Warskirts

Warskirt

I've been unsuccessfully tossing ideas back and forth for months, with no leads, no brilliant ideas, nothing. Then, a few weeks ago, someone else asked about them and someone else posted a picture of a section of their warskirt.

*heavy breathing intensifies*

This thing, this right here...

Inspiration! Not my picture, not my warskirt.

I asked them about the metal and how they did it. Tin snips and sheet metal and a drill for the holes.

I feel like a fool, they make it sound so...obvious.

Fast forward to the past seven days or so, and I've picked up some sheet metal, got some new sheet metal cutting attachments for my Dremel, because my grip strength just isn't what it once was, and a workbench that's awaiting construction... yeah, side note on that, the manufacturer didn't tap the holes used for the tightening screws, so said holes are stripping the screws as I attempt to install them. *grump*

But I'm hoping that once we get the workbench sorted out, that I can clamp the metal onto it and play with the Dremel attachments, and hey, if I don't cut straight, it's ok, it'll add character to the plates. Bonus is that I learn how to do it for myself, and if some future moment, that I do need to cut straight, I'll be better equipped than just going at it cold.

Plans:

Bash the cut pieces to dent them, also grind off the rough and raw edges, gouge the plates a little, then stain with some corrosion agent and maybe a wash of nearly-black paint, then rivet or stitch to a piece of cow leather.

What's Your Game?

I attended this kit fair, and Armchair Armoury was there, I did get ten of those half-circle plates from them. Shortly after that, Galla showed me how I might layer them. So I might have two pieces of plates to wear; one for the belt, the other might end up on a shin or forearm.

Remember these?

We'll see what happens.

A rant, feel free to scroll past this post!

A moan about clothes...

I'm discovering that I dislike my current gi trousers for Seppa, partly because the pelvic depth on them is enormous, so if I wear the crotch where I want it, the top of the trousers are almost to the nipples. Yuck. If I wear the top of the trousers where they're comfortable, ie low down beneath the belly, the crotch is down near my knees. Double yuck.

My raw silk coat is too small to wear over the current tunic.

Oh, and that tunic... I loathe the boat neckline, and the too-wide sleeves; been too unmotivated to fix either of these issues. I like the fabric, the rest of it is perfect, it's just the damn neckline and sleeves.

The coven panel, too enormous. Take a hint from me: when making one's group/banner/coven/sect symbol, measure and trial its location. What works on someone taller or larger, probably won't if one's smaller or shorter.

Fabric scrap 'warskirt' yeah, it's not working... I think I will need to go back to playing with leather. I don't know why it's not working. I don't even know if it's necessary. *flails*

OK, enough already.

Projects in motion

I need to make the most of my classes so that I can use the big tables and bright lighting for such projects as Seppa's panel coat.

Yep, it's the Folkwear Tibetan Panel Coat.

Faded, pigment-dyed yellow cotton twill that's probably twenty years old, and Indian indigo and resist-dye cotton that's probably two years old. The fabric weights are unequal, so I might end up backing the indigo fabric with some blue pigment-dyed twill that I bought the same time as the yellow.

I will be lining this coat with the blue twill.

For the shoulder facings/"fancy" fabric, I want to do some boro-inspired shoulder pieces.

The indigo fabric, right side - top, wrong side - bottom.

I have some sashiko threads in the right colours; I will need to make the patches and scraps for the satchel, as it's too white and clean.

I need to make a small drawstring coin purse in fabric to hold my coins. The bigger leather pouch allows coins to escape; this will not do.

Small brass buckles

I'm going to have some forearm pieces made in leather, these buckles are intended to help secure those bracers to my arms.

I've lost my train of thoughts, so, I'll close this one for now and get on with other things.

Empire Player Event: "The Little Mother's Ball"

Photography stuff

Very last minute, but on Wednesday, I received an invitation to attend the Little Mother's Ball ("LMB") as a photographer. There were openings where people had to cancel or whatever, so I was delighted to attend in general, but also to challenge me and my fourteen-year old camera kit with indoor, low-light shooting. Note, I don't have the 50mm fixed/prime lens, so extra challenges there, as the lowest f-stop my lenses allow is f5.6. I'm also grateful that my hands are relatively steady, and I can hold a 1/30 second shutter opening with almost no shake.

Thankfully, there was a second photographer with photographer kit almost as limited as mine (I think theirs was better), which means I now have a few clearer images of Skywise Seppa.

Role play stuff

I got to play up some of the shaman aspects as I handed over Ieri's red canvas herb bandolier to Florina, with me shouting back at my ancestors who were telling me to not hand over the bandolier. I also had a couple of fellow orcs to interact with and Seppa didn't have to feel quite so anxious and isolated. Redhand Gezzar and Stormcrow Rork were my fellow Imperial Orcs.

The ball itself consisted of a buffet feast, bards of various nations, dancing, trading, and an auction of various goods to raise funds for the Empire's orphans. The location: Sarvos, the League.

I showed my nails, which had the pinkies done in sparkly varnish, the rest were plain, I said that it was the Freeborn children doing my nails. My use of gold eyeliner also provoked a little bit of attention from the Freeborn in attendance. Seppa's earrings also drew some attention, as one of them has a tiny tassel on it.

Oh, and I rode in the taxi in my mask; the driver asked to take my picture. No idea what he ended up doing with it...

The location that I listed for this post is where on Earth the event took place.

Some pictures

A selfie taken before the taxi arrived.

I'm slowly figuring out Seppa's appearance.

I'm grateful to Samantha Carrington for their pictures of Skywise Seppa. I did trim their photos to exclude other participants, partly because I was trying to focus on Seppa's kit, and also to minimise me accidentally sharing someone's face who might object to being on my blog.

Photographer: Samantha Carrington
I did trim the original photo to focus upon my character.

I usually don't mind sitting on floors, it challenges my flexibility and works my body. I put up my hood because the neck gap was bugging me. I really need to come up with a better neck cover that won't overheat me.

Photographer: Samantha Carrington
I did trim the original photo to focus upon my character.

I confess, I like seeing my characters from the back and sides, because I always wonder how those areas appear.

Photographer: Samantha Carrington
I did trim the original photo to focus upon my character.

Conclusions

I lasted well with my mask, but I did need a face time about 3/4 of the way through the five hour event. I am struggling to keep my hair from peeking out of the eye holes. Yes, I'm growing my top-scalp hair so that I can pin/braid it back, but it's too short for either restraint. I saw Redhand Gezzar using a wig sock/cap, so I might have to look for one for myself. Also, I physically struggle to get the mask back on when I've taken it off for a face time; it's like the neck shrinks or my head swells, I need to discover why this is so.

I'm starting to think that I need to redo my coven symbol, to a smaller size, and also stitch the panel to the coat. The current one is too large for me.

Also, I went with two layers again, the tunic and the coat; I started with the scapular and skirt as well, but quickly discarded it, as the hall was so warm.

I'll do another post about costume, but I wanted to make a post and include pictures of me in costume. I'm also kinda pleased that my glasses disappeared in these photos.

Seppa's coin pouch

Here's the promised post about the belt pouch for coins.

I caved and purchased Tandy Leather's 'Winsor Belt Bag' kit; which comes with naked leather precut and hole-punched pieces, some black waxed thread, a large-eye needle, and a short black leather thong. I discarded the black thread and leather thong, because I didn't want that much black in Seppa's kit.

It does take some tricky counting to correctly make the bag. Also, we came to the conclusion that double-needle sewing method would be quicker and easier. Also, the thong wants to be longer if one wants to have some beads hanging from the thong.

About the size of the bag:

It's not so small that I can't stick my hand in there to fish out coins, of which, I'm glad to say, Seppa now has a few. I sold the one dose of liao that I had, for a loss, but I wanted to have a few coins for player events.

The pouch's tooled flap.

The flap carries several symbolic gestures and marks. The Varushkans have animals to represent the Virtues of the Way; from those animals, one can represent them as 'runes'. The rune on the flap is the Spider, who represents both Vigilance and Wisdom. The seven little tooled marks along the bottom are the Seven Virtues; this isn't how PD or other players represent the Seven Virtues, but I opted to express it this way.

Once Galla dyed the leather, I had a flash of thought, and grabbed her pear-shader tool and randomly bashed the dye-damp leather with the shader to add just a fraction more surface texture to the flap.

The pre-cut and pre-punched pieces, after we'd dyed them with saddle brown.

The saddle brown dye has stiffened the thin leather, but I suspect that once I start using it, that it will soften some.

I appear to be rather fond of this leather stamp.

The leather button for the pouch; it's the first thing stitched, and I had used the heavy waxed black thread to attach it. That's about when I decided I didn't want to use the black thread and switched to my brown thread.

A clever use of stamps to make a tiny eye.

We used 'mahogany' dye for the tooled leather portions of the bag.

The eye of Vigilance.

The image above shows where I diverged from the kit: I used dark brown waxed thread instead of the heavier black waxed thread that came in the kit.  I also used a brown thong instead of the black thong that came with the kit.

Belt loop, flap, and gussets. I put my PID on the belt loop in case the bag goes for a walk.

The next step involved the back of the bag; where we attach the belt loop and the flap at the same time. This is followed by securing the bottom of the belt loop to the back of the bag. After that, I sewed half the gussets to the bag back.

The blue mark is where my player identity number is, which is why it's covered in this picture.

Bag front, and the pleats with the tricky-for-me counting.

We returned to the bag front and here is where that tricky counting takes place; thank you, Galla, for helping me figure that out, because I would have gotten that wrong and it would have looked all wonky, and that would have annoyed me.

Pleated leather, that's new for me.

This is what the inside of the bag front looks like with the pleat. If I were to tweak the pattern, I'd stitch a 'binding' to cover the top of the pleat to protect it from wear.

Next stop, the gussets.

After the pleats to the bag front, I stitched the front and back together and through the gussets, which at first glance looks wrong, but as one has to return the way one came, it does balance out.

Gusset, oh gusset.

I heartily recommend reading through the instructions several times, and scrutinise the illustrations. They really were helpful.

Before I turned the bag right-side out.

It did take a little bit of effort and a dose of patience to get the bag turned; however, brute force is unnecessary.

The bag mouth... almost sounds like a monster, 'bag mouth'.

Here it is with the stitching complete. The bag is still slightly damp from the dyes, but I think that helped with the manipulation required to make the bag.

Side view!

Overall, it went together fairly quick, even with me occasionally having to remove stitches or restart a section.

Thanks, Tandy Leather.

I decided to take a picture of the completed pouch with the kit picture to illustrate how they compared.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the kit.

The combination of soft leather and tooling leather works well. I still want to try the bag body in deerskin or elk (if such should come available). I would also use a slightly thicker tooling leather for the flap, as the carving knife almost went through the flap's leather. I would double-strand my thread as it seemed just a little too thin as a single strand.

I do like how the tooling worked out, thank you, Galla!

Spider.

I'm calling the pouch 99% complete, because I haven't put the beads onto the thong. Otherwise, it is complete and ready to go.

Leather belt work, the result

This past Thursday, I got together with Galla's Emporium to finish dyeing the belt. We also made a belt pouch for Seppa's coins or other small bits.

I digress, this post is supposed to be about the belt; the pouch is another post in a future date, come back if one wants to read about it.

Seppa's belt:

As one knows, we had tooled the belt with the twisting ribbons altered to fit in the width of the new belt and cleaned it up to make it easier to carve on future projects. We spattered some dyes across the leather, and dropped some tools on it to divot and ding the leather to give it that rustic effect. It wasn't completely finished, but it was sufficient for the time being, as I had two player events to get through before we could have another leatherworking session.

That's better.

We used a saddle brown dye over the top of it, and rubbed it into all the skipped areas, and allowed it to pool in the tooling to help emphasise them. The saddle brown also softened the black and red dyes we previously smeared over the belt. I'm satisfied with the result. We also dyed the sides and back, to help seal the leather a little bit more.

One knows I couldn't show off the pouch too.

I'll need to strike the belt against a boulder a few times to soften it, and rub in some beeswax, but the belt is otherwise ready to go.

Where's My Home, pt 2

Another player, who can't make as many summits as he wants to, asked for IC-mail (IC = in-character). I offered Seppa as someone to penpal with, as Seppa's in the Brass Coast for now. Send in the head of my coven, who informs me that a portion of the Winter Sun legion is helping the Freeborn in Kahraman and now I have a much better excuse for schlepping through part of the winter in the Brass Coast. Thank you, lovely!

So to amend what I say about myself when I'm at another player event, is that I'm helping the Freeborn protect their lands, and more importantly, their wealth, from marauding barbarians...

...As well as staying warm in the south, because Skarsind's a bit too cold.

I might see if someone wants to be my kin; as an extra bit of RP. But must get through E1 and see how I fare. SQUIRREL!

By the way, the history I had in my head, involved me growing up with my parents. I had forgotten that Imperial Orcs tend to send their offspring away to foster in other legions/groups. But I still think that my parents instilled a bit of bigotry and distrust of humans before I was fostered... or maybe my parents' fears were such that they didn't send me away for fostering and I've been working to break out of their conditioning since leaving them at my majority.

Wait, that sounds like my RL. Oopsie!

Might still work though. I'll have to think about whether I want to bring that ugliness into my character. I like to think that Seppa's sober, but still capable of a laugh and the occasional thrumming, thundering dance party, and capable of being around humans, without a meltdown. Courage!

"What's Your Game" kit fair haul & Night Before the Storm

This past weekend was interesting; I spent some time trying to help at Eversley and getting used to the site. Then there was the player event, "Night Before the Storm" set in either Segura or Kahraman (I will have to enquire to clarify which, I'm hoping it's Kahraman) of the Brass Coast.

Going with the notion that Seppa's spending time down in the Brass Coast, I mentioned this in an FB post, and was delighted to find that some of Seppa's legion and banner, the Winter Sun, is in Kahraman this season, helping the Freeborn with... something, I'm not sure, but we apparently have orcish troops there, so I'll incorporate that into Seppa's recent history. It also explains why I have no idea what other Skywise are up to, as we're apart until Winter Solstice (aka 'E1).

Related, was someone else's discussion about magic and mage armour, and how casting magic by orcs is tied to ancestors and objects-of-worth. So now I need to have a think.

As it is, I kinda enjoyed myself at the player event, and early the next morning, decided to go to the What's Your Game kit fair in Gloucester.

Fox, rabbit, horse...

In the above image is most of my haul from the kit fair. It includes a vintage fox stole from Amber Wolf Workshop; the fox is a Virtue animal for Ambition. I intend to fix it onto the bandoleer so the fox drapes over my left shoulder.

Metal armour pieces

The metal scales in the above, plus the Winter Sun medallion, came from Armchair Armoury. One of them is a fellow Skywise coven member, so talking to them helped me a fair bit with understanding some of orc costume a little bit better.

It's actually made of resin.

Now I need to decide where to locate the Winter Sun banner medallion and the metal scales on Seppa's kit.

The horse tooth gave me ideas.

The rabbit furs and wooden spoon came from Chow's Emporium. The crown pin is from PD as an IC (in-character) pin for Empire. The horse's tooth came from Amber Wolf Workshop.

Going back to ancestor items as magical foci, I'm wondering if I can incorporate the horse's tooth into it somehow.

The bone knife is a LARP-safe coreless weapon for throwing or roleplay from Epic Armoury sold by LarpInn. I'll need to get a sheath for it.

I also found Seppa's weapon from Eldritch; I like this style of mace, and the blue wrapping fits within the coven's colour scheme.

Also known as "Listen to the Ancestors!"

Overall, a good haul. Roll on LARPCon and the next player event, the Symposium of the Drowned.

Distracted other bits...

Oh and the embroidered mirror eye I put on Seppa's hooded coat sleeve? It glows greenish in the dark!

I worked in some stains on the coat by chopping rhododendrons, carrying pieces of lumber, and trying to maintain a frontier stove, whilst at Eversley.

Here're the patches all together; well, except for the white pillowcase one. Need to add more.

Inspired by Japanese boro patchwork and stitching, not sashiko.