Catherine Oakley (called Kate): maker of leg coverings

Kadija: tireless seamstress

Keina ferch Sion: stubborn hood-maker

Georgia the Pragmatic: maker of underwear

Signy Torfadottir: tablet weaver extraodinairre, also a model

Virithos: your humble servant, off to be garbed by some talented ladies

Lisa: Keina's cousin, an interesting lady

Ceara: amusement for Virithos

A Dog

Prologue: Quest for the Golden Seamstress is in its second year. The idea is to garb someone from head to toe in 19 hours. Non-fabric stuff may be done in advance. Patterns may not be used if your team has competed before. Sewing starts at 11pm Friday night and goes until 6pm Saturday.

Our Fearless Leader misplaced her brain sometime since last year's competition. She fell in love with a tomb covering showing a brother and sister in matching cotehardies. This tomb covering is not very well known, so it would be a good thing to base this year's outfit on. Hey, we could even do both of them! With proper organization, 6 people could make 2 outfits in that amount of time...

Our Story: So way too early Friday morning, after way too little sleep the night before, Signy and I pile our gear into Gwyn's car and the three of us are off. Traveling goes well. We did a poor job of picking a lunch stop and lost an hour. Around 3:30 Eastern, we hit the city limits of Detroit. And traffic stops. We had an early lunch, so we were quite ready to stop for dinner now. But we're in the city proper, and the exits aren't labeled with signs for food, and we don't dare get off not knowing where we are. We drive past the exit for site (which doesn't open for 4 more hours) and go to Keina's cousin's house, where we have arranged to rest before the competition. An important sign is missing, but we eventually get there.

Lisa answers the door talking on the phone. "Who are you?" "We're Keina's friends." Blank look. "Where's Keina?" We, road buzzed pretty badly, do *not* answer "Who?" or "We ate her on the way," or anything else that sprang to mind. "We just talked to her, she's in Grand Rapids." "You mean you didn't all come in one car?" No, and there's another car coming about an hour behind us. She gets off the phone, "I'll call you back, there's three girls here, you're all girls, right? If you don't see me tomorrow, have my mom talk to Keina." Despite her being flustered by our arrival, and our road buzz, we managed to get directions to someplace to eat (and get us out of her hair as we'd arrived rather earlier than she was expecting us).

We found ourselves at an establishment rather like Panera's, and had gone from sandwiches to smoothies by the time Georgia and Kate showed up. We had cleverly grabbed the squishy couches to sit in, rather than the hard wood chairs, and it was a very nice place to re-focus the eyes, relax the ears to normal noise, and not move. By the time the five of us returned to Lisa's, she was ready for us and the dog had calmed down.

We didn't nap, but it was dark and quiet and very relaxing. We all burned off our road buzz and told Lisa about the event. The dog thought my knees were the tastiest food in the world. Yuck. We called Keina asking where they were, as they should have been only a few hours behind us. "Mejers?" OK, in what city? They didn't know. They decided to meet us at site. Lisa seemed a little nonplussed about that, but rolled with it.

We arrived on site around 9 local time and got a good parking spot. We checked in, and received beeswax and needles as site tokens. Our space was in the back, with no wall space. We unloaded. Keina and Kadija showed up. Those sewing set up the sewing area while I set up the sleeping area.

The whole team was wearing non-matching red tunics (red for Midlands) and buttons which read "All your fabric are belong to us" and feeling rather geeky. The red tunics made it very easy to find teammembers, and very confusing to me when I was looking around and seeing people in red who weren't on the team. Gwyn gave us cute little tokens, too. We had the team spirit thing going on.

Ceara showed up and I raced through the main floor to get my hugs. I hadn't seen her since WW. Silly woman was surprised at my tackle hug, so it must have been too long.

The rules were read. I couldn't hear them, but I knew that my part was to not work on the outfits, as I wasn't a sewing member of the team (only 6 allowed, the others all far better seamstresses than I). I fetched duct tape.

Just before the sewing started, I took a picture of the team, smiling and ready to go.

Time started. I was accosted by several women with tape measures around their shoulders and determination in their eyes. I bore up bravely.

While other people were sewing, Signy went off to the bathroom to dye. She was turning white silk ribbon into red silk ribbon to be the facing on the necklines and reinforcement behind the buttonholes. She was in a very cold bathroom for a very long time, as the dye had to be shaken every 5 minutes. Kate asked me where Signy was so that she could fit Signy for her hose, and I replied "In the bathroom." "Oh, is she OK?" "She's dying." (Say it out loud...) Kate looked at me... "Dying silk, D-Y-I-N-G!" Oh, OK! I watched Signy dump the dye out, it looked like she was pouring blood down the drain and pulling out a mass of intestines. I probably shouldn't have remarked upon that as loudly as I did...

I succeeded in not kicking Kate as she traced my foot (the ticklishness of my legs was highly annoying the entire time).

Keina wandered around muttering such reassuring things as "I've never done a hood without a pattern before," and "It's been a really long time since I made a hood."

I sat my chair against a pillar and watched. My toys were close at hand, and Ceara sat next to me. I spent a lot of time talking to Ceara. The only other overnight things I've done, I've been on the team. I felt horribly lazy not helping. I've only had 2 pieces of garb that I didn't make all by myself, it was very hard to sit and watch people sew things for me and not help. I was very glad Ceara was there to distract me, we could have been disqualified if I'd helped at all.

Kate showed the patience of a saint. Apparently my legs are a funny shape. Signy only needed one mock up before her hose were made. I think three full muslin mock ups were made for me. And I discovered that my legs are highly ticklish. I'm sure my squirming didn't help her concentrate, but I did manage to not kick her. To the amusement of all, shortly into the competition, as soon as I saw Kate approaching me, I would say, "I know, I know, take my pants off," and strip in the middle of the room (wonderful thing, long tunics. And then it gave me an excuse to show off my period undies).

Keina walked by, "I get all this to make a hood?!? All this just to make a hood?!?" She was in heaven. The burgundy fabric was in two pieces, fulled and un-treated. She had been handed two or three yards of wool to make the hood and was ecstatic. It was highly amusing, and it wasn't even late yet!

Georgia completed the first garment of the outfit: underwear! I immediately put it on, and spent quite a bit of time before the hose were completed flashing the team, judges, and anyone else who was foolish enough to ask how we were doing within earshot of me.