Yet more kit.

It's all still works-in-progress, but it might entertain a reader of this blog to see another of the objects in their various states and conditions.

Seppa's belt.

The belt, it's still very pretty and clean and neat. It needs a bit of abuse and some stains and oils and waxes once I've finished tooling the leather. I might add the Varushkan spider on it somewhere. There will be some D-ring loops for it as well, so that I can hang some tat onto the D-rings.

Concerns

I do have them.

One that's been hanging over me is what I'm doing with my legs below the knees. I will wear my tactical boots, for the ankle support and that I can walk in them pretty much all day in relative comfort. Not as comfortable as trainers, but the trainers don't mesh with LARP and have no ankle support. I do have some metal-slats greaves, and I have padded canvas leg armour, but the tactical boots have a thick padded cuff that ends around the bottom of my calves, and that dead space between there and my knees, has me worried about how to adequately fill in that area so I don't harm my already wonky and fragile knees when the leg armour tilts on the boot top fulcrum and slams into my patellae. Leather straps around my ankles not withstanding, I'm too heavy for the greaves not to tilt into my knees.

I do have two pairs of winingas, or leg wraps, or puttees, all three names pretty much mean the same thing. They don't really work with the boots, and I'm again stuck with that dead space between top of the boot and the 15cm or so to my patellae.

Another option is a boot topper or gaiter, but there's that dead space again. I suppose I could have the gaiters made to knee height, and then stitch in a very thick padding to fill the dead space.

I'll have to ask the group to see how to get around it.

Side notes

I may have to make a few vertical pouches to hold the mana crystal cards and any herbs or resources that I have spare.

I think tomorrow, I will try to start drawing the lines-to-stitch on the coat so that I can add the Varushkan Virtue animals.

I'll be starting to plan out my 2020 bullet journal; my goals will be less ambitious, but perhaps more realistically achievable than the outright failure of this year. This is related to this blog and this character.

I will be listing my sewing patterns at some point, with which Empire nations they could best work with.

More kit in progress...

As promised, here's the related post to the previous.

First, those trousers that I mentioned; they're the Folkwear Saroulles and pantaloons pattern, I shortened the leg length. Truth is, I really ought to decrease the pelvic depth of the pattern to raise the crotch by several centimetres so it's not down near my knees. Perhaps with the next pair.

The four pieces of the crotch gusset.

The stripes really do help.

Pinning the crotch gusset to the legs before stitching.

Pinning before pressing the folds for the waistline's drawstring channel.

The crotch gusset and the bottom leg hem that I've turned up. It shows how much I shortened the leg on this pair of pantaloons.

This is where I paused in the sewing; again, before I can finish the waistline or hem the legs, I need to hand-sew buttonholes for the drawstrings. My machine is supposed to be able to do buttonholes automatically, but all it does is pucker the fabric before tearing it. Hand-sewn buttonholes it is.

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Tat

Some of the items that I wore for the Bakers' Ball in November are pictured below.

Tat, it makes the costume into something more.

As you can see, I have restrung some of the necklaces from the pictures taken of them months ago, to make them Seppa's and not Ieri's tat. Some bits I ended up not wearing or bringing to the event.

I did pierce Seppa's ears, to personalise the mask; I might add another earring or two. I will need to do more trimming around the inner eyes and the top lip, I found that both of those areas became problematic the longer I wore the mask. I managed almost four hours on my first wearing before I needed 'face-time' ie to get out of the mask and just be.

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Other items that're 'in progress' is a leather belt that's actually made for Seppa; it's longer to accommodate my fat gain and the bulk of the many garment layers to make me look stouter than I am. I don't yet have a photograph of the belt, but I will see about some progress pictures at some point. Galla's Emporium is cooperating with me to build the belt and the tat pictured next.

The inspiration for this particular bit of tat is a black leather strip that had the smooth buttons that I'm re-purposing onto a brown strip of leather. In the picture, is the same strip of leather, but with the buttons and conchos differently placed before deciding which one we'll go with. I'm in consultation with Galla to maybe craft two more strips to go with this one. It does remind me, and others who have seen it, to some Ancient Roman legion groin armour/decoration.

The "vintage" bronze ring is about twenty years, maybe thirty years, in age. I've had the black strap and its buttons for nearly thirty years too, it was a gift from Daedalus Anteros Fortune of Leatherhead Regalia. Anything that I can recycle or salvage from rotting in a box into something that I can wear as part of a character's ensemble, is good.

The straps will hang from the waist belt that I mentioned above. The ring represents the item-of-worth as an ancestral artefact, which is why I've attached it to the longer strap so that it's presented as important and doesn't get lost amongst the gewgaws hanging directly from my belt.

I will soon need to decide which one to make.

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Last item of Seppa's tat for the moment; I need to add the bit of felted wool for the needles to rest in, in order for this antler and leather needle case that Amber Wolf Workshop crafted to be functional. I asked them to make it, inspired by some of the antler and bone needle cases of similar design found on Pinterest. But using the soothing circles-and-dots patterning that AWW often implements on their creations.

Antler, leather, and wire, needle case.

Another item that isn't yet made, but AWW is playing with, and that I'm eager to acquire is a bone whistle-flute; again, inspired by Pinterest and European Ice Age artefacts. If I needed some animal bones for the shaman's costume and character, I might as well make them functional. Imperial Orcs' music tends to be heavy with drums, but I can easily see a bone whistle-flute making a bit extra to the pounding rhythm of percussion instruments.

An ongoing process...

I confess, I still don't have any actual grip on Seppa's personality. This character's costume is far more involved than Ieri's ever was, and I've been working on it for the past few months, which is why I haven't written anything here regarding Seppa's kit. If my dates or sequence is disjointed, it's my memory trying to recall.

Regardless, here's a post to give some more information about the costume and kit.

I'm going to start with the costume test I did the night before the player event in November (which was on Wolfenoot), up until that point, I hadn't actually tried it all on and sat around in it. Yeah, last minute 'aiiiia' indeed.

This ended up changing on the day, but it's the only set of pics that I have.

Some thoughts about it: I'll have to drastically shorten the blue skirt in the picture, but it could work for indoor events that aren't too warm. I ended up not wearing as much as shown in the collage because it was too hot indoors to wear it all. One of the garments sacrificed for the sake of keeping comfortable was for me to discard the blue skirt. However, it does look good with the ensemble, so I won't write it off entirely as it works, though not sure within the Skywise brief.

The warskirt is the remnants of scraps cut to make some of the layers that I'm wearing. I layered and stitched the scrap pieces onto a plain brown panel, created a drawstring channel, took a grater to the ends and edges, and then tossed the panel into the wash. It frayed nicely, but a) it's still too clean; b) it needs more of the grater. The group emblem panel: I painted with white house paint, let it cure for a few days, then stitched the drawstring channel before tossing it into the wash; doing so gave the house paint a kicking, but it helped with the ageing. (I have a secret lurking in the warskirt: there's a simple pocket for a pencil or a pair of claves.)

I also left off the scapular, the fingerless gloves, and the neck scarf in favour of the simple crochet neck gaiter. Again, too hot for all of those layers. It also meant that I was unable to wear the chainmail bracelet, because it is too large around my wrist. I might have to remove several links in order to make it wearable on the wrist. I'm not entirely sure I want to use many chains, as Imperial Orcs generally prefer the Imperial Horse for Loyalty, instead of the Chain, due to their grand/parents generations before emancipation. I have, since the player event, changed the boxers' wraps in that I've removed the Velcro fasteners and will find another way to pin or secure them.

Another note: black face paint layer first, followed by daubs of green, works far better than a brown or green base layer. I don't know why, seeing as the mask is a green-brown thing.

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The following weekend after the player event, I took the warskirt with me to my lace guild's final lace day of 2019, and added some more customisation to the panels.

The Wintermark rune of 'Lann' for Loyalty.

As you can see in this image, the washing machine wonderfully frayed and tattered the fabric scraps. This is another one of those little bits that unless you know it's there or happen to spot it, it's not obvious. The rune is about 5cm or so in size.

The other addition was on the coven's motif panel; I took some glow-in-the-dark machine embroidery thread and started a back-stitch outline around the white paint. My intention is that it will softly glow in the dark at night time; I'm a Day Ritualist, it seemed apropos to the character. 

In the daylight, the stitches aren't too obvious.

I hadn't finished back-stitching around the white paint when I took the following picture, and the thread hadn't much light to charge it. However, the faint green around the edges is the softly glowing thread.

I hope to capture a better image of the glow at some point.

I left this half-finished for quite a while, but then got on with completing the outlines a day or two ago.

This was taken when I picked it up again to finish the outline.

Another close up here of the wing after finishing the back-stitch outline.

The overview of the panel after finishing the back-stitch outlines; it's not noticeable from a distance.

The current panel with its finished outline.

The wing panel needs something more, but I'm waiting and thinking about it in the background. Some chainette fringe is one possibility, it would add some movement to the panel. Another possible option is that I take some of the silvery 'gilet' metal amulets from my belly dance costumes and spray paint the amulets with a bronze or brass colour.

But enough about the war skirt for the moment.

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In between the lace day and completing the outline on the wing panel, I also built this outer hooded coat in flax linen (not the unbreathing environmental hazard rayon/viscose crap, but proper flax linen) lined with dyed-in-my-washing-machine medium-lightweight cotton calico. I haven't finished the bottom hem as I want access to the body to start adding embroidery and decorations.

I can't start the ageing and distressing on the coat until I have the embroidery finished. My ideas for embroidery not only include running stitches at the arms and hood, but also some of the Varushkan Virtue animals, including the spider. However, I have been wearing the coat over my street clothes, to get a feel for its comfort and to start the wearing. I haven't taken a rasp or grater to it yet, those will wait until... yep, the embroidery is further along than it is.

I would like to say, that as confusing as it sometimes got, making the linen hooded coat brought me a sense of pleasure and pride. I made the extra effort to baste which meant things lined up and didn't shift around the way pinning usually does. The extra effort paid off.

Basting the lined hood to the body before machine stitching.

Basting the body lining to the body at the neckline.

Putting this together showed me new methods of lining a garment and basting helped me try out the concepts before locking things into place with machine stitches.

I believe this is one of the sleeves; I like the contrast between the two fabrics, both in colour and texture.

Here's the front, followed by the back, as displayed on my dressmaker's dummy.

Hooded coat front.

Some extra notes about this hooded coat, I purposely shortened the sleeves because I wanted under layers to show. I also made the size "large" to allow me to wear many layers beneath it without constricting my movements. Yet without those extra layers, this coat is almost too large for me. It is also 'Anvil-cut' in length so that it's not wrapping around my ankles and less likely to drag in the field's mud.

Hooded coat back.

The pattern (Simplicity Costumes 8944) is out of print, which is a pity, and I would definitely make it again, in other fabrics, whenever the time comes to start a different character. I can easily imagine this in sari fabrics or in a cotton twill or a medium weight wool. It certainly benefits from a slightly stiffer outer material.

I'll end this post here and start another, as this one's gotten long.

However, another linen garment that I began, but haven't yet finished, and is still awaiting some hand-sewn buttonholes, is a pair of pantaloons/trousers for Seppa. I began these probably in October or November, but I need to refresh my memory on the proper way to do buttonholes by hand. I'll cover that in another post, along with some of Seppa's tat that I'm either working on, or have finished adapting or 'it's adapted enough for now'. I do need to leave something to future upgrades/kit improvements.

Also, my next player event is the Violet Illumination's "Empire Day", which in the real world is happening on the 11th of January, 2020. I hope to have more of the kit ready for that date, and another post with which items I opted to wear for it. I will likely bring all of the garments and then adjust according to weather, hour of the day, and temperature of myself and my environment.