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So far Helena has created 24 blog entries.
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Mining the stash

I’m mining my fabric stash for next spring’s Ontario Society for Creative Anachronism Arts & Science competition. The plan is to use mostly what I have on hand, only buying new materials when there just isn’t anything in the stash that’s suitable.

A bit of background: the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is an international organization dedicated to researching and recreating pre-17th century arts and skills, and the Arts & Science (A&S) competitions include all of those except the martial arts.

A&S costuming competition gets into some pretty extreme authenticity, using only natural materials like silk, linen and wool. Which can be financially challenging – hence the mining of the stash. Luckily, over the years I’ve run into some irresistible bargains that I figured would come in useful “someday”.

Well, “someday” is here!

I’m basing my entry on this 1552 Veronese portrait of Countess Livia da Porto Thiene which is now in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland:

1552 Veronese portrait of Countess Livia da Porto Thiene currently in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.
It’s not going to be an exact copy; for one thing, the colours that suit the Countess look dreadful on me, and for another, my local second-hand stores don’t run to sable, which is what the fur draped over her arm is. Or lynx, the lining in her coat.

So the excavation begins!

By | May 4th, 2014|costume, fur, medieval, museums, SCA, the stash|Comments Off on Mining the stash
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The raccoon coat

Sometime in the 1990s I picked up a slightly-too-small raccoon coat at Goodwill. It spent most of its time in the closet because it didn’t fit well and because it was … fur.

Helena in her racoon coat on a snowy day.But seven years ago I traded that coat in on one that was actually big enough, which I started to wear whenever the weather got really cold.

I was concerned that my fur coat would draw negative reactions – though not concerned enough to not wear it!

Lots of people have commented on the coat. But to my surprise, except for the rather dim co-worker who raked me down for wearing “exotic fur” *, the comments have been 100% positive!

They’re mostly variations on “That looks warm” or “That’s a nice jacket”. (Language drift seems to be in action here – even though the coat is ankle-length people almost always call it a “jacket”. Fascinating!)

So I’ve met minimal hostility to fur out there. Which is a good thing – in really cold weather, fur or sheepskin are the only things I’ve worn that actually kept me warm.

And I strongly suspect that the “wonderful synthetic alternatives” we’re encouraged to wear have a big ecological cost. They are, after all, oil that’s been heavily processed. (But that’s another post!)

In the meantime I’m wearing my raccoon coat and staying warm even when it goes down below -30!

…

* I’m writing in Toronto, Canada where raccoons are not exotic. They’re vermin. Very successful vermin.

They’ve adapted beautifully to the urban environment and contribute to it by vandalizing garbage cans, tearing up gardens, defecating on roofs, mating noisily under my bedroom window in the middle of the night and occasionally attacking pets and people.

People tell me their raccoon stories when I’m wearing the coat, and so far they’ve all been horror stories.

For example, a gentleman I talked with this morning as we trudged through the snow told me of how he had to get a series of rabies shots because a raccoon bit him. He was sitting in his garden one afternoon when a raccoon jumped up on the bench beside him. He was talking on the phone and thought it was his cat, so he reached down and patted it.

Chomp!

On the whole, I prefer my raccoons as coats.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By | February 5th, 2014|fur, Kensington Market|Comments Off on The raccoon coat
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May I please grope your houppelande?

Medieval statue of a man wearing a long houppelande…a question I asked a gentleman wearing a houppelande made of luscious-looking fabric at the Pennsic War, a Society for Creative Anachronism event last summer.

It came out more suggestive than I intended, but luckily the gentleman was also a fabric geek so he understood!

However, it once more made me aware that the English language needs a word that accurately describes that cloth-feeling gesture so familiar to every fabriholic – that gentle touch/rub/squeeze that tells so much about a fabric.

While there is something sensual about fabric, both “grope” and “fondle” – with their unfortunate associations with unwanted sexual touching – miss the boat.

In Czech – my first language – there’s a word that does the job nicely. In English it transcribes as “shmatat” and it specifically implies touching. Not groping, not fondling. At worst, pawing – as in “get your paws off that yardage”.

And I’ve often wondered whether there’s a connection between “shmatat” and “shmata”, the Yiddish word for rag – as in “rag trade”, aka the clothing industry. I’d be very surprised if it were a coincidence.

Any etymologists of Yiddish out there who can help with this one?

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The image is a statuette of a Dutch count in a long houppelande from the Dam chimney-piece, Amsterdam, ca. 1475. From ‘A History of Costume in the West’ by Francois Boucher.(photo Giraudon)

By | January 28th, 2014|costume, language, medieval, SCA|Comments Off on May I please grope your houppelande?
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beautiful beetles & a costume collection

A book on beetle embroidery I picked up yesterday pointed me to a costume collection I’d never heard of before at the Narrya Heritage Museum (hadn’t heard of the museum before, either)!

The book, The Stumpwork, Goldwork and Surface Embroidery Beetle Collection, mentions a Victorian dress from the Narrya collection. The dress is trimmed with net embroidered with beetle wing cases – and manages to be gaudy in spite of being full coverage and made from a somber black silk.

The most interesting thing about it is that the scraps of trim left over from making it came to the museum along with the dress! That’s pretty much unique.

I’d love to hear whether any other collection has a garment and its scraps!

As for the beetle embroidery book, it’s beautiful and it’s set ideas for incorporating beetles in a design for an Elizabethan embroidered jacket or doublet – or maybe a vest – running around in my head.

More on that later, when I’ve finished reading the book & decided what I’m actually going to make…

 

 

 

By | October 26th, 2013|books, embroidery, insects, museums, stumpwork|Comments Off on beautiful beetles & a costume collection
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