Solo No Stopping Now

[Rosela]

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Timestamp: 60th of Winter 513AV

The news that her hired help wouldn’t be able to start until spring had hit Rosela hard, and she was more than unhappy that she had to finish out the rest of the season by herself. Not entirely by herself, she supposed, eyeing the new section of the wall that covered up the burn damage done earlier in the season. Orabelle, her new cosmetologist, would be the front room with her just until the end of the season, after which, Rosela only had to be out there once every six days. The reversal had not yet lost its humor, formerly one in six days were her days of rest, now they were her days to be restricted to the front room of the shop.

The prospect of change had awoken a hunger in her, a desire to be experimenting, to find new ways to push the limits of her four walls. She hadn’t even decided yet what to pursue, now that RDF makeup was going up. Two ideas in particular were appealing – weaving and perfume. Logically, she wanted to be able to offer shoes as part of her lineup, but frankly, it wasn’t a very interesting trade. She’d spend most of her time making boots and other practical footwear rather than the heels and cute things she had in mind.

At the moment though, she had inventory to update and a store front to run, on a blustery, miserable day that seemed to be keeping absolutely everyone indoors. There was a bundle of pinned leather and various types of cloth under her front desk and a drawn-over piece of design paper in front of her, ready to be filled with ideas. The leather and cloth bundles were mostly pre-cut gloves, to be finalized and stitched once she had her designs.

Eager to be done, she launched into the designs quickly. The back of the hand on gloves was a good place for decorative elements, and was thus a place to start. A simplistic flower was drawn, each section colored in to indicate depression into the leather. A semi-circle of small stars were drawn, but she instead focused on the outlines, as they could be stitched on instead of impressed. Simpler additions were also possible, and she drew two sets of rectangles, one that would lie parallel to the hand, and one that would lie crossways.

In an attempt to go more decorative, she attempted a rose imprint. Drawing small arcs clustered together, she made them bigger as she moved outwards before drawing a larger curving shape for the outmost petal. The final product was less than satisfactory, and she indicated her opinion with a small ‘X’ in the corner. Still hoping to keep the idea, she tried again in a space next to the failed rose, starting with smaller, more variable arcs in the center, and moving out to arcs not quite as big as before. The curve of the outermost petal was less dramatic, and she added a line next to it, for the hint of an outer petal next to it. The result was satisfactory, and she put the designs to the side.

She’d imprinted leather before as a common design element, but disliked doing it in winter because it required her to jump outside. Grabbing her waxed wooden bowl, she walked as a man condemned to the front door. It would only be for just a moment…

Before she could talk herself out of it, she thrust herself through the door, dashed the three steps to the edge of the building, and scooped up some snow in her bowl. She was back inside trying to suppress her shivers in another flash.

”Getting a bit warm in here, are you?”

”Shut up,” she snapped at the snide shadow under her front desk, unable to think of a witty comeback. She swore she heard it snicker.

Being sure to stick her boots right through the middle of the shadow as she sat down, she picked up the first bundle of leather to work on while the snow melted. This one was of a dark leather, and was cut in a gauntlet style with a tall, wide wrist. It was big enough to clearly be men’s gloves, so no decoration was needed. Removing the leather clamps from the trank, the main part of the glove, she was working on, she twisted her leather needle through the two layers in a stab stitch, as it was too thick for a running stitch. When she finished the seam, she turned her needle around again instead of knotting off, and ran another line of stab stitches going the opposite way, using the holes she already had open for the first row of stitches and filling in the spaces in between.

One hand lifted her snow bowl and saw that it was satisfactorily melting, to be used later when doing the leather imprints. Putting it back down, she turned the glove over in her hands and began to stitch the opposite side.

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[Rosela]

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After sponging the water onto the top leather panel of one of the women’s gloves, she knelt up on her chair and gently tapped the imprinting mallet on the end of a metal rod, pushing the shape that would form the beginning of the rose design into the pale brown leather. Every few seconds, she lifted the rod to push down the next area, making her mallet strikes stronger as she grew more confident. Occasionally, she’d miss the narrow end of the rod and smack her hand, drawing a strong of Arumenic curses. The shadow kindly did not comment.

After a few chimes, the design was successfully tooled in, and she rewetted the opposite glove to repeat it there. The second time went quicker, and once she was done with both, she matched up each top half with the bottom, and overlaid it with a sheepskin interior. With the leather needle, she knotted her thread and twisted it through the end of the seam, punching the needle back and forth through the four layers in a slow stab stitch. As usual, when she reached the end, she flipped it back around and did the reverse stitch as well. It took longer, as it was difficult to find the original stitches amongst the plush sheepskin, but she eventually finished the first side. With a very put-upon sigh, she moved to the opposite side of the trank, already dreading the finger fourchets.

Still, they needed to be done, so once the trank was finished, she pulled one of the miniature clamps off of the first finger and rethreaded her needle. Starting the stitch slightly overlapping that along the trank, she continued it along the length of the fourchet, around what would be the fingertip, and back up the other side. She ran out of thread just short of getting back to the trank and knotted it off. Double stitching all long the finger would make the glove very stiff, and while that would fly with work gloves, these were being made for style and warmth. A single line of stab stitching would be just fine, but she’d add a little extra at the fingertips, just in case. Knotting a new length of thread, she began reverse stab stitching around where the top section of the finger would go. Such a short section was finished in a matter of chimes, and she knotted off the end and clipped the thread.

Sighing, she pulled the clamps off the next finger and braced herself for a couple bells of painful stitching. One finger down, four to go. Two bell later, she had four pairs of gloves, and her fingers were sore and stiff from working with the tough leather. The occasional breaks to do the design work were breaths of fresh air, and she’s spent more time making imprints and embroidery than was likely necessary.

She tested each glove herself, the men’s gloves feeling like small tents around her hands. They were warm though, and once they were inspected for seams and loose threads, they were added to their respective sections of the floor.

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[Rosela]

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While the majority of people had already gotten their cloaks for the season, there were the inevitable stragglers who’d worn their old cloak bare and waited until mid-winter to replace it. Rosela didn’t like to keep a huge cache of cloaks, as they were bulky to store and sold only during winter, but she liked to keep a grand total of six cloaks in her inventory at all times: three women’s and three men’s. It was just enough that if no more sold that season, it wouldn’t be a huge hassle to have to store them for another year.

She had a couple ideas for cloaks, and pulled out a design paper to work them out. Some of the ideas likely wouldn’t work without a custom order to the Stained Pelt for specific colors of fur, but if they panned out well on paper, she could save them for next year. She needed only one men’s cloak for the day, but the design work would ease her tired fingers.

She’d worked with cloak designs earlier in the season, but only remembered the design she’d settled on – a crescent moon. She wanted something more masculine for a men’s cloak, and oddly, she’d thought of Leo Varniak when thinking of designs. Fire was a terrible, dangerous thing, and with a rueful look up at the new wood along the edge of her ceiling, she wanted to try and capture it in a design. Three hairy trapezoids were drawn on the page, the pencil fluttering along the edges to create the illusion of shaggy fur.

In the first, she grabbed her gray pencil and filled in the upper half of the cloak with short quick strokes to simulate the gray fur she knew she could get from the Stained Pelt. Setting her gray pencil to the side, but not putting it away, she picked out her black pencil and moved to the bottom of the cloak. Quick strokes slowly formed a single tuft of black fur there, which elongated to a length of black that tapered up to a point. These locks of black were repeated three more times along the bottom edge of the cloak, each tapering up to a long, thin point. She thought of charred wood, and smoke pouring out of embers refusing to die. Filling in the remainder with gray, she called the design finished and moved onto the next.

This design would be less subtle, and would use the coarse red-brown fur she’d seen last visit to the Stained Pelt. There hadn’t been much of it and she hadn’t asked what it was from, but made a mental note to keep it in mind. She started with a base of gray and white, mottling the two colors together for all but the top third. The top, she took her orange and brown pencils and alternated streaking what would be the shoulder to upper back area, and made the seam between the two colors jagged, like the tops of flames. The shoulders would need to be padded, to make the ‘flame’ area more dramatic, and she made a note to the side to indicate this.

Glancing up, Rosela sighed at the low light outside, and acknowledged she didn’t have time for a third design. As she didn’t have the fur needed for her second design, she opted to go with the first.

Running to the back, she grabbed a bundle of pre-cut gray rabbit fur, and brought it out to the front. She had a lot of the gray fur, and with it being popular and cheap, she’d cut it for use earlier in the season. Laying out two pieces on her desk, she pinned them together, and threaded her needle. Slow as she was working with fur, she consoled herself with the knowledge that it wasn’t as tough to punch through as tanned leather.

Holding the fur panels between two hands, her primary pair worked the needle back and forth in whipstitches, and the third pair felt underneath to part the fur where the needle moved, keeping it from getting matted down with the thread. She reached the end of the panel and knotted her thread quickly, glancing once again at the darkening sky outside. It was looking impossible that she’d be able to finish it that day, but it could always be a project she picked up the next day.

She could get just one more finished though, and after some sorting through her piles, she found the patching pair to one of the panels. Pinning it quickly, she rethreaded her needle and plunged it through the hide, fingers working quickly on the other side to shift the fur out of the way. Back and forth, the popped the need through in the same, looping whipstitches. Until-

”Ow! Petch!”

Snatching back the right hand that had been parting fur underneath, she sucked angrily on her thumb. In her haste, she’d stabbed herself with the needle, and she could taste very faintly the metallic tinge of her own blood. Other hands flipped over the mass of fur, taking care to mind the needle stuck in the opposite side. Leaning over until she was bent almost double, she sifted through the fur to see if any blood had gotten on it. Chimes went by, and she was eventually satisfied that she hadn’t stained it. Taking her thumb out of her mouth, she inspected that as well to see if it was still bleeding. It wasn’t, but as she looked out at the darkening evening, she realized it was time to close. The cloak could wait until tomorrow.

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[Rosela]

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Rosela had already set aside that evening to work on her Ice Masquerade dress, so after switching her shop sign to ‘Closed’ she bounded to the back, injury all but forgotten. She’d had the vague idea of it in her mind for some time, but had needed to schedule out time between shop work to be able to work on it though. It would be no small task, if her design came through the way she thought, but it had been a long time since she’d felt intimidated by a job.

Plopping down in her work chair, she leaned to the side so she could cross her legs as she pulled up a design paper. She started with her standard female figure, drawing the lines for the shoulders, hips and spine first. Though the cut of the dress wouldn’t be affected by her multiple arms, she drew the ball joints and general outlines on principle. The bust and hips were outlined next, as per her usual practice, and she lifted her pencil to consider her next move.

One of the designs she’d made for her job posting had partially inspired this one, and she made two arcs over the bust area in another sweetheart neckline. It wasn’t low enough to make the cleavage too obvious, but it was undoubtedly seductive. Leaving the lines around the waist and hips, she extended them down to just above the knees, which would make for a curvy silhouette. It reminded her – she needed to retake her own measurements before she started cutting. She’d put on some weight in the last season and didn’t want to be clearly squeezing into something too small. Like her job posting, this was meant to display her prowess for the city to see, and every detail had to be perfect.

The bottom of the dress would be Charoda-tail style, fanning out from the knees to lay much wider around the feet. She hadn’t actually met any Charoda with tails like that, though she could assume the handful she’d met in the city weren’t representative of the population. With such a tail, how would they walk on land?

She drew the abrupt fanning out from the knees, letting it taper back to fall long in the back. Two arcs created a top layer and a bottom one, and she made a note to the side that the ends of the top layer would overlap in back, rather than the expected hidden ends at the front.

OOCThe style of dress is typically called a mermaid tail, so...
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[Rosela]

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‘Tail’ outlined, though it wasn’t so much a tail as a fin, that finished the silhouette of the dress. The inner details were next, and they would make or break the whole design.

Rosela wanted a red and white color scheme, red because it was one of her best colors, and white to endear her to the ice theme of the masquerade. Preferring the majority to be red, she colored the bust in red and added a note for belt-like embroidery in white at the A-line seam. If she had any white leather left, she could have done an actual tiny belt, but she didn’t, so an illusory one would do just as nicely. An overlay for the tail was added, with white underneath, and the top point of it came up above the knees and just to the right to create some asymmetry. She doodled in some vague details around the seam between the tail and the body, making a note to figure out some decorative embroidery there to cover up what would be a dull seam.

Pencil lifting, she moved indecisively over the design. It was missing something, some manner of visual interest to the body. She didn’t want to add more embroidery, as there would be enough of it between the ‘belt’ and the area above the tail. A thought occurred to her and she immediately wrinkled her nose at it. She didn’t like doing ruching, as it tended to be an unnecessary distraction from the silhouette of the dress. Here, however, it could likely occupy the rest of the visual space without being too obtrusive. Pausing as she considered directions, she opted for vertical ruching on the bust, then horizontal on the body, ending at the embroidery.

As she colored in the discreet ruffling on the design, she was happy with the decision, seeing a pleasing alternation between the top vertical alignment, the horizontal center alignment, and the fall of the tail at the bottom. She added some vertical lines below the embroidery there, to slightly ruffle the top of the tail’s overlay.

Holding up the paper, she looked it over and thought quickly on whether to add an overlay to the bust area, but she canned the idea quickly. With the ruching, the dress would be bursting with detail, and she didn’t need to add more.

Standing up, she grabbed her measuring tape and took down her own measurements, blushing at the inches her waist and hips had grown. She’d lived too much on rich tavern food – spring would have to bring a new diet for her.

Gathering up her bolt of deep red silk, she laid it out, pinned it, and cut out the pattern for the dress. It was a pity she didn’t sell more of the fabric, luxurious as it was, but unless it was for a dress of this caliber, she had to recognize it wasn’t very practical.

The bust was sewn first, with a thick cotton backing around wire supports. The rest of the dress she could pull off without supports, but if the bust slipped down…her life would be over. She’d likely have to leave the city. Shaking her head to clear the unpleasant thoughts, she ran a line of straight stitches to attach the cotton to the wire, with a solid knot at each end to keep the wire from slipping out of its tube. Trying it on over her sweater, she added an extra line of stitching at the left side to draw it in slightly more. She could do the final fitting when it was done, but the closer she made the original, the better.

Moving into the bust ruching, she spread out the length of silk she’d be attaching to the base. On the back of the panel, she marked with chalk two zig zag lines, one pair on each end of the silk, each corner a right angle. With loose straight stitches, she went over each zig zag, leaving the ends trailing, and finally worked a loose running stitch down the center of each pair, knotting off the ends of those. Four hands picked up the silk, and the last two gently pulled the ends of the running stitches, crinkling the fabric at both ends.

Working for a moment to organize the ruffles how she wanted them, and make sure the silk was still tall enough to cover the area, she pinned the length of silk to the cotton backing. With careful back stitches that locked the ruffles in place without flattening them, she completed the bust area. Looking over at the design, she sighed heavily and tried not to think of how she’d only completed the smallest area.

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[Rosela]

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The cotton backing on the body had been put together, with room for lacing up the back. The silk panel for the body was cut and pinned, but not yet ruched. She couldn’t embroider on ruched fabric, so she’d need to embroider both the belt and the lower flowers before she could finish the ruching. Looking at her design, she made notes as to the order she’d be able to work in: belt embroidery, tail and overlay, flower embroidery, then the body ruffles. At the very last, she’d add the linen petticoat to support the tail’s flare.

Satisfied, she picked up her pencil and considered the two instances of embroidering. She needed to have a solid plan before starting them, as embroidery was an enormous pain to fix. Doodling aimlessly, she drew a set of jagged lines for the upper and lower part of the belt. She paused to frown at it and immediately moved to an empty area of the page to start fresh. With the rest of the dress lacking in sharp edges, it would look odd to include them in an accent area that wasn’t meant to draw attention. Parallel lines of loops looked much better, and she added small, splotchy flowers intermittently between them. They were so small, it would take only a few satin stitches to make, and any detail finer than that would be lost. To fill in the area, she added extra swirls to connect the top and bottom loops, and called the area finished.

The embroidery around the bottom would be different. The white silk she intended to use was damasked in flower print, so it was no decision at all to continue with the flower motif. She sketched the line she needed to fill, a lopsided peak, and on a whim, extended the peak higher to a single point. It would add some visual distraction from the sheer shape of her hips under the ruching.

Starting at the lower left, she began with a thorny swirl, making smaller vines above and below, and adding a large rose just underneath. The petals were simplified to shaded in arcs, already planning the satin stitches that would make them up. A few leaves were added further up, as well as additional smaller flowers. As she moved up the peak, she drew smaller and smaller flowers, topping it with a slightly larger rose with a tapered loop of a vine. Down the opposite side of the peak, she continued with subdued flowers, letting the longer side and top of the peak dominate the eye. Moving down the page, she drew a short arch, and continued the designs there for the back. Her hand alternated back and forth as she added smaller flowers to both sides, becoming larger towards the middle, where the two ends of the overlay silk would overlap. At the very center, just under where the lacing should end, she added a large rose atop the line of smaller ones and vines, and added several slightly smaller ones amidst leaves and flourishes in a triangular shape pointing down underneath.

Putting down the pencil to crack the stiff knuckles of her hand, she looked over the design. A couple extra nudges of the pencil, and she felt confident it was complete. Whether she’d be able to survive that much embroidery was another question.

Moving back to the silk, she took the two panels of silk that would make up the tail and set them aside. They’d be pinned and sewn to the body before the embroidery, but ruffles were needed on the top layer first. Taking care to make uneven basting stitches, she ran her needle and cotton thread through the top of the red silk, starting a third of the way into the horizontal area. She didn’t want ruffles all the way round, just in front, under the embroidery. To make sure the ruffles were nice and big, she ran a second line of basting stitches though as well, just below the first line. With careful, slow hands she began gathering the fabric along the stitches, bunching it gradually up in the middle and leaving it to fall straight towards the edges of her stitches. Every few chimes, she held it up against the half-sewn body to make sure the concentration of ruffles would be in the correct place.

Ruffles finished, she stood and stretched, rethreading her needle with fine, dark red thread. To keep the edges from unraveling, she had to serge them, an unpleasant stitch that was slow and looping, but did the job and looked good enough to be left visible. Knotting the thread, she began the slow process, holding the edge of the silk up before her eyes, one hand with a pair of scissors to trim stray silk threads as she went. Back and forth, the needle looped, slipping the thread underneath itself and looping back to the other side to push through the fabric. It was nearly a bell before she was done, and as she looked tiredly out the high window at the pitch black night, she wished she’d arranged her schedule to allow her to make the dress in two sessions.

Two free hands patted her face firmly, willing her eyes to stay focused. At the very least, she compromised, she’d leave the embroidery and final ruching for another day.

Silk overlays of the tail successfully serged, she pinned them together to the bottom of the body, combining it with the silk and cotton backing there. Flipping the long silk overlays up, she threaded her needle again and ran tight backstitches along the seam, pulling the four layers of fabric together along a tight line. Back and forth she moved the needle through, already feeling the strain on her eyes. She briefly considered using one of Kavala’s healing scrolls, but it wouldn’t fix her tiredness.

The backstitch seemed to take forever, but once the final pin was pulled and the thread was knotted off, she laid it out on the desk to admire. It was clearly coming together now, and she was glad she went with white embroidery, to balance out the splash of white silk at the bottom. Yawning widely, she rubbed her scalp as she leaned backwards. It would be a long day tomorrow, but it would be worth it to enter that ballroom in style.

Ledger :

Dress base price: 8sm

Fabrics:
Silk (20gm) + Cotton backing (1gm) + Linen petticoat (8sm) = 21.8gm

Embellishments:
Half Damasked (x1.5) + Embroidered (x5) = x6.5

Final Dress:
141gm 7sm

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[Gossamer]

Character: Rosela
Experience: Business +1, Planning +5, Drawing +5, Fashion Design +5, Sewing +5, Leatherworking +3
Lore:
Fashion Design: Back Of Gloves Best Place For Decoration
Leatherworking: Imprinting Gloves,
Fashion Design: Decorating With Men’s Tastes In Mind
Fashion Design: Taking Inspiration from Leo Varniak,
Leatherworking: Rabbit fur is easier to sew through the hide than tanned leather
Fashion Design: The Charoda-Tail Style Dress
Fashion Design: Seductive Without Being Trashy,
Sewing: Measure Twice Cut Once
Fashion Design: Planning Color To Match Theme
Fashion Design: Knowing When & Where To Add Embellishments Like Embroidery.



Additional Note: I really liked how you put together this dress, sewing it in sections and stages then putting the whole thing together at the end. Its nice seeing Rosela’s thought process as she goes through her design phases. And its also great that she’s not perfect, being lazy when she can and cutting corners when necessary but then again doing extra work to make sure her clothing is durable and hard wearing. She feels like a real character to me when I read her things.

I didn’t award Embroidery points, though I at one time added it in there on the last post, because you didn’t actually get to it but put it off for another day.. which is cool. But you planned it all very nicely and I tried to lore to that effect.