Barter stack: things Alesone needs...

I am always asked what need in the way of barter in exchange for sewing.

1. Dress stand. I need to construct a dress stand that can be taken apart and transported. I am looking for wood construction. This would be used to handle duct tape doubles on for sewing work as well as display. I need to be able to have varying arm holes for different heights (it should be able to accommodate Lissa sized as well as Griff sized people).

Other types of barters:
2. Spices. Hard to find medieval spices (grains of paradise, mace blades) are always great currency.
3. If you iron it, and cut it, I will sew it.
4. This for that... Brew, cord, knit [enter your thing there] for sewing.

Pennsic panic

Apparently this is becoming a tradition for me. What can I get done before Pennsic? There are 5 weekends until Pennsic. One weekend is the 4th, one weekend I'm in Vegas and one weekend is EKWC. So there are exactly 2 weekends of pure sewing. I will be taking champion favors with me to the 4th and Vegas, as that is nice easy hand work that can be done with out a machine.

All calculated out.. I have 24 machine sewing days and 5 hand sewing days until Pennsic. ( The list... cause you know I'm nuts. )

Project updates

Some days the prep takes longer than sewing. I had a 5 hour window of productivity last night from 7 to midnight. I only accomplished 2 of my billions of pre-pennsic projects. I laid out and cut what will become the Bear Dress (because the colors are the same as Cal Berkley). I edged the sleeves and sewed 1/2 of the bodice. This took 3.5 of my 5 hours. By the time I was done and looked at the clock, I had a moment of holy crap where did my time go... And now that I am looking at the bodice in the light, I will probably remove the front panel, and re-do it tonight as I am not happy with the lines or the color combination. In the other hour and a half, I was able to finish one barter stack project and added the sleeve cap to the Pickle Dress.

Costumer's trick #172 - Heat and bond 1/4" roll
This handy little trick allows you to "tack down" 1/2" edging into straight lines without bunching, folding and did I mention straight. The glue holds everything in place while it gets sewn down. You can use pins to help the holding power. I use the 1/4" so that I have a clean, clear edge for stitching down. Sometimes it is hard to get a needle (hand or machine) through the glue. I am not substituting sewing here, just using a product to help keep those nice even straight lines. On the Bear Dress, I am doing a double diagonal pattern and machine zig zag stitching the edging down (this is a respectable 1 ft dress, not an A & S entry).

( Pic below... )

In period they used chalk, pins, time and probably quite a bit of cursing, un-doing and re-doing.

I can haz schedule...

This kinda goes with the Pennsic panic post.  I feel like Im forgetting something somewhere. I am anal (hyphen) retentive about these things. I put everything into MS project and created a calendar. If you should be here and aren't, let me know.

In theory, if you are on here... you can see when I will be working on your stuff.  Calendar's here.