16th century ornamentation

From lightsabers and jedi it's back to the 16th century. Today I had the joy of reading an original manuscript from the year 1520. The texts have been transcribed and are available in a book frm 1997, but I was really interested in the original for some other reasons. As an historical recreator I was curious about the ornamentation of the script, since this is a book that was made in Sweden in 1520 it would give a lot of information on style and elements. In the printed book there is also a note that there is a recipe in the original, but since that is more of a scribble they hadn't included that.

You are not allowed to take photos of the original, but I tried to copy the designs by hand. The book was a very expensive items, it's made from vellum with illuminated golden initials. Still not all illuminations are finished, and a lot of the elements surrounding the golden intitials are quite uneven and look almost hastily done.

The most common element was this, that I called the snowdrop.It's not always mirrored, they are sometimes just upright and they also some times have four stems, with two in each direction and all of them of different height. After the stems it's usually three horizontal lines and it ends with a Z lying down. Sometimes it's just two horizontal lines before the Z.

Sometimes the snowdrop has a more solid part at the top and on the larger ones the tip of the solid part is sometimes filled with ink. It occurs facing in both directions.

On one page there was this little simple scrolling element. I added the top and bottom straight lines to help me draw th scroll, it wasn't there in the manuscript.

I feel really inspired by these ornaments, and I will definitely see if I can incorporate them in my 1520s court gown project somehow.

As for the recipe, well unfortunately my reading of 16th century handwriting isn't the best, and unlike most of the text this looked liked something that was just scribbled down on an available piece of paper. It is a list of things that were eaten during the Walpurgis celebrations. Unless the recipe actually calls for "porgs", which I find unlikely, I just couldn't make out anything except that you should finish it off with saffron. To the dish with the recipe they also had one long pig and one little pig.

Under the recipe there is a list of other foodstuffs, which also gives an insight in the household. The list contains

Cod, herring and stock fish, pork, beer (two kinds), butter (two kinds) bread (two kinds) and spirit vinegar.

The separation of the foodstuff gives a view of the first part, where you have saffron and pigs (probably meaning fresh meat and not salted pork) where for the feast and the noble family, while the other list is made up of simpler food that presumable was consumed as everyday food, and some of it probably by the servants as well. The separation of two different kinds of bread, butters and beers is likely a separation of the quality of the items, where the noble family's food was of the higher quality while servants had to make do with food of a lesser quality.

Finding a lightsaber for a jedi costume

I feel very wishy-washy right now when it comes to costume projects. I'm slowly working on Daisy, planning a new start on the 1520's court gown, and now I'm looking for lightsabers for my future jedi. The reason why I'm looking for lightsabers is that a friend of mine is getting ready to order one for his costume, and it would be nice if we could combine the shipping costs. I still haven't decided, but I am pretty sure what I want, but I have also discovered that there is really a jungle out there. Doing your research is important, but I would like to write down what I have found out so far, so that maybe prospective lightsaber buyers can skip the first steps I have taken to come to this conclusion. It's important to say though that with one exception I have not tried any of the lightsabers, I'm just going from what I can read online. I have also not contacted any of the creators, so I don't know their shipping costs or if they ship globally. I know at least for Sweden that after the shipping, import taxes and custom fees the end price is usually around double the price of the actual item.

So you want to buy a lightsaber?

The best source on information for anything about lightsabers, and where to buy them is Sabersourcing - a great website all about lightsabers. This post is just a little tidbit compared to the information you can find there.

First of all I will list a number of webshops where you can buy lightsabers. This in no way a complete or ranked list, but these are shops where it's easy to just go in, choose a lightsabre, pay and then wait for it to arrive. It is always a good idea to reach out if there is a local 501st garrison, Rebel Legion base or Saber Guild temple, since they probably know of more local producers that can make lightsabers. This is especially good if you are outside the US and want to avoid importing your lightsaber due to shipping and customs.

Ultrasabers
Saberforge
Parks Sabers
Korbanth Sabers
KR Sabers (UK)
Ultimate Works
Pachstore (Hong Kong)
Electrum Sabers (Canada)
Vader's Vault
Kyberlight
Sabertrio (Malaysia)

RebelChumps is a great youtube channel with reviews of different lightsabers. Here is their rundown of 7 of the above sellers. I highly recommend seeing this one first before researching more info.

1. Do you want an exact replica of a lightsaber from the films or games, or do you want your own personalized saber?

I'm personally looking for a personalized saber, so my experience here comes from helping a friend finding a saber for Qui-Gon Jinn. Sabers for identified characaters, not just generic background characters, tend to be more expensive than the most basic sabers. They are also usually more detailed than the cheapest models of basic lightsabers. Due to copyright reasons and other legalities the sabers that are modelled after specific characters are usually called something else. If it's actually called Luke Skywalker lightsaber, then the store is probably located in China. Darth Vader lightsabers are usually called something like the "graflex"; councillor or guardian can mean Obi-Wan or Qui-Gon Jinn, Starkiller can be Kylo Renn and so on. The biggest sellers all have variations on sabers that are inspired by specific characters, but they might not be exact replicas. It can also be a real challenge to find lightsabers for lesser characters, like Qui-Gon Jinn or Mace Windu. They are made in smaller batches, or runs, and when they are sold out you need to wait for the next production run.

2. What are you going to do with your lightsaber?

Do you want to hang it on the wall, just hold it up for photos or do you want to duel with other lightsaber users? Heavy duty duel sabers are usually less detailed and the blade can be dimmer, since the thicker walls of a heavy duty duel blade makes it less transparent so the light doesn't shine through as well. On the other hand it can really stand up to a beating. There is a lot of talk about stunt sabers, and they are just that. Simple hilts with blades that you can use for fighting,but no sound.

3. What is your budget?

Having looked around the different shops it seems as if you can get an empty hilt for around $60-100, a simple saber with blade but no sound for $120-150, a slightly more detailed saber with blade and simple sound for $200-250 and a detailed saber with a lot of sound from $300. A character saber usually starts at the $300 mark, and a lot of them are priced in the $400-800 range.

4. How much customization do you want?

Some manufacturers only offers a specific hilt, even if they can have a lot of different hilts to choose from. Kyberlight has a base hilt, and then you can buy a lot of sleeves, pommels and emitters that you can mount yourself to create a more unique saber. Saberforge has probably the largest inventory of lightsabers and parts that you can combine. They also have an ASP process, where you pick the parts you want to use and then have them combined into a unique saber. They also have the option of powder coat colours and wraps with a lot of textures and colours. As soon as you start adding more customization the price goes up though, a powder coat costs $75 for example. Of the mentioned manufacturers Parks Saber only do replicas of film sabers and Electrum sabers only do their own designs, but a with some options when it comes to colours and details of the sabers..

5. Do you want a specific blade colour and sound or be able to change?

Some of the producers, like Ultrasabers and Saberforge, let you pick a specific colour on your blade. Some, like Kyberlight, have a set of different colours in the blade and you can switch with a button on the hilt, and some like Electrum Sabers let you decide the colour yourself with the help of their app. The same goes for the sound of the saber, with options from none to very customizable. Some manufacturers also offers dayblades as an extra. Dayblades are coloured blades that makesit easier to see the lightsaber even in daylight.

6. LED or neo-pixel

Image from Sabersourcing

Now we are going into details, but here is a quote from Chris Anderson on the Rebel Legion forums.

The most affordable options have in-hilt LED modules where you insert a hollow blade with diffusion material inside to achieve a fully illuminated look.
Neopixel is currently top of the line for blades and being that it uses a flexible RGB LED strip inside the blade it offers the cool scrolling effect (as seen in the movies) and other awesome effect for blade lockup and blaster deflections. These blades are also sturdy enough to handle light to moderate dueling and choreography. Trooping with these blades is a breeze. And people love the brightness and the blade effects.

The LED are sturdier and cheaper than the neo-pixel blades, but the neo-pixels look the best.

To sum it all up

Before this post gets too long I'm going to give a quick rundown on some things that I have picked up about the different manufacturers. Once again I want to say that I have no personal experience with them, this is just what I've seen from their shops and some comments online.

Saberforge - largest selection, may start out cheap, but when you add sound and such they end up in the $300 range. Apparently a bit of hit and miss with quality of the electronics and customer service. The longest delivery times for items in stock.

Ultrasaber - great sabers for duelling. They have sacrificed some style over sturdiness and the Ultrasabers have the largest dimensions. Great if you have big hands and is tall, might feel unproportional if you are smaller. Don't use the cheapest sound option.

Kyberlight - Their base hilt is a bit boring, so you need to add some parts if you want to customize it. Lifetime guarantee on the blade. If you are going to order more than one saber they have packs with two or four sabers that are cheaper than if you buy them individually.

VadersVault - the producer that all other sabers are compared to. Really top class.

Electrum Sabercraft - they have some unique features like the touch switch, instead of a button, to turn the saber on, and that you can play around with sound and light through their app.

Presenting Princess Daisy

I posted earlier that one of my plans of the year is to make Princess Daisy from the Super Mario universe. The idea was born on the way home from NärCon and definitely inspired by woodsling's Luigi.

My favorite Daisy outfit is her winter outfit.

But then last week happened and I had a bunch of pieces of a bright and lovely yellow-orange silk velvet. A colour that would be perfect for the more traditional outfit for Daisy.

I would not have enough fabric to get a full length skirt, but Daisy also has an early tennis dress that looks like this.

And that's the style I decided to go for, with some changes. First of all I want the skirt to be longer, so I can be comfortable in it. I'm also going to go for Daisy's regular teal jewels instead of the blue ones that she's wearing in this version. I also don't think I have enough fabric to be able to make full puffed sleeves.

On Thursday I whipped up a quick mock-up for a short full-skirted dress.

The bodice is my standard stretch dress pattern, but I added a couple of cm on each seam, because I want to be really comfortable and not have a tight fitting dress. I managed to get a bodice out of the silk velvet.

Silk velvet is really slippery and should be tacked down everywhere, or at least use a lot of pins. I chose to construct the bodice like I did my Lady Poe bodice. That is I first sewed the lining, and then I mounted the outer silk fabric to the lining. I then found a couple of meters of a cotton voile in my stash, and I gathered three lengths together to make the underlayer of the skirt.

The skirt was also sewn to the lining, not to the velvet. I also added pieces of cotton tape that I will use to hike up the skirt, everything to avoid having to attach anything to the slk velvet.

In the back I added a zipper, also to the lining, and then I handsewed the silk fabric edge to edge with the zipper. Overall the silk velvet is handsewn, it's so much easier to keep the fabric from slipping and controlling the tension compared to when I tried to sew it on the machine. The skirt consists of as many square pieces of fabric that I could cut out rom the silk velvet and then sewn to the lining. I finsihed by folding the outer fabric of the bodice over the skirt and hand sewing it down.

On the photo above I have just tied a white ribbon over the waist and pinned up the velvet skirt. Next steps are to make a proper waistband and sleeves, and then it's time to permanently fasten the skirt. I also want to make the skirt poufier. In this photo I have one of my tuille petticoats under the dress, but I'm thinking that I need more petticoats or tuille to get the shape I want.

big change of plans

After a frustrating weekend I finally had a nice bodice that I was happy with. Tonight it was time to cut out the skirt. I knew that it would be tight when it came to squeezing out the skirt and sleeve from the available fabric. After a lot of puzzling this was the best I could do.

I could maybe eke out the skirt, but there would be sooooo much piecing, that there was no chance of it looking good, sleeves were out of the question. So I sat down and cursed all the gods and goddesses of the sewing pantheon, and then realised that I had to give up. I will not be able to make a velvet court gown.

I now need to decide what kind of fabric that I can buy to make the court gown, because I'm still set on making it. I will probably switch to silk taffeta and not velvet though.

As for all my scraps of velvet. It's still a gorgeous fabric, it's just not as much as I thought and it's all cut up in smaller pieces. My plan right now is to use it for my Daisy cosplay, but that means switching from the winter sports Daisy to the old tennis Daisy that look like this.

I should be able to get a short skirt, bodice and short sleeves from the fabric, and she will still be sporty, just in silk velvet instead of active wear fabric.

As for the bodice

I just don't have it in me to cut it up. At first I thought about using it as a base for Daisy, bt it's too deep in the front, and also too tight to be comfortable as a sport-inspired top. I will keep it, and when I'm done with Daisy I might see if I can turn it itno some kind of jacket, i there is enough fabric left for a pair of sleeves.

and the 1520s court gown has started

My main project for this year is to make a gown suitable for the Swedish court in 1520. 2020 is the 500th anniversary of the massacre known as the Stockholm bloodbath. For English-speaking people here is the wiki article about it, and for Swedish-speaking people I hope you follow my other blog where I'm basically live blogging the events that led to the bloodbath. I have talked for a long time about making a gown that would be suitable for coronation festivites, that were later turned into the massacre. There are not a lot of pictures of Swedish gowns, but I have posted some of my thoughts about Swedish fashion in the time period already.

I have two main inspirations for the courtgown.

This is my main inspiration, but since you don't see very many details I have decided to use this is as my other inspiration.

It's an altar piece by Lucas Cranach, and the saint to the left is wearing a gown and headpiece that I think is very similar to what can be seen on my main inspiration. This altar piece is from 1506, so a bit earlier than 1520, but I will still use it. I also like the simplicity o the gown, it doesn't look like a stereotypical Cranach gown, with a lot of slashing, lacing and fabric poufs.

For material I'm going to use the leftovers from my gold handmaiden gown. The silk velvet that I didn't manage to dye to the correct colour for that project, but I still loved the colour. That also means that I have a very limited supply of material, so it will be interesting just how much I can get out of the remnants. The skirt will definitely involve a lot of piecing, but I hope it is doable at all.

That being said, I have started on the bodice for the gown. I actually did that more than a year ago when I cut out the main pieces to the bodice from the velvet, and interlined them to a very thin linen fabric. Now it was time to sew them together.

Here is the interlined velvet and the lining of linen. Now I soon discovered that it was a problem that I had draped the outer fabric and the lining with more than a year apart.

It turned out that the lining was a lot bigger than the outer fabric. I decided to hope that I had been more careful with the fitting of the outer fabric and cut the lining to the same shape. The next thing was to decide the closure of the gown. The problem with the inspiration images is that none of them show any kind of closure. When I cut out the outer fabric I planned to do a standard front closure, but now I decided to try with side lacing, that would be hidden under the arms.

I sewed the front pieces together and pinned it on to my kirtle that I put on my dress for. I sewed the shoulder seams together and decided to fit it on my body, since my dress form is problematic in the chest area. I couldn't fit it on myself. I wasn't able to pin anything together under my arms, and then keep it there while I held the other side closed. It was also really problematic to get in and out of bodice. Even with the problems with fitting I had a distinct feeling that it was too small.

Some more thinking, and I decided that for simplicity a front closure would be easier anyway. So I unpicked the centre front seam. Since I was redoing most of the seams anyway I also cut out two strips of fabric, interlining and lining that I added under the arms, to make it bigger.

In the end it has taken me the whole weekend to make the bodice, and I think I have sewed and ripped every seam, except he backseam, at least twice. So much frustration.

In this light I also realize that the extra strip has the nap in a different direction. I was so careful to avoid it (I thought)

There are definitely things that I would have done differently, and that's a good reason to not start a project and then leave it for more than a month. I learnt a lot about interlining and avoiding buckling in the fabric when I did the Ladey Poe ballgown. I would definitely have done it differently than how I have added it now. Still without a stiff bodice, and my body shape, the bodice won't be perfectly smooth, I'm hoping that the skirt will add some weight to the gown and help with smoothing out the bodice.

Next step is to either make the skirt, and use whatever fabric I have left to hopeully get a pair of sleeves out of it, or the other way around make the sleeves first and see how big of a skirt I can get out of what's left of the fabric. I also need to decide on how I will do the hidden front closure, since I don't want to have any visible lacing in the front. Decisions, decisions, decisions...