Countdown to the Ball: 10 days

After many long days of sewing, Adam is pretty much done.

He doesn't have a hat yet, and the shirt is an older one and the collar is a little too small and the cuffs too large, but he can be dressed to a publicly appropriate level.

I unfortunately got almost zero pictures of the process, because it was a lot of "head down, keep sewing, drink the water and coffee set in front of me".

The doublet is flatlined in heavy weight white linen. That wouldn't have been my first choice, but in the midst of this process, my stairlift was delivered and we've been trying to unbury the craft areas and the linen was what I could get my hands on.

We had to do some modifications as he's a lot broader in the shoulders than he is in the waist, and even after that the waist is still a bit looser than I'd like. But as he's wearing it more like a jerkin, I can always make a doublet and sleeves to go under it at some point. And he's very comfortable in it, which is the most important thing.

The back seams, collar, waist, shoulders and skirting are all edged in heavy twisted cording. That was a pain to get under the sewing machine and most was put in by hand.

The lining is black linen and was sewn into the doublet in pieces rather than assembled and then put in as one. That allowed me to work around the front slashing and focus on smoothing and matching smaller areas at a time.

The slashes are closed at intervals with small square stones in a simple setting. Adam glued them into the setting and then closed the prongs. I reinforced the closures with thread to prevent excessive pulling on the settings. We were lucky to find the stones and settings in a long forgotten bead box in the Great Organization.

And now he's dressed (more or less). However, my nephew, who comes to Pennsic with us, asked if he could have a ball outfit too, so now it starts all over again...