Knife Pleats

Okay, I freely admit, tho I can't say I like to, I was overthinking knife pleats. Especially with linen. It's easy to overthink something you have no experience with, so I've been trying all kinds of ways to make it easier or make it faster and realized a little while ago that I was actually making it harder, not easier. At any rate, it's easy to see the threads in linen. Actually, I'm sure it's easy to see the threads in most materials if you try, but that's beside the point.

Here's what I'm finding is the easiest way, eyeball the thread I'm trying to follow. I'm not kidding.

To make it a step easier, I would trace a line on the material where the ground of the pleat is supposed to be sewn as well as on the peak of the pleat that's supposed to be sewn to it, so I don't lose my threads as easily, but that's for the next row.

Needless to say, I thought this method would be the hard way to do this, but it actually isn't. No wonder there haven't really been good instructions for it, because other than sewing them down, there really isn't a method necessary for making them easier. The only thing you need to know is how large to make the folds, but that's pretty easy too. Period Pleats shows the folds. See the ground fabric with the folded pleat on top? Simply draw your line where the folded pleat should lay on the ground fabric and draw a line on the point of the folded pleat. Match those two lines and voila, sew them down with a backstitch or something else you prefer right on the top about a 1/16" in. Granted, this method *can* work with a sewing machine, but somehow handstitching feels better to me.

It's going to take a little while to get these done, but I think it'll be good by the time it is. Hopefully it's not too small, but as a test piece, I think it'll be okay and I think I can likely take the pleats I'm making now and sew them to a larger piece of material later without much difficulty, so it won't be wasted.

Funny how you go through all this stuff to make something easy, only to find the original method was the easiest. I'll post pics when I'm done tho.

Material!

We went to JoAnne's today to get a metal yard stick for making my steuchlein pleats even. I suppose that's cheating, but hey, who knows really what they did in period. At any rate, while there, (incidentally, we had to get the metal ruler at Michael's) we found some really nice light weight 100% wool on sale. Suit weight is how they termed it. They had a lovely cream, about 4.5 yards, and a really deep brown, about 7.75 yards. Normally they were 14.99 a yard, but the sale was 40% off, so I bought it all for 8.99 a yard. I haven't, as of yet, been able to find them cheaper online, so hopefully we made a good purchase. :) These will be used for future kleid (or dresses) and hosen since they weren't in colors that would work for my husband's landsknecht unless we overdyed the cream, but that might be a waste... We'll see tho.

Pleats Again

I figured with the newest Shire roundtable being centered on head-coverings or hats, I should really get my steuchlein done or close to being done. I did "another" search on easy pleats and I found someone else's blog and a sewing site. I'm thinking I'll have to merge these two sites methods. The sewing site indicated sewing a loose unknotted line along the pleat line, which sounds like a lot of work, but will likely make the pleats more even in the end. Here's the blog showing how she does her knife pleats. Slightly Obsessed This is going to be a bit of work I think, so no time like the present.

Actually, I can use the blog's method across the steuchlein, make about 4 or 5 lines like she does on the edge, iron them flat and hopefully straight, then sew them down by hand across the top as is shown in period. This might actually be the quickest method for me. I'll grab the linen and try tonight. What the heck.

Wig Head

And, so I don't forget, I need to get a hold of a styrofoam wig head for making the hats and veils. I think it will be a lot easier making these things on 'someone' else than it will be testing them out on myself and since K.C. is on the west coast more often than not, I'll have to do with a few dummies. Do they make wig heads in different sizes, cause K.C.'s head is a bit larger than mine and I seriously doubt he wants a tellerbarret in my size. :D

Pleat Put-Off

I've put off working on the steuchlein, but I think what I'm going to do is get a metal yard stick and try doing the pleats that way. Not sure how that will work really, but hopefully it'll help. I figure if I take a piece of cardboard, cover it in material and use it to pin my steuchlein down as I figure out the pleats, hopefully it will make even straight lines. Judicious use of an iron would likely help as well. Nothing like learning and going completely from scratch, right? :D I've seen a contraption that ppl use to make pleats, but whether that would have been used is beyond my research right now. Since I don't exactly have one, that's a rather moot point as it is. At any rate, I'll get the yardstick and see what that does for me.

Pleats Again

Though the theory was interesting, I don't think the way I am doing the pleats is going to work. I hate pleats. They are more difficult than you'd think they should be, yet I guess I shouldn't be surprised, just annoyed. I'm going to pull out what I've done thus far and figure out how in the world to do straight pleats.

Pleats

Personally, pleats aren't the easiest things in the world to do. I attempted to sew a very light 3/8" 'line' where the inside of the next pleat would be, but then I considered what my next step had to be and realized if I had to do that for all of them, it would take a lot longer than it likely needed to. Called Wynn and though she doesn't do much pleating, she had a suggestion that she said someone else had done. Whether what she told me and what I'm doing tho, are two different things. :D I wasn't quite sure what she intended, but what I am doing now is taking the point of the next pleat and using a -_- type of stitch (yes, that's not very helpful, but think of it as sewing up at the 1/4" line or where I want the first pleat to end and sewing down 1/4" higher on the fabric or into the point of the second pleat, then going about 1/4" and coming up into the point of the second pleat again and finding the corresponding spot on the first pleat). Hmm, a picture will be necessary to make this make sense.

Hopefully that makes sense to someone else, but it appears to be working quite nicely. At any rate, once you've sewn a few of those back and forth stitches, then you pull on the thread and wah-la, you have a pleat without a stitch on the top. Iron it flat and it should be good, though I am only on the first pleat, so we'll have to see if this technique will work on the other pleats and whether or not it'll be hardy enough to work. I may still need to do the top stitch as all the various manuals say it should be done, but I'm hoping not. I'm lazy, what can I say. ;)
This is what the pleat is looking like thus far (rather close up, sorry). It's looking a bit rough right now, but I figure after ironing I'll make a final determination on whether or not the top stitch will need to be done to make it "straighter". Looks better from a small distance!

Caved

Okay, I went ahead and ironed the cream cotton, because putting pleats into an unironed piece of material is a challenge to say the least. Next time I'll do it before I start sewing (yeah, yeah, I know, I know). Also, the hems that I thought were straight, aren't 'quite' and likely should have been done last, but how do you keep the sides from unraveling while doing everything else? Guess I should figure that out too.

Findings Thus Far

A single thread is definitely more "invisible". I had a few of my weak double threads break (the threads pulled from the original woven fabric) and found that continuing with the single thread at that point was easier even if not uniform with the rest of the piece, but this is a practice piece, right? I've also discovered that the weaker double threads, as long as they remain untwisted, which tends to happen as you sew, doesn't break as often. I didn't pin my original hem at all. I found it was easier, since I pulled the material apart instead of cut it, to work with the straight line that was already provided.

Here are pictures of how things are looking thus far.

This is the running-stitched hem prior to the rolled hem. The right-hand side is the selveged edge. I'm afraid I didn't iron my material before sewing, which is likely one of the main "no-nos" of sewing, but it hasn't really affected what I've done thus far.

This is the rolled-hem completed. I haven't removed the runningstitch thread yet, tho I'm debating right now if I need to. It will likely make it look neater though if I do, but I don't know how easy it will be to remove.

Thinking about my next step, [that is, the pleats that go over the forehead] I realize that it might have been easier to have planned for them and not completed the rolled hems at the ends of the pleats yet to be completed, but hey, we'll see what happens. I'm also going to use the suggestion on <http://cadieux.mediumaevum.com/schilling-headdress.html> and put a piece of canvas under the pleats, but I'm going to experiment with a single canvas layer, not a double as she used. So basically I'm going to have to sandwich the canvas inside the selvege edge of the steuchlein and the pleats. Not quite sure the exact shape or size of the canvas itself, but I have enough to play a little with pins.

Mitered Corners

Though I know I've had people tell me about how to do corners, they don't mentally make a heck of a lot of sense, so I found directions as follows:

To sew a mitered corner with all edges enclosed, press under 1/4 inch all around the cut square. Then fold in another 1-1/2 inch and press again. With the 1/4 inch fold still intact, open up the 1-1/2 inch fold and make a diagonal fold on the corner, matching up the creases from the first fold. With right sides together, pin this fold together so that you are sewing on the diagonal with small stitches. Cut out the excess in the miter. Turn corners right side out. Topstitch close to the pressed edge.

I'm going to attempt this on my cotton steuchlein, but I'm not totally sure I'll know how to do it correctly.

Rolled Hem

My first attempt at a steuchlein is with cotton. I realize it's not the best material to start with since it won't react the exact same as linen, which is what I've determine the material should be, but I didn't want to waste the linen I have by trying it out the first time on something good and messing up.


I cut a square of cream white cotton material dimensions of 30"x 30". Thus far all I've been able to do was start hemming one of the rough edges. For the thread to sew the hems, I've simply been using thread pulled from the original material. I've noticed one problem with this method: the thread is thinner and more brittle when pulled from it's sisters, but it appears to work well if you're willing to put up with it breaking now and then. Regardless, I folded it over about 1/4" and used a running stitch to hold it down, now I'm currently folding that same rough-edged running-stitched side another 1/4" and using a rolled hem stitch to hold it down. Later I'll remove the original running stitch to keep it cleaner though from what I've read, it might not be absolutely necessary. I'm also trimming the excess material or strings on the backstitch set so that it will have less material under the rolled hem. My rolled hem isn't as narrow as it likely should be, but sewing and I are playing a careful game... It fights me and I fight back a little at a time. Eventually I'll overcome it and I'll be able to sew worth something. I hope at least.


According to <http://www.perestroika.ca/html2/vest/handstitching.php>: The rolled hem uses a slipstitch to secure a very narrow finished edge. Roll the fabric between your thumb and finger (or, if the fabric won't roll, fold it), then secure it with a tiny stitch that catches just a thread or two from the fabric and then a short stitch through the roll (or the edge of the fabric).

Note: Though I've seen instructions that say to use a single thread when doing a rolled hem, I've been using a doubled over piece of thread for this experiment. I *think* the only real difference will be the stitches visibility on the cloth, but for now a doubled over piece of thread is easier for me to work with right now.