the white scarf-y thing) from a different Bronzino portrait; fine and dandy. So we needed to make dress, chemise, petticoat, hose, calzone (that's "underpants" to you), partlet, and headpiece; make embroidery for the dress and chemise; and sew it on.
This takes, in the event, a lot more than 90 woman-hours.
It did not help that some time was not used efficiently, and everyone except me and Kasia slept for a few hours. Nor that most of us got there after 11. (When I had this brilliant idea, none of us realized the event was THREE HOURS AWAY. Mistake #4, 5, and 6.) Unfortunately, Beth was trying to make me straw boss, but as the least-known person on the team, no one was taking my direction, and it didn't seem like it was going to be helpful if I came it the cast-iron bitch so I had to let it ride. The partlet took the entire time of one of our embroiderers. The headpiece was done before most of us even got there, but the person doing it then spent a goodly amount of time messing around with additional netting for the hair (which wasn't working out at all) when we really needed her working on other stuff. The embroidery pattern for the dress bodice took all the time of our second embroiderer. Etc., etc., and so forth.
What we got finished, at least to a casual view: dress (unhemmed & skirt just basted to bodice), chemise (unembroidered), partlet (partially embroidered), calzone (but we didn't have Angelina there when I made it, and Kasia forgot to measure her legs, so they turned out too small!), headpiece. One sleeve was more or less done, but not in the style we intended; the other was plain gold silk without the dress fabric over-whatsit, which looks a little odd, but Kasia had a period portrait of a man with mismatched sleeves, so in theory at least it was possible. And don't even talk about our documentation. We had a big sheaf of printed-out pictures that we were working from, but next to no text. (I tried to knock something together the week before, but since I hadn't made several planning meetings and I know next to nothing about 16th c. clothing, this did not amount to much.)
Final product: our little princess, Angelina. (warning: colors are bad due to crappy disposable camera.)
We, of course, saw a grand and brilliant project carried out in our usual haphazard half-assed fashion. However, that's not what the judges nor the populace saw. They saw a SOOOO CUUUUUTE! (and she is...that girl knows how to work a crowd, I'm here to tell you) three-year-old in a velvet and gold and pearled glitzy dress. We didn't win the competition--nor did we deserve to; Daria's bottega made one of their usual perfect 15th c. Italian outfits, with a BRICK of documentation to go with it--but we did win the popular vote award. Go Us.
This was gruelling, I hated it, and I'm really glad I did it. For one thing, I'm swinging back towards a sewing mood. For another, it's given me a new confidence in my needlework--I made the chemise and calzone almost entirely by hand, using contrasting floss on the calzone for decoration, and both Beth and Kasia were applauding my stitches. I think I'm even ready to take on the next phase of costuming, to wit, learning to fit and drape (aka "the hard part").
It's clear that, with projects like this, someone really needs to be designated the straw boss--but that someone has to be mutually decided on by the team members, or it just won't work. We could have gotten much more done if there had been a person who could refocus straying attentions onto the tasks that needed doing RIGHT NOW. See: learning experience.
We staggered home in a daze; I woke up around noon Sunday feeling like hammered shit, which feeling only got worse during the day, til I was down with a mild fever, sore throat, and fairly debilitating exhaustion, which continued into Monday. And when I say exhaustion, I mean I was too tired to sit at the computer. Goddammit, if I have to blow a sick day, I at least want to get some CoH out of it.
This was an SCA event called Fields of Gold, which was primarily a time pressure competition: your team of up to 6 people has from 10pm Friday night til 4pm Saturday afternoon to create a complete period (for the SCA) outfit. Now, the reason we were going to go to this in the first place is because our friend Briony was getting a (well-deserved) award at the Royal Court that was going to be held there, but once I realized what the event WAS, I mailed Beth and said "y'know, pretty much everything we do is the night before anyways, we're perfect for this." (Mistake #1.)
Now, Beth couldn't be on the team, since she is a Laurel (that is, top-rated in her artsy field), but she could sponsor a team and help us out beforehand. And a team we assembled, which was me, Kasia, and three ladies I didn't know personally but who are on the needle-arts classes list that we run; none of us save me and Kasia had ever worked together before (mistake #2) and they were all, primarily, embroiderers, giving us two actual garment-makers and three embroiderers to make a whole outfit (mistake #3). Compounding our difficulty in getting our act together was the fact that late January, as the Gentle Reader may have noticed, has been a fucking nightmare for me, and was not much better for Beth or for one of our other team members. So our organization was not All That and a bag of chips.
By Sunday last, we'd come up with a project to play to our strengths: making a dress for Kasia's three-year-old daughter Angelina based on a 1551 painting of Maria de'Medici. So it's really small scale, which means faster, and is a lot with the embroidery, so that will show up the talents of our embroidery farm. One of our embroiderers liked the idea of doing a partlet (that's the white scarf-y thing) from a different Bronzino portrait; fine and dandy. So we needed to make dress, chemise, petticoat, hose, calzone (that's "underpants" to you), partlet, and headpiece; make embroidery for the dress and chemise; and sew it on.
This takes, in the event, a lot more than 90 woman-hours.
It did not help that some time was not used efficiently, and everyone except me and Kasia slept for a few hours. Nor that most of us got there after 11. (When I had this brilliant idea, none of us realized the event was THREE HOURS AWAY. Mistake #4, 5, and 6.) Unfortunately, Beth was trying to make me straw boss, but as the least-known person on the team, no one was taking my direction, and it didn't seem like it was going to be helpful if I came it the cast-iron bitch so I had to let it ride. The partlet took the entire time of one of our embroiderers. The headpiece was done before most of us even got there, but the person doing it then spent a goodly amount of time messing around with additional netting for the hair (which wasn't working out at all) when we really needed her working on other stuff. The embroidery pattern for the dress bodice took all the time of our second embroiderer. Etc., etc., and so forth.
What we got finished, at least to a casual view: dress (unhemmed & skirt just basted to bodice), chemise (unembroidered), partlet (partially embroidered), calzone (but we didn't have Angelina there when I made it, and Kasia forgot to measure her legs, so they turned out too small!), headpiece. One sleeve was more or less done, but not in the style we intended; the other was plain gold silk without the dress fabric over-whatsit, which looks a little odd, but Kasia had a period portrait of a man with mismatched sleeves, so in theory at least it was possible. And don't even talk about our documentation. We had a big sheaf of printed-out pictures that we were working from, but next to no text. (I tried to knock something together the week before, but since I hadn't made several planning meetings and I know next to nothing about 16th c. clothing, this did not amount to much.)
Final product: our little princess, Angelina. (warning: colors are bad due to crappy disposable camera.)
We, of course, saw a grand and brilliant project carried out in our usual haphazard half-assed fashion. However, that's not what the judges nor the populace saw. They saw a SOOOO CUUUUUTE! (and she is...that girl knows how to work a crowd, I'm here to tell you) three-year-old in a velvet and gold and pearled glitzy dress. We didn't win the competition--nor did we deserve to; Daria's bottega made one of their usual perfect 15th c. Italian outfits, with a BRICK of documentation to go with it--but we did win the popular vote award. Go Us.
This was gruelling, I hated it, and I'm really glad I did it. For one thing, I'm swinging back towards a sewing mood. For another, it's given me a new confidence in my needlework--I made the chemise and calzone almost entirely by hand, using contrasting floss on the calzone for decoration, and both Beth and Kasia were applauding my stitches. I think I'm even ready to take on the next phase of costuming, to wit, learning to fit and drape (aka "the hard part").
It's clear that, with projects like this, someone really needs to be designated the straw boss--but that someone has to be mutually decided on by the team members, or it just won't work. We could have gotten much more done if there had been a person who could refocus straying attentions onto the tasks that needed doing RIGHT NOW. See: learning experience.
We staggered home in a daze; I woke up around noon Sunday feeling like hammered shit, which feeling only got worse during the day, til I was down with a mild fever, sore throat, and fairly debilitating exhaustion, which continued into Monday. And when I say exhaustion, I mean I was too tired to sit at the computer. Goddammit, if I have to blow a sick day, I at least want to get some CoH out of it.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 05:39 pm (UTC)Which CoH server do you frequent?
no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 07:18 pm (UTC)Shugotenshi, lvl 16, dark/dark scrapper
MechAssault233 (?), lvl 11?, guns/device blaster
Ligeia Bathory, lvl 11, dark/dark defender
Doctor Reality, lvl 11, gravity/radiation(?) controller
Mistress Dusk, lvl 10, martial arts/reflexes scrapper
Te Nephren, lvl 9, empathy/radiation defender
Babyface Nelson, lvl 8, guns/device blaster
Lifeforce Lass, lvl 8, empathy/psionic defender
Whippersnapper, lvl 8, mind control/? controller
Abysmal Flame, lvl 8, fire/fire blaster
Crimson Sky, lvl 7, fire/fire blaster
Isceald, lvl 6, ice/storm summoning controller
Cyber-Man, lvl 5, super strength/invuln tanker
Captian [sic] Kre-something, lvl 3, gravity/radiation controller
(There are also "ghoti" and "flufi", and I don't know what their powers are.)
I think that's everybody.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-09 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 06:56 pm (UTC)