It's a community thing...

Early in the week the call went out -- a friend needing help getting together the garb for her upcoming elevation to the Order of the Laurel (yeah, SCA stuff....).  After significant email planning, several of us descended on another friend's house on Saturday with fabric, threads, trims, pins, needles, food and love. We worked steadily through the day, with a break for supper.  Most were staying there, though I left and returned on Sunday, when more work was done. By the time we all left on Sunday the gown was well in hand, the decorative bands were receiving beads and we had talked ourselves out.

As we worked and chatted and shared, I wondered how much like this was the work of hands of our ancestors.  The gown we were working to assemble is based on the 1532 inventory of the Queen of France -- much later period than the 12th Century clothing I usually work on, and there was a lot of work involved, from endless-seeming lines of eyelets (my task), to assembly of trim to the basic steps of assembling bodice and skirt pieces of several layers.  Did the workshops that turned out the clothes of the court of Francis I of France that we see in portraits and inventories also ring with laughter sometimes, and at others fall into companionable silence as they worked?  I have to think so.  Despite the modern conveniences of sewing machines, electric lights, music from the other room and air conditioning, in many ways, it was a "medieval moment."

And, I even learned to do a decent eyelet for clothing (which, it turns out, is very different from an eyelet for embroidery)

Just some of the 60 eyelets I managed over the weekend.