by Meg "Kyomi" Matulewicz. Photos by Steve "Therian" Matulewicz
So to begin, this all started about a year ago when Lady Anne decided that she wanted to clear out her crafting room and was giving away all the fabric in it. I jumped at the opportunity....I mean, someone who'd been in the SCA and Realms for 20+ years wants to get rid of their fabric stash for free????? So I drove 2+ hours each way and returned with my car stuffed with trash bags full of fabric, and I mean some really good stuff! There was plenty of wool, linen, silk, brocade, and all sorts of materials that make fabric lovers go nuts. I decided that I needed help consuming this amount of material and wanted to spread around the good fortune. Thus, Garb Making Day 2016 came around. It was me and a minivan full of newbies in our house, crafting as best we could. By the end of the day, they all went away looking much more fabulous.
The year passed. I have given “the Stash” out to a couple of other sewing groups. I started talking with people. "Hey, are you thinking about doing another garb making again?" The question kept coming up, so we marked a date. This time around, we also received a donation of leather and I pulled even more garment-weight leather from my basement. We scheduled it from 9am-9pm and figured people would filter in and out through the day. On the day of the event, 2 people showed up right around 9, which gave me time to work with them on sewing and leather working skills. Everyone else piled in around noon.
Holy crap, we nearly had a legal event! After people had a quick bite of Guinness-brushed turkey plus all the fixings, the crafting went into high gear. At one time, we had 6 fabric machines, an embroidery machine, a serger, and two leather sewing machine all running. People were waiting for a turn to get on one of them. Other people were in the basement applying leather dye to grieves that the guy learned how to tool that day (the wood grain style dye looks awesome, by the way). Upstairs in Therian’s leather workshop, someone else was adding eyelets to bracers.
In the end, I'm not sure how many completed items were produced, but it was something like 2 leather hats, 1 quiver, 1 set of grieves, bracers, 7+ leather hooded mantles, 1 leather vest, 4-6 tunics, 1 pair of pants, a cloak, 4+skirts, several pouches, and there's more, but I can't remember. We had about 5 experienced leather, sewing advisers assisting 15ish new players. There was so much fabric, thread, and good will flying everywhere I am still stunned. Luckily, our house could hold it all. I still feel like we hardly made a dent on the fabric, though (8 almost full bins of stuff still remain in our garage). I guess we'll need to do this again some time. Thanks to every who came by!
