Fabric Acquisition Supreme Team

Well, we were at it again. Lavena and I headed to JoAnn Sunday for another round of FASTing (has nothing to do with going without food and all about shopping for fabric.) JoAnn is having one of their 50% off their clearance fabric, including upholstery. Ooo la la did we have fun. We got there at 9am sharp only to realize that JoAnn doesn't open until 10am on Sundays. That meant we had to go to Books-a-Million and have a cup of tea and a pastry while looking through this week's sales ads (and aquire some more coupons for JoAnn- Lavena's paper had FOUR in it!)

When we finished tea, we headed back to JoAnn. Lavena picked up a few random pieces for her hubby and son. We fussed over whether the lightweight striped fabric was period, hemming and hawing about it for a while and finally decided that it wasn't as nice even as bleached muslin which we could get for less than $2 a yard. There were probably 4 bolts of this which made us go, "uh, maybe?" but decided we would stick with what we got. Lavena also picked up a nice piece of "Cody blue" linen blend for Gunnarr a new outfit for Crown List in a few weeks.

I was on a mission as I needed fabric to do some false sleeves for Emily's tudor. I snagged 5 yards of some lucious brown velveteen. This will go lovely with the burgundy kirtle and gold gown. Now to get all this going. I also picked up some gold flat braid and some cream colored pearls to do some sort of decoration on the false sleeves and head dress. I picked up another 4 yard piece of some very soft cotton for Keon a new tunic or two as well as a few miscellaneous pieces that were too good to pass up. My Big Find was some blue linen that I had my eye on last year that is embroidered with daisies. Can you say cote-har-deeeeee!! Oh baby! And at $2.50 a yard versus the $16.99 a yard it was this past spring! I need to carve out some soapstone for buttons for the cote and get Cato and Solva to cast them for me.

There was some lovely lozengy fabric that I thought would be truly awesome for Italian Ren, but passed up on it. Anyone in this area of Meridies who needs assistance shopping for fabric let me know. I'm good at spending other people's money on fabric! And I'm just 5 minutes from JoAnn (which has its faults as well as its advantages.)

In other news of the medieval, the kids and I are working on a "box project" for the Crown. They need largess to give at Gulf Wars and other inter-kingdom meetings. Phoenix Glade is working on providing them with some of this largess. We've got leather bottle and pouch making, bead making, veil pin making, and box making. The kids and I are doing the boxes. We took boxes that we bought for 66¢ a piece at Michael's and took the hardware off of them. We sanded them and stained them yesterday and today we put the first coat of poly on it. We will sand them again tonight and put the second coat of poly on them so that tomorrow we can reassemble the lids and bottoms and put them back together. Trust me, they are NOT going to look like 66¢ boxes when we are done. Amazing what a little cherry stain can do for a cheap wood box.

And speaking of wood, I have wood shoes!! Greet found 2 pair at her local thrift store and bought both pairs. One pair fit her and the other pair fit me with some thick socks on. Woot! I'm going to make a quick pair of thin leather turnsole shoes to wear with them as well and need to sand down one spot that rubs wrong on my right foot. I'm thinking seriously about woodburning my daisy into the back of the shoe. What do you think? I haven't found any documentation into doing such, but I haven't looked very hard either. I think this will be just the thing for my working women's kirtles.