soles occidere et redire possunt

I wrote up some directions for dances I commonly teach in my children’s classes. This document also includes steps and links to music and dance videos. Link to handout.

I finally figured out the major issue I was having with my tablet weaving, after consultation with everyone I could think of who might have insight into the problem. It turns out that I had been thinking of the labels on the paper cards as being meaningful in themselves rather than as referring to thread positions. So once I made… Read more »

The first time I tried making one of these, I managed to make it both too wide for my face and too small for my hair. This time, instead of using the “square with rounded corner” sort of pattern, I took some nice linen/cotton gauze I had left over from a t-tunic style underdress and used the section from under… Read more »

My tablet weaving continues to exhibit weirdness. I tried flipping back the tablets I had strung to the wrong orientation, and that didn’t work. Then, upon a suggestion from someone much more skilled at tablet weaving than I, I tried flipping the other set of tablets to the wrong orientation. That didn’t work either. Even though I thought the pattern… Read more »

I decided to start weaving over again with a smoother fiber, after all the difficulties I had last time. I screwed up the warping again (by screwing up my S- and Z-twist), but the actual weaving is going much smoother. This setup is actually giving me half of the pattern on the front of the band and half on the… Read more »

Finally warped up the lovely loom I got for my birthday, and have started on some tablet weaving. I went to a class on it at Gulf Wars about five years ago, but otherwise haven’t done any. The book is one I got from a used bookstore a number of years ago. Thoughts so far: I desperately need to improve… Read more »

After a long while of no progress, I finally got around to ironing the bodice pieces for my velveteen cioppa today. And then proceeded to finish attaching the linings and sewed the whole thing up. While I still have eyelets to make and sleeves to attach, the actual bodice construction is finished. It even appears to fit decently well.

While I have not yet finished my velveteen cioppa, I spent much of today helping my friend Taylor start on a 15th-century gamurra. I made a body block for her and from it a bodice pattern, and we got through sewing the fashion fabric, lining, and interlining together on all the bodice pieces. Next sewing day we can work on… Read more »

After taking apart a dress that no longer fits me, I am now making a new gamurra out of the pieces. I’m very pleased that (as far as I can tell) even the sleeves can be made from this so I won’t have wasted this lovely wool.