Thursday 19 July 2012

Cream and purple t-tunic

I've been trying to make some garb for Dash as he is woefully under-garmented. I figure if I start now he'll have enough garb for a week long camping event in April. I've already make him a long black woolen t-tunic (crusader?) and a white linen under tunic. I've also made him a couple of pairs of trews including an awesome green and black houndstooth pair.We've bought linen for a number of gab projects for him but I find I'm having the usual issue of not being able to cut the fabric because I know I'll screw it up. So I decided to use a cream woolen blanket I bought for a cloak making demonstration at the College of St Monicas. Not only is it cheap fabric, it's also wool so he'll be snug and warm during freezing Rowany evenings.

The Plan: Cream body, dark purple trim around the cuffs, the hem and the neckline.


Since he wants this to be a little fancy and I don't have any purple trim in stock I'm going to decorate the edges with embroidery. I've tested five designs that I like. The colours in the final product will be reversed, with dark purple linen and light purple thread. The linen used in a sampler was some left overs I got from Lady Nadia because I'm not sure I have enough dark purple for the garment AND a sampler.
Next time I do a sampler I'll sew down the fabric first. I had a little trouble with the linen wandering over the wool and bunching under the threads.

 Butterfly chain stitch - I like this one the best but Dash thinks it looks like a bunch of *
 Variations upon blanket stitch. We agreed that we liked the one on the right the best.
 A combination of double feather stitch and chain stitch to create little leaves every third branch.
 Half blind cross stitch. I like this one too. It'll be good for seam treatments.
Herringbone stitch - this was hard to get even as the linen kept migrating across the wool.

The verdict: I'll be using one of the blanket stitch varieties. Probably the second from the left, but using purple embroidery thread on the cream wool and cream thread on the purple linen.

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