Perfectly Period Press 'n Seal

The first thing you need to know about me is that tedium is my sweet spot. It is the thing I enjoy most about embroidery, second only to the creation of a tangible final product that is a testament to time spent and a physical manifestation of my skill.

Understandably, Fiordelise has been reluctant to ask me to do huge amounts of embroidery on a project because it is so time-consuming and that kind of tedium is difficult for her own neurodiverse brain. However, for the past year or so I have been jonesing to create a brown bodice with delicate, ditsy style florals covering it in some weird fever dream of the French countryside and quilters' cottons, and now is finally the right time!

I would say that I finally convinced her that this is a thing I actually want to do, but the truth is, moving states is hard as hell. I moved my family to the Denver area from Atlanta in 2020 and she joined me here with her family a year and a half ago and it takes a while to settle into a place and feel like you have a handle on your life again, especially with kids. She took that year with me to explore Denver, work on our relationship, settle the kids, find a routine, and simply recover from the massive amount of burnout she was suffering from.

Additionally, due to a variety of factors including medical ones, Fiordelise lost a large amount of weight, rendering all of her garb entirely too big and requiring her to create a new bodice pattern and think about how to fashion garb for her changed body. I will likely talk a lot about our SCA involvement over the next few months simply because it's been on my mind a lot over the past year as we have honed in on what our involvement will look like as a couple here in The Outlands vs when I just followed her lead in Artemisia, but this was a huge factor that I know some of our friends can relate to. Having your body change dramatically requiring all of your garb to be significantly altered or created entirely new from scratch is a huge undertaking when you also have recently moved states and are trying to settle into a new life in a new place.

So that brings me to our newest project, this ditsy floral dress.

I "helped" Fiordelise create a new bodice (which was quite enlightening for me as I am a very go-with-your-gut crafter with little experience in clothing construction) and we shopped our stash for this first piece. Maysun had this beautiful brown linen from Fabrics-Store and I had a ruddy, red linen to go with it. I pulled some DMC from my stash and we were off!

Almost.

I was really struggling to trace anything through this relatively loose woven linen onto dark brown fabric. While I have a lot of confidence in eye-balling my work, that was not the tact I wanted to take when considering "ditsy florals." I feel they should be relatively evenly spaced and essentially the same size throughout the entire piece. While I have been learning to let go of some perfectionism when embroidering for clothing vs framed display, if I can't get it at least close to what I envision, I still feel like I might as well not even do it at all.

Finally, I admitted to Fiordelise that I might have to break down and use Sulky Fabri Solvy, a product I have long turned my nose up at, to be honest. I know many people use it with great success, but I was resistant and honestly frustrated that I was going to have to order something when I wanted to start this project sooner rather than later while I had the drive and motivation to start. She suggested I try Glaad Press n' Seal.

Embroidering over the top of Glad Press n' Seal with green floss on dark brown linen fabric.

I had never heard of this idea before and I generally don't keep plastic products like this in my house. But it was a five-minute drive up to the grocery store so I said sure. Generally, I trust Fiordelise's opinion on things like this because with 20 years of experience, there is little she hasn't encountered and it's all new to me. We weren't trying for perfect period authenticity in this dress, and I was intrigued by how it would work, so off to the store I went.

While this method absolutely works and I will use it throughout this project, I'm not positive I would jump to do it again. Moving the Press n' Seal while tracing is a huge pain in the butt. Embroidering over the plastic-y surface is also strange and there is a light sticky residue that occasionally builds up on the needle. It is a food-grade adhesive, however, that is easily wiped away, and not a huge deterrent, but as someone who focuses on speed and efficiency, it's definitely a thing to be aware of. The Sharpie lines stay well but they will slick off with too much handling, which is another thing to keep in mind. Peeling it off, while satisfying in the way that an epic sunburn is satisfying to peel off, is a pain when it comes to trying to get tiny pieces of plastic out from within these tiny leaves.

On the plus side, it is repositionable, so even after being moved many times while tracing, it adheres to the fabric very well. It is also super thin so I don't feel there is a lot of empty space between my stitches and the fabric once it is removed. I find that I do end up stabbing the fabric a lot rather than sewing my stitches (which isn't an issue for me as I generally prefer the stab method, but it may slow others down) and I ended up switching from my original idea of using stem stitch to whipped back stitch as my brain couldn't handle trying to sew through the plastic the whole time. This will definitely add time to how long it takes me to complete this project. I have found I can lay down the base backstitch for each floral in 10 to 15 minutes. I'm uncertain how many florals will be applied to the bodice, but I will certainly be at least close to if not more than a hundred. That's a solid 20 hours just for the base layer of green on the bodice alone. All told I would expect this bodice to take probably 40 hours of hands-on embroidery time.

Luckily for me, I recently had surgery and have the whole month of January off, so I am quite looking forward to these 40 wonderfully tedious hours on the couch with a cat and these sumptuous colors I picked.