Adventures with weld and FIRE

Today I stuck a pot over a fire and dyed wool yellow. I had one of those "yesss I'm so period" moments standing in front of real fire.

First, fire. I constructed a stand for the pot out of bricks and spare rebar, which is at least plausibly period if not very pretty.

I then lit a whole bunch of wood on fire.

... and fed it more wood for a while.

Once the fire was established, I added my dye vat, with a mixture of weld, fustic, alum, and cream of tartar, all from period recipes for yellow. I added my pre-mordanted (with alum) white wool and cooked this for about an hour.

I then removed the pot from the fire to start cooling, leaving the fabric in the pot.

Several hours later, it is still cooling, but my formerly white wool is this screaming yellow color. SCIENCE.

The Coat-Thing lives

I finished the "Coat-Thing" style of corset! (check out my theories on the enigmatic 14th century corset)

This is made with coat weight burgundy wool, lined in very nice faux fur because I couldn't afford that many pelts of anything. All visible stitching, including every edge and 41 buttonholes, by hand.

I really like the bezants. I am a 14th century disco ball. This was nice and warm at a chilly event.

Worn with my 100% hand sewn, hand dyed hood

Edit: This is what the pattern looks like. The outer wool pieces are laid out on the faux fur which must go all in the same direction, as it would if I had pieced pelts together. This pattern avoids any bias to bias seams and is very efficient

Sightings of Katheryn in the wild

I can be found on the EK Wiki, on Facebook, and in my Laurel's sewing room trying to SEW FASTER OR ELSE, APPRENTICE