life in the garden

I try to find the flowers and new growth in the garden to remind me that even though the wildlife eat most things there are a few plants that continue to grow in my garden and attract other animals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

eyelet button hole

I have been learning how to make an eyelet button hole to go on the sewn armour I made for my son to use while he does rapier . I wanted to keep the jacket fairly authentic, even though sewing is not what I am good at . The jacket will have ties to fasten it, not buttons. This first hole was too small to let the cord through so I made larger ones and they seem to be working well, so far.

five finger loop weaving

What to do on a quiet weekend. WEll at our house we learn how to do the five loop viking finger  weaving. Now that I am working on the Viking tunic for my son to wear at the  medieval society he thought he would like a belt for it so we had a go at finger braiding. This is similar to other braiding I have done except that you keep a loop at the end of the yarn and use you finger to pull threads through these loops to create the braid. We started off by using my hand spun but I think it was a little hard to separate and keep then tension tight. We later tried commercial yarn and this was a lot easier to use, but not authentic for the viking period of course. It was lots of fun and I want to try some more.

 

 

 

 

 

Viking tunic

 

It is always the best feeling when you finally get to cut your weaving off.

It feels like the weaving of this Viking tunic took forever but I think that is only because the research into creating an authentic replica tunic form the viking era took such a long time and then of course the winding on and threading up of the 5 metre warp did take a while to do. BUT here we are all done and even with a nice grey band running down it. Next is the cutting out and then the sewing up. I  have been researching the traditional seams from this period but I am a little nervous about the material fraying at the edges if the seam is not done well enough.