So as I add images, I’m tagging garments (with comments on sleeves, collars, hems, and fastenings), headwear, accessories, decade, country, and genders in the picture. The source and folio, etc, are added if I can get them (and mostly I’m not adding things if I can’t). Is there anything I’m overlooking that I’m gonna regret, once I’m 1K images in?

Well, dress is cut out… gores are sewn together, as is back seam… time to tweak the fit.

Great idea, except for the part where it doesn’t fit at all. Apparently this fabric doesn’t stretch as much as my other pull-over kirtles (which still fit!), thus I can’t actually put it on, so looks like I’ll be moving some gores and it won’t be as tight as I’d like (or I’ll add buttons/lacing). At least I have a bit of extra fabric, so I can add slivers of fabric to the bust/side seams if I have to…

Anyway, so I long ago drank the Koolaid and learned to love layers. As such, all of my garb, basically, requires me to wear an inner dress and an outer dress to look right – if I skip the outer dress I look like a peasant, if I skip the underdress i’m running around with visibly bare arms. This won’t do at ALL. I have one dress which I *can* wear without the undergown, as it has closed sleeves (and it’s even unlined! in other words, it was actually made for Pennsic, though I’ve never been QUITE warm enough to wear it without the supportive layer underneath.)

So, obviously, I need more garb like this. I’m still not thrilled with this, as honestly that’s more closed-sleeve dresses than I want to have, but it’ll work. My first one is going to be based on this dress:
though with a wildly different color scheme, as I found some black/white mini-checked tropical wool I had forgotten I bought. I think I meant to make a GFD with it, as those always look interesting in slightly patterned fabric, but ah well. Unlined and with just a supportive smock underneath, it should be as cool as Roman etc. I have 5 yards of the fabric in question, maybe closer to 5.5 since it’s fabric.com and I ordered 5, so that gives me an extra 15”.

Enter my trusty Visio/analog. (Actually on the Mac I use Conceptdraw, but same idea. Really Visio’s the one piece of software I wish would get ported win->mac, but I digress again.) So here’s the layout:

For some reason the labels don’t show up, but the purple is the body pieces, light blue is gores, and dark blue is sleeves. I have an existing gown pattern I can impose on the body pieces for shoulder/bust line preliminary fitting.

Only question is what color shall I make the dags, and should I put faux “underdress cuffs” on the bottom of the sleeves? Am leaning towards blue, but will have to see what’s in the stash, and decide how much work I want to put in this. My other one has cut dags, , which is easier in the “I don’t have to hem these” sort of way, but requires a fairly significantly difference in fabric weight between the dress and the dags…

Hmm, I guess I also have to decide whether I need to lace the bust at all – am leaning against, given how scoop necked it is I suspect I can move it out of the way for nursing, but will have to see…

I have been known to wear a hood in the men’s chaperone style, which I had seen a few images of, but knew was rare. Still, I figured I had just enough evidence to justify it. However, I realized today that (with one *marginal* exception, that I think may not actually be an exception) unless I want to move my persona WAY north, I don’t actually have justification for it. On the up side, it DOES fill in a mental gap in “how europe north and west of france differed a bit from english/french styles in the early 15th century”.

Anyway, without further ado, Blanche of England – married a german prince, died in austria, had her picture painted on the ceiling (circa 1430):

Look at that hat! It’s like a very elaborate version of a men’s chaperone. And the thing I realized, looking at it, was that every example I could think of with a woman wearing this sort of hat? Netherlands, German, Switzerland, Cleves… somewhere not France. (Thus why it’s technically “right out” for me… though I want Blanche’s outfit.
This one’s netherlandish and from 1425. And I’ve got 2 more in “A Visual History of Costume (The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century” that are also Netherlandish (images 66 and 71, if you have it, I couldn’t find either online). Cynthia Virtue has a redrawing of a Swiss Tapestry that seems to be the same idea (3rd image), though without additional citation.

The only counter example I could find, I suspect is actually a guy – English, 1415 – http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/chaucerreading.jpg – the figure in pink in the bottom right corner.

Anyone want to shoot me down? As I *like* wearing “men’s” hats, they’re easy… but I’m not from the Netherlands…

No one size fits all rules, here, unfortunately. I suppose that’s a reason to cook more…

DreamHost Blog » They’re Internet History.

Nope, no kickback to me off this. Though I still think after yesterday’s post the Met should give me a commission.

This has been passed around several LJs and mailing lists, but just in case people *haven’t* seen it, there are some lovely in-period books scattered amongst the rest, for *amazing* prices. I just picked up four *fat* museum catalogs with lots of pictures for $25… and if you use the promo code P908, you *should* get free shipping. It worked for me anyway.