"I Shall Make You a Cambric Shirt..." Men's Elizabethan Gentleman's Shirt - R

Collar and gussets.  Can I tell you I don't like making gussets?  Does anyone?

Right side of one side of gusset

While laid up with a broken foot, Lisa has encouraged me to sew like crazy, so I tackled my SO's shirt.  I'd previously done the machine embroidered black work. I put this together in a week.  It included a lot of hand sewing because of the gussets and all the finishing.

I'm pleased with the work and it look great on him. AND I'm getting better with gussets. This pattern is from Margo Anderson's Elizabethan Gentleman's Wardrobe http://margospatterns.com/and I'll be making him an entire outfit.

The one thing I figured out AFTER I'd finished was how to French seam a gusset, so I'll have to try that out on my chemise.  What I ended up doing, in my ignorance, was turning under every seam twice by machine, then hand stitching the gusset to the seams.  It works, serves the purpose, but is not elegant.

I don't know about you, but sometimes my markings don't come out of my item.  This time,
All of the did, so I'm happy with that.  Now that his shirt is finished, I can fit the doublet, the next on my "to do" list for him.

The back of the gusset hand basted and sewn in.

I love my ruffly cuffs.

Here's a close up of the embroidery.  Yes, I'm kind of proud!

Our Sunday Sewing Bee - R

Our sewing bee on Sunday was a success.  Of course we scheduled waaay too much "stuff to do" in one day, but I'm proud of all we got done.  In return for my machine embroidery of Lisa's black work for her Ren chemise, Lisa helped me cut out my Ren chemise and farthingale.  Her house has an area where we can lay out a huge swath of fabric all at once, however, I hate her iron because it doesn't steam enough!  And you know what's really great?  Finding out you made a cutting error on a nearly finished garment and trying to figure out how to compensate without do-overs.  Cause I did, and I did!


These sessions leave us exhausted but full of the feeling of accomplishment while reigning in our admitted procrastination/time waste tendencies.