I Rock.

I got so much done today! I made a huge dent in my project extravaganza. I knew I could once a weekend hit, and I had a whole day to work on things. (Yeah, I could have had two whole days, but this worked out anyway, and I'm happy).

I made the two t-tunics, and added the side panels to one dress.

That picture pretty well sucks, but it's the only one I took. The dress looks far better on me than on a hanger - the side panels worked out absolutely beautifully. So well, in fact, that if I make any more of these dresses, I think I'll put those in just for fun. The widening out of the strip on the bottom half makes the skirt nice and swirly and full. I didn't have the dresses with me when I went to pick out material for these side strips. For the green dress, I found this dark tan color material with brown flowers, and I knew it would work - and it does, the color combination of green and browns is really awesome. But for the purple dress, I couldn't find anything I was confident would combine well, so I didn't get the material to fix that one yet (or I'd have done it today). I will take a trip to the fabric store next weekend, and take the purple dress with me so I can pick out something complimentary.

The tunics - eh. I'm actually not a big fan of t-tunics, but they are something quick, easy, and requiring little in the way of material, when you need something in a hurry. I have had trouble with every one of these I've made with the neckline. I pretty well buggered up the blue one, but it doesn't look too terrible on me - most of the buggering up is more on the inside, where it annoys me but doesn't show too terribly much.

On the second one, the gray one, I tried a different shape to the neckline - instead of a circle, I made it more of a baseball diamond, with more straight lines. This worked out much, much better. I want to add trim to both of them - they're so very plain - but that's not something I'm counting on doing before Pennsic. I may have to just wear them plain this year, then spruce them up over the winter.

Then I worked on the haversack, and got it almost done.


I'm really happy with the way this turned out. I hadn't put much thought into it before I started it, and was just kind of making it up as I went along - and it turned out great. Note to self: quit over-engineering things. (the stuff I wing it on always turns out far better than the stuff I try to follow patterns with ... hmmm.). It's a little bigger than I meant to make it, but I decided it's actually a very good size. It's not too large, and it will be a great size for shopping days at Pennsic. I was going to make the straps by making a long tube, then turning it right side out ... but the canvas is kind of stiff, and when I tried that, I could not get it turned right side out. So I made a new strap, just a flat strip, which at first I was going to edge with bias tape. But I didn't have any, and didn't want to wait till I could go back to the store, so I decided make a trim strip out of some cotton material I had on hand. I'm really glad I did - it looks awesome. Better in person than you can see in the picture. It's a black fabric with little gray flowers on it, but the gray's kind of non-committal, so it tends to pick up the purple from the main canvas fabric, and almost looks custom-matched.

And yeah - this is a nice waterproof canvas I bought as 'scraps' from none other than Panther Primitives (home of my future pavilion) for like dirt cheap - I think the whole bundle I bought only cost a couple bucks, and I only used a fraction of it. They sell haversacks similar to this one pre-made for about $15 or $20, but I made this one for basically a buck or two. Rock. On. And while their pre-made ones are nice (my boyfriend has one, that's what got me wanting one), I do like mine better.

I have a little work yet to do to finish this, but I just ran out of steam today. I want to put the same trim on the front edge of the flap. Also, where the straps fasten on to the side gussets, at the bottom edge of the straps, I need to trim that with something - it just got left kind of bare and unfinished looking

Other than that, though, it's pretty well done. Eventually I'd like to do some embroidery on it, but that's another thing I'm not even attempting before Pennsic - another next-winter project.

Meanwhile, I'm only 10 rows and a binding off from finishing the pair of socks (started last Sunday - a pair a week would work well). I will probably finish them tonight if I don't fall asleep too early.

So, it was a great day for my projects, and I'm very happy ... I'm only one week into the 5-week marathon, and got so much done. This bodes well for the coming month.