The Post Birka Post: Mostly Event Pictures

Well by now I'm sure you're wondering "Fortune, how did Birka go?" and "Fortune, do you ever want to sew again after Birka?" 

Well, gentle reader, Birka went well, and I did eventually want to sew again. 

Lady Fortune St Keyne as Lotso from Toy Story 3

Here is my finished dress. 

I even smelled like strawberries (a character feature of the villainous Lotso). Thank you Bath and Body works and your Fresh Strawberries Hand Cream. 

The fashion show went amazingly well. We had over 40 entries and many of them for the Pixar Queen's Challenge. Lady Syele runs the challenge and does a wonderful job. We had some very tough judges (Lady Elena, Mistress Albreda, Mistress Amelia Venture, and her Majesty and her advisors) and the wonderful Mistress Alys Mackyntoich volunteered to MC. 

My household members Gritta won an award for her amazing Crannach "Ham" (she's been in the SCA less than a year locally!) and Lady Bianca Anguissola won an award for her late period "Bo Peep". The overall winner was the most amazing WALL-E early Tudor by Lady Astrid. 

I somehow never got a full picture of Partysaurus Rex in his tunic by himself, but I will share construction pictures. Tho and I are still working on how to get his pants to be comfortable and stay up. 

Pictures of the event: 

Most of House Strangewayes: Lady Bianca Anguissola, Lady Cecily Windham, Gritta,
Lady Elvira Ballesteros, Mistress Iulia Agricola, Lord Fearghas Randonneur,
Lady Lysken die Wayer, Lady Syele von Heidelberg, Lady Fortune St Keyne,
Erdene Qadijin, Jacquemine van Bel, Lord Thothreker Ogaefa
Jeremy (Mr. Syele)

And we've reached punchy o'clock.
Lady Simona bat Leon, Lady Syele von Heidelberg, Lady Lysken die Wayer
Lady Fortune St Keyne, Gritta, Lady Elvira Ballesteros, Jacquemine van Bel, Lady Bianca Anguissola
Lord Hermankyn, Lord Thothreker Ogaefa
And once again: Jeremy. Who loves our darling Syele. 

Lady Syele ran the fashion show and had a lovely German gown that looked like Jesse from Toy Story, her loving and patient husband Jeremy had a Buzz Lightyear houppelande. 

Lady Simona and her husband Hermankyn were the green claw machine aliens from Toy Story

Let's just say family picture time this year was chaotic. 

We also have a tradition of taking ankle shots as a household: 

Mistress Iula refuses to show her ankles as she is wearing her work boots.
Mistress Iulia is a spoilsport of the first order. 

The other tradition we ladies indulge in are selfies in the executive ladies washroom by the Armory: 

Simona and I 

Selfie time!

 Actually walking in the fashion show:

I borrowed Master Ekkehardt's cane to complete the look. 

And the twirl!

All in all it was yet another wonderful Birka!

 

I'm Lady Fortune, and I'm a hugger!

So, as we reviewed in this post, the Birka Queen's Challenge for 2016 is PIXAR.

My garb will be based off the following character from Toy Story 3:



Lotso Huggin' Bear!

He smells like strawberries!

You see, I've had the length of fuchsia damask in my stash for a couple years and I keep passing it when sewing other projects and I realized when this was announced this is what that fabric was waiting for.

If you haven't seen Toy Story 3, it's wonderful. If you're in your late twenties early thirties you might want to watch it with a box of tissues. I saw it at the Leicester Drive-in with friends, and we all got teary. Just a minivan full of weepy late 20-somethings. Move along...

And if you HAVE seen Toy Story 3 you know the secret: Lotso is the villain. The strawberry-scented evil overlord of Sunnyside Daycare Center.

That's more like the real Lotso.

The dress style I have come to favor are the extremely low necked dresses of the Venetian region from 1515-1530 or so. Which is perfect with his white belly, it's the the low scoop front of one of those gown.




Portrait of a Married Couple - Lorenzo Lotto
c. 1523-24
The Hermiage, St Petersburg





The Seduction - Giovanni Cariani
c. 1515-1516
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Three Courtesans and Four Gentleman - Giovanni Cariani
c 1515
Private Collection

The dress in white here is what I'm basing my preliminary sketch on for the most part. See here for the finished product!



I'm unsure if I'll do the mallet right yet...

I've also created a strawberry shaped pouch to wear that I'm beading in tiny gold seed beads and embroidering the green leaves.

I based the pattern off of a the Strawberry Treat Box on Oh Happy Day!



It's so cute!



The pattern

I patterned out the pouch on red wool, left over from Viking Sailor Moon. A total of 5 panels.


The strawberry takes shape!

 The felt is all one piece, I just did a small whip stitch on the edges of the panels to give it some shape and body. This way the panels know where to fold when the top drawstring is closed.


The leaves!

 The leaves were drafted by trial and error. I liked the layered look of the different leaves.



What a finished panel will look like.

As we all know, I get impatient and have to see how things will look when done. I'm not 100% sold on the gold blanket stitching, but it does give some definition to the leaves.

I'm very excited for this challenge.

Tho and the dinosaur- a tale of joy and serendipity

Our gracious and wise queen Caoilfhionn inghean Fhaolain (KEE-lin, it's gaelic, ignore the letters they added for posterity) has issued a garb challenge for Market Day at Birka for the East Kingdom.

Lady Syele von Heidelberg announced the challenge on the East Kingdom Facebook on October 5th:

"Greetings, people of the East! Her most royal Majesty Caoilfhionn has issued a Garb Challenge to the good gentles attending the Market Day at Birka. She desires to see the skill with needle and thread of the populace in interpreting the theme, "Characters of Pixar."

If you must, turn yourselves Inside Out in order to find the perfect Toy, Story book, or other accessory to adequately display your Incredible interpretation of the challenge. Even if it seems you might hit a creative Wall-e, or you are afraid Monsters, Inc-luding laurels, squire brothers, and apprentice siblings may scorn you, you must be Brave, keep your chin Up, and stay strong by eating nourishing Ratatouille.

Although it is a Bug's Life out there for those artisans who think taking on challenges is like Finding Nemo, those wounds inflicted by pins, needles, and shears will soon turn to sCars of pride and victory!"

Full disclosure: House Strangewayes, my household, runs the fashion show at Birka and we're stupidly fond of puns.

Most of us are choosing to go with characters from Toy Story:

Myself as 1530's Italian Lotso Huggin' Bear (I'll make a separate post)
Syele as Saxon Jessie
Jeremy (Mr. Syele) as Polish Buzz Lightyear
Elvira as Crannach Sid
Bianca as 1560s Italian Bo Peep
Erdene as Mongolian Slink
and
Thothreker as Viking Rex

In this post I'm going to talk about Thothreker Ogaefa, or as we call him Tho. Tho is our resident viking. He's a simple guy who chose his persona by the strict criteria of what era would allow him to wear pants.

He doesn't sew, I'm making him an outfit fit for a King... well, a Rex.


Rex the lovable T-Rex from Toy Story


Now how do you interpret this into an outfit without it looking super-cheesy?


That's a lot of look.

Well, he needs a caftan, and a new tunic and probably some nice matching pants. Maybe, if we're ahead of shedule I'll make him a hat too.



Sketch for Tho's Birka outfit. 

The key here is going to be finding the right fabric that says "Dinosaur" without saying "GREEN AS ALL GET OUT".

So I went fabric shopping at my favorite store the Auburn Fabric Outlet where everything is $2.99 a yard!

I scored some amazing olive and tan wool, some green matelasse* and some lighter yellow rayon for the under tunic.

*Matelasse is a term for quilted upholstery fabric, not really suited for anything other than doublets or the occasional surcoat. It is usually quite stiff. A friend once made the mistake of ordering 8 yards from a home decor fabric website because she had never heard the term and thought it was a brand name of a designer.

The green diamond matelasse, yellow rayon and olive and tan wool diamond weave

This is another lesson in colors in pictures vs natural light. The first bolt is much brighter, the rayon more yellowy and the diamond weave looks brown here but is a distinctly olive green color in person.

Same fabric, different lighting.

I'm not sure which for the caftan I'll use, I'm going to let Tho look at them. I determined Rex's stomach is really a light yellow, not a green by looking at several screenshots.

Speaking of screenshots. Through my extensive Google Image Search research I discovered:



A Pixar short where Rex the dinosaur dresses like a viking!!!!!

How much more perfect could that get?!?!?!

We're trying to convince Iulia Agricola that we need R-E-X glass beads or maybe T-H-O glass beads. I did some research on period viking men's jewelry and found that they did not do the swags of beads, but occasionally grave finds would have 1-3 beads on a cord! Iulia is still needing some convincing but here's hoping.

Stay tuned for progress on Partysaurus Tho!