The engineering of medieval clothing

After Etaine's sewing night got rained out Tuesday evening I figured I might as well work on the same sewing project anyway, so I finished up the lacing eyelets on the gothic gown and tested the fit. It feels just about perfect (i.e., a little on the snug side when freshly laced -- I didn't keep it on long enough to see how it feels when the fabric has relaxed a little, but I'm advised that it will). Now I need to get together with someone to mark the neckline and armscyes for cutting, and maybe help drape the sleeves. (Although they're going to be short sleeves -- the kind you pin the decorative sleeves onto -- so not a lot of fitting is required.)

I've also re-sewn the main seams on the outer fabric of the "party dress". Still need to re-fit the lining, which would be easier if I had a functional dress dummy. I think I may re-do the front edge of the hood that goes with the "party dress" as well. The sculpture(s) I was working from clearly seem to show something like an extended hood opening that's been fan-folded back in on itself a couple times for a layered effect, but I have a hard time making it work for me, even with several dozen pins keeping everything in place. Mind you, this may be because I lined the hood with the same lightweight silk taffeta I used to line the dress, which makes the whole thing as slippery as all get-out. And on top of that I don't have the sort of hair you can pin a headdress to. I suppose I could baste the folds in place and see if that worked a little better. (I also cheated a little to get the right squarish shape by pinning a wire armature inside the folds, and I suppose I could baste that into semi-permanent place as well.)

It's not my preferred solution, mostly because I have a love affair with clothing styles that arise naturally out of their intrinsic structure. (Just like I have a love affair with fabric decoration that's woven in, rather than printed on.) Too much basting and pinning and cheating and it starts feeling like I'm wearing a costume rather than clothing (even if I'm doing the same basting and pinning and cheating that was done historically). It's the same reason why all my Burgundian chaperons are still functional hoods inside.

I rather doubt that I'll wear the new-and-remade outfit for March Crown, even if it's done by then, since that site is normally a mud-pit. But definitely for Collegium in April. Of course, I really need a new belt, too. And shoes. I really need to work on having decent and appropriate shoes for all my centuries. And I need to see if the chemise I made to go with the party dress works for under the gothic gown (in which case it needs to have sleeves added) or whether I need something from scratch for that purpose. Yeah, I think I'm getting my sewing momentum back.

Bonus Post: managing e-mail inboxes

A year or so ago at work I took this time-management workshop (which was mostly a shill for Franklin-Covey merchandise) that really helped me get a handle on keeping track of tasks and "to do"s on the job. One of the guiding principles was to keep your in box empty. Pretty much everything is in one of four categories: delete unread (meaningless reminders and notices), skim and delete (e.g., the daily "site news"), skim and archive (anything needed for reference, but not for action), and convert to a to-do item (which is extremely convenient to do in Lotus Notes). One of the underlying principles behind the last group is to have a scheduled time to deal with to-dos rather than going off in all directions at once trying to respond to them as they arrive, or having them pile up unorganized in the in-box.

At work, I've been keeping on top of this system fairly well. At home, not so much. My system for dealing with Category 4 e-mail tends to be to have a folder labelled something like "deal with this" or "action items from in-box" or "to reply later". Well, guess what. I have a folder labelled "need to do something about this" containing 86 pending e-mails from July 2006 to October 2008. I have a folder labelled "sort through this and do something" with 91 e-mails from May 2007 to March 2008. And as a result of how I'm coordinating reading e-mail on both the laptop and iPhone (which forces me to physically remove all e-mail from the in-box after reading -- or I keep re-receiving it every time I download mail) I have a a folder entitled "pending items from in-box" with 55 e-mails from November 2008 to the present.

What all of this really means is that my good intentions for answering questions, doing research for people, following up on links, or even simply continuing conversations far and away outstrip my actual time and energy for doing so. Typically, about once a year I try to go through these types of folders and delete or archive items that are either so out-dated that they're obsolete, or where temporal distance lets me conclude that I never will get to them. But in the mean time I drag the guilt around like Marley's chains.