Duchess

It seems like maybe the question to ask is:

What do you think is wrong with the reproductions you've already found?

The Duchess

Often how well a pattern "works" is greatly affected by they type of fabric and thread used to make it.

It'd be interesting to see exactly what people who had trouble used...

The Duchess

Really? I thought it was amazing.

:) To each their own. :) I'll continue to listen to it and see what happens.

The Duchess

Well, I just picked up the new disk yesterday. I have to say that I am a wee bit dissapointed. It lacks the flash and energy of some their other stuff. It feels toned down and overly polished.

The Duchess

On the back of any pattern, should be a list of required supplies along with quantities and suggestions for fabrics.

In general, it's nice to have a sewing maching, some spare needles. Hand needles, straight pins, iron, pattern wheel and paper, scissors.

The Duchess

Yes, Mr. Sparrow, in addtion to a prodigious quantity of witty repartee, possess the ability to time travel. How truely wonderful he is.

The Duchess

Yeah, you can have that, I don't want that.

Actually it was a, possibly obscure, referance to a BBC comedy called the Red Dwarf and it's character "the cat."

The Duchess

The back of my hand to that, so I joined a renaissance festival instead...

The Duchess

whoa... the medicine and lack of sleep is playing tricks on my eyes... for a sec I thought you wrote "so I joined the resistance instead."

Well, I might have done, if there had been one available!

Don't feel to bad. I once spent nearly a month trying to figure out the meaning of a roadside billboard. On it was a picture of a guy in a long tasseled hat driving a jeep. For that length of time I always read the sign as "Feed the weasle", until one day, driving past at a slightly later time of day, I realized the actual words were "Feel the wind in your tassle."

So Viva La Resistance!

The Duchess

Thanks be to you for that Captain!

I've just relocated to Washington, though I'm sure I won't be out here forever. Most of me heart is in the midwest.

The Duchess

That's mine.

This is mine.

OOOoo! That's mine too...

and THAT is definately MINE!

He he.

The Duchess

Hmmm, Stephanie looks a little nervous to me. Must be her first time being exploited...

I thought it was odd too. A few years after that, through the fest I met some other members of that SCA group. Their take on it was the folks in charge were of the more "picky" type. And that perhaps they didn't want the liability of an "unattached" underager hanging around. Who knows...

The Duchess

I tried the SCA once, in Wisconsin, when I was 17. Went to a meeting, talked to a "board" and was told that I was certainly welcome to apply. I could present my research paper with full bibliography/references and a proposed character development at the next months meeting and they would review it and perhaps consider an interview. I could expect a tentative decision on acceptance several months after that.

The back of my hand to that, so I joined a renaissance festival instead...

The Duchess

Jill-

JoAnn Fabrics is like my little guilty pleasure. I go in there and brouse the remenants section and take home loads of fabric with no plans for use. I tell myself "Someday I will have the perfect use for this..." Fortunately, I'm often right!

I was just thinking back and I find most of all my sewing is done with upholstery/decorating fabric. The remenants in this section can be enormous by clothing standards. Often around five yards. Most of my harem pants for belly dancing are shantung silk, I once got seven yards for thirty dollars in a gorgeous purple!

The Duchess

Well-

to anwser the lining question: The simplicity pattern is a costume pattern. It will probably omit such things as linings and facings and all those little details that really make a garment. Though I haven't seen the pattern all laid out so I cannot speak for certain.

As others have mentioned, you have a long list of things for this coat to accomplish, and it might indeed be better to have more than one, that way you can do all you need to your very best satisfaction.

As for materials, I am always a big fan of the upholstery department. Extra wide, exceptionally durable material in a wide range of styles. Carefull inspection of the labels will get you natural fiber material. And a thorough washing and drying before you do any cutting or sewing will usually shrink it up enough that you can launder it normally after the piece is made. I have several long coats I've done this with and it has "suited" me fine.

The Duchess

Great video!

If only I were eight again.

Eight? What are you talking about? I have a quarter century of lego's in a huge wooden chest. You better believe they aren't gathering dust! Little kids don't truely appreciate Lego, they just loose the pieces!

The Duchess

ah, don't listen to him. Call it whatever you like. Though do be advised that the term used often reflects the degree of peoples obsessions.

The Duchess

I really have three sets of clothes. Tribal Belly Dance and pirate/amazon gear and modern.

The over all look of the first two hasn't changed in nearly 10 years. There are still people at MNRF that know who I am because of the clothes I wear. I do change out shirts, skirts, pants as they wear out. I bought a new pair of boots when the first ones died. I add or subtract extras, such as mugs, knives, scarves, flasks or jewerly. But the whole is still the same.

I like the idea of owning well made things that can be worn day after day. So much so that the clothes become a part of a persons identity. It is one of the things that bothers me about modern clothes. They are trash. Junk meant to be worn a few months and discarded. There was no time invested in their construction, no love in their decoration. Just a state of pre-garbage. When I can I purchase custom made items, knowing that if it is just right for me I will most likely wear it for the rest of my life.

When I sew I do not make costumes, I make clothes. Things well sewn and made to last. Things I could comfortably wear and mend, things worth fixing when they tear. To that end I do not own multiple "costumes" or dresses or outfits, just one set of clothes.

The Duchess

And the anwser be: What ever you want!

There aren't any rules about sash lengths or widths. In general ten footers are meant to be wrapped around several times, and leave a good length to hang down . Shorter sashes wrap fewer times and/or have less hanging down. So play around with your fabric and decide which look and style suits you best.

The sash I wear most often actually started out as part of a turban. It is olive green heavy silk, about eleven foot long and one foot wide. It wraps several times and hangs down to my knees. I do have several shorter lengths of fabric that I wear occasionally, depending on what I'm doing. Sometimes having that much "bulk" and loose fabric can get in the way, or even be dangerous.

The Duchess

Obviously I can't spell "HELP".

It could be worse. The last fellow I saw trying to sell plaques had this for the advertisment:

"Rare, Vintage Plagues! Great Prices!"

The Duchess

Get a belt! Then go find something called a "jack strap" or a "mug strap." Those are the things that connect your belt to all the things you want to hang from it. There are several retailers of them on the internet.

The Duchess

The movie isn't really a hybrid of those two books. It picks and chooses scenes and dialogue from all 20 books. In the book "Far Side of the World" Jack and the Surprise have not yet become a Letter of Marque, or privateers. They are sent by the British government to deal with an American privateer who is wrecking Bristish whalers. Along the way Jack takes on Mr. Hollom who woos the gunners wife. All the hand regard Hollom as very bad luck since terrible things continue to happen to the ship throughout the cruise. Eventually the Gunner bludgeons both his wife and Mr. Hollom to death, he doesn't commit suicide. The Americans are portrayed in a very bad light. The lie, cheat and steal throughout the book. At the end through some very odd circumstances the Americans as well as Jack and a party of Suprises end up stranded on an island.

It isn't until Jack returns to England and takes some ill offered advice that he get arrested for "rigging the stockmarket" and is then out of the service and the Surprise is also sold out.

So the movie is very good. True to the feeling and the characters, but not to the story.

The Duchess

If I've posted to this thread before my apologies. I'm not willing to take the time to go through each page and check if I've posted my views on Tattoos.

I happen to have an unusual problem when it comes to tattoos. No, not medical, but mental of sorts. I tend to have a difficult time making up my mind in some situations, and half of the time regret the descision I made [Not in a serious way like picking a car or a house, but things like I have to decide between one of two piratical video games and pick one that I didn't like, and would have liked the other one.] I'm afraid that I'll go to get a real tattoo, decide where to put it, and after it's been done I'll think "I should have gotten this placed over here, and not where it is." or "I don't think I like this tattoo. I should have gotten the other one I liked instead"

So, in light of that, what I do is get temporary tattoos. If it turns out I don't like the location of one, then I remove it with rubbing alcohol and reapply a new one at a different location. I've got a new one that I saw at the Texas State Fair, and might be getting quite a few more if I can find one like it, and once I find the right spot for it, I'll be applying one on when I go out in garb for a weekend (at a faire or pirate event).

Morick Towain

Captain of the Pirate Brethren of Texas

That's actually a good idea! The parlor in me home town willl make a temporary tattoo of your design, so you can try it in different locations. Where it around for while, see if you like it.

I think there is ink that you can buy for your home printer that is transferable, so you could do this by yourself too.

O course, my tattoo guy also confessed that if he felt people were getting ink for the wrong reason, just bad designs, or being bloody stupid, he'd jack the price up, hoping to deter them...

The Duchess

The books top my list of all time favorites. Patrick O'Brian had a way with words unequaled by any modern writer. An amazing ability to portray a character, faults, glories, feelings, motivations, everything. And not just one character but shipfulls of characters. Not to mention the man has a prodigious vocabulary. There are words that I needed an unabridged dictionary to look up!

The movie while not at all true to the story line, is very true to the feeling and characters of the books.

The Duchess

O'course keep us informed with pictures!

The Duchess