Project Elf Chain: Finished (Again!)
Mar. 31st, 2012 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzI realise I've already announced this project done twelve days ago, but one is not truly addicted to chainmailing unless one can find an excuse to continue on a project that already took over two years to complete. By all intents and purposes, I should have been done and happier for it. Instead, I found an excuse to continue on it.
Let me show you what happened. (Please excuse me, I have been forced by kitty cuddles to do part of this documentation by phonecam.)
If you recall one of the final pictures of me in my fixed gambeson and chain, you can see that the hips are escaping at the sides. This was part of the plan, I would need space to move in. However, I still had enough rings left to do something about it.
I set to making gussets. Starting in the train, because Trainmaille'ing is such a time-honoured tradition.
I started the gussets at four rings after examining the side slits. I had added a "fly" to the top of the slit to prevent it from tearing open at the slightest bit of exercise. A fly is a dressmakers term, I believe, although the shape of rings used is similar. It is mostly just a matter of squeezing in an extra ring. I had made sure the top of the gusset had three rings side-to-side where there should have been only two. This would ensure enough movement during exercise without opening any rings. It would only be logical the gusset would start at four rings, which is just the next row +1 ring in Japanese 12-in-1. Try it, you'll see.
The gusset was added to the "side seam" slits. I had no idea how long my supply of gold rings would last, so I didn't make them too big at first. Silly me.
The bottom of the gusset is straight, which means that stopping anywhere above the bottom edge of the rest of the chain would just look weird. A straight hemline all across, except at the hips where it's suddenly 10 rows higher? Impossible. I'd have to fix this at some point.
The gusset insertion went pretty well, I must admit. The sides of the chain were straight, but because of the nature of the weave, one row is offset by half a ring to the row above it and below it. (You can see it in this picture here.) The gusset had a 45 degree angle edge, and no matter how hard you try, the two will never join up perfectly. It's not European 4-in-1. You can see what happens when you try in these two pictures:
Some of the green rings will jump up a bit because there's not 12 but 14 gold rings going into them. Seven pairs of rings, joining them to other green rings. I'm pointing to one of them with my pliers, but perhaps the other picture is more clear. It's not to be helped, you can't remove the ring or another will jump up. It's inherent to joining the two dissimilar edges together.
After the gussets were added and the weird hem shape was defined, I resolved to go on until the bottom. I hoped to have enough gold rings. But first I had to try it on. Gussets are all nice and dandy, but they don't need to continue unchecked to the bottom if your hips don't require it, after all. I put the chainmail on over my vest and asked NoKey to measure the width between front and back panel with a bit of chain that still needed to be attached. It measured some 14 rings (hello voluminous hips!) which gave me an estimation at which point I needed to stop the increase from the gusset and continue straight down. This would also mean no more oddly jumping rings.
But I had more pressing problems. These were all the gold rings that were left at some point.
Unweaving. We all do it, but we just don't like talking about it. At some point, I even laid out the still-to-be filled parts and filled them up with prepared chain to see if I could just unweave some of these chains instead of removing 45 minutes of work from a front or back panel. Lucky for me I had plenty chains, so I only removed one row of rings from the chainmail itself and took the rest of the needed gold rings from the prepared chains. And not even all of these chains were unwoven, because I was just too eager to continue work.
When the gussets were done, I found out that one of the two was being a little difficult... One gusset (left) fit perfectly. The other... not so much.
*sigh*
There was only one solution that would be fool-proof at this point. I opened up the gusset from the "extra" ring at the bottom towards the oddly-jumping-rings* and then closed the bottom up perfectly.
I figured that I'd need to add a ring somewhere in between to make the two ends meet up perfectly. Guess what?
I actually had a ring too many in there. But as you can probably surmise from above picture, I managed to match the sides up and get my pliers in well enough to close the final rings to the project.
And here she is in all her glory: Project Elf Chain, finished not once but twice!
Of course I'm going to have to do a final "the full story" post some day, as well as a new "Beriadanwen undressed" now that the chainmail is done, like peeling the layers off an onion. Still, that's something for another day. It's done, it's truly done, and even two episodes of Downton Abbey (which NoKey enjoys,by the way!) did not provide me with an excuse to work with my pliers. I truly cannot think of another point that needs fixing, improving, altering or extending...
I am sad. My project is done. And I have so many green rings left. Of course, I've quite run out of gold, but that's the story of most people's lives.
-----
*) I'm trying to coin a phrase here. I just hope it's not too noticable...
Let me show you what happened. (Please excuse me, I have been forced by kitty cuddles to do part of this documentation by phonecam.)
If you recall one of the final pictures of me in my fixed gambeson and chain, you can see that the hips are escaping at the sides. This was part of the plan, I would need space to move in. However, I still had enough rings left to do something about it.
I set to making gussets. Starting in the train, because Trainmaille'ing is such a time-honoured tradition.
I started the gussets at four rings after examining the side slits. I had added a "fly" to the top of the slit to prevent it from tearing open at the slightest bit of exercise. A fly is a dressmakers term, I believe, although the shape of rings used is similar. It is mostly just a matter of squeezing in an extra ring. I had made sure the top of the gusset had three rings side-to-side where there should have been only two. This would ensure enough movement during exercise without opening any rings. It would only be logical the gusset would start at four rings, which is just the next row +1 ring in Japanese 12-in-1. Try it, you'll see.
The gusset was added to the "side seam" slits. I had no idea how long my supply of gold rings would last, so I didn't make them too big at first. Silly me.
The bottom of the gusset is straight, which means that stopping anywhere above the bottom edge of the rest of the chain would just look weird. A straight hemline all across, except at the hips where it's suddenly 10 rows higher? Impossible. I'd have to fix this at some point.
The gusset insertion went pretty well, I must admit. The sides of the chain were straight, but because of the nature of the weave, one row is offset by half a ring to the row above it and below it. (You can see it in this picture here.) The gusset had a 45 degree angle edge, and no matter how hard you try, the two will never join up perfectly. It's not European 4-in-1. You can see what happens when you try in these two pictures:
Some of the green rings will jump up a bit because there's not 12 but 14 gold rings going into them. Seven pairs of rings, joining them to other green rings. I'm pointing to one of them with my pliers, but perhaps the other picture is more clear. It's not to be helped, you can't remove the ring or another will jump up. It's inherent to joining the two dissimilar edges together.
After the gussets were added and the weird hem shape was defined, I resolved to go on until the bottom. I hoped to have enough gold rings. But first I had to try it on. Gussets are all nice and dandy, but they don't need to continue unchecked to the bottom if your hips don't require it, after all. I put the chainmail on over my vest and asked NoKey to measure the width between front and back panel with a bit of chain that still needed to be attached. It measured some 14 rings (hello voluminous hips!) which gave me an estimation at which point I needed to stop the increase from the gusset and continue straight down. This would also mean no more oddly jumping rings.
But I had more pressing problems. These were all the gold rings that were left at some point.
Unweaving. We all do it, but we just don't like talking about it. At some point, I even laid out the still-to-be filled parts and filled them up with prepared chain to see if I could just unweave some of these chains instead of removing 45 minutes of work from a front or back panel. Lucky for me I had plenty chains, so I only removed one row of rings from the chainmail itself and took the rest of the needed gold rings from the prepared chains. And not even all of these chains were unwoven, because I was just too eager to continue work.
When the gussets were done, I found out that one of the two was being a little difficult... One gusset (left) fit perfectly. The other... not so much.
*sigh*
There was only one solution that would be fool-proof at this point. I opened up the gusset from the "extra" ring at the bottom towards the oddly-jumping-rings* and then closed the bottom up perfectly.
I figured that I'd need to add a ring somewhere in between to make the two ends meet up perfectly. Guess what?
I actually had a ring too many in there. But as you can probably surmise from above picture, I managed to match the sides up and get my pliers in well enough to close the final rings to the project.
And here she is in all her glory: Project Elf Chain, finished not once but twice!
Of course I'm going to have to do a final "the full story" post some day, as well as a new "Beriadanwen undressed" now that the chainmail is done, like peeling the layers off an onion. Still, that's something for another day. It's done, it's truly done, and even two episodes of Downton Abbey (which NoKey enjoys,by the way!) did not provide me with an excuse to work with my pliers. I truly cannot think of another point that needs fixing, improving, altering or extending...
I am sad. My project is done. And I have so many green rings left. Of course, I've quite run out of gold, but that's the story of most people's lives.
-----
*) I'm trying to coin a phrase here. I just hope it's not too noticable...
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