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…

This site is *fabulous*. I got sent to this from a random article, and just as a test, typed in a book I had been looking for for *years* (Margaret Scott’s The History of Dress: Late Gothic Europe, 1400-1500) and never found for a price I was willing to pay. It found it… in Canada… for something resembling half the price I had found it elsewhere. (And yes, I should get it next week.)

::happy dance::
Enjoy!

There are a fair number of things I want to make / organize the making of for the barony. Still working on plans for that – the problem with regalia is that it ought to be spiffy but persona (and gender, and size) neutral, which is somewhat difficult. While I’d like to make some Court livery for the Champions and Officers, I can’t think of anything other than baldrics, or perhaps hoods or cloaks, that would work. Though fancy embroidered or appliqued baldrics WOULD have some spiff factor.

Now that I have some space, with the house and all, I’d like to do some more silk painting. I still owe a few banners, and I’d like to do yet another one for WM as well – we have some gorgeous emnoidered ones, but one can never have too many banners…

I plan on fighting at war this year, so my armor needs help. So does Girard’s – I think his gambeson is held together by hope.

This, other random stuff, and… Oh! I am going to try to have a garden this year. We bought seeds, and I started the ones that needed starting, and I even identified the one eligible sunny spot in my yard. Next step – raised beds.

As I was blockaded in my sewing room for much of the weekend, I listened to a lot more music than usual. And as a confession? My music taste hasn’t really changed that much since, well, high school. This is kind of sad. Not to mention it was getting a bit repetitive…

So, people with better music taste than I, what should I be listening to that’s come out in the last 5-10 years, since I quit listening to the radio? My taste in music runs slightly angsty, leaning heavily on Tori Amos and Better than Ezra, but ranging as far as Disturbed/Korn/etc into the “harder” rock side of things… not so much into folksy, definitely not into country at ALL.

(And yes, I know about Pandora, but I’m hoping for more personal suggestions…)

Poppea Velvet from Silk Trading Company

So someone on h-cost posted a link to this company (click the picture) earlier today.

It’s completely unfair that to make a houppelande out of it (it’s 100% silk) it’d cost me something more than a mortgage payment.

I really ought to be able to dress myself in the style of my persona.

Even if my persona has scads of money. And I don’t.

::pout::

• St. Catherine’s Tourney Documentation – A Light Evening Meal
• Feast Menus from Battle of the Oranges and Baronial Champions 2006 (recipes to follow)
• The Purple “Tacunium Sanitatis” dress
• And Girard has finally released his “Goat Scrotum Stout” recipe on the world. (NO goats were harmed in the production of this beverage).

Enjoy…

BNF Latine 1673, Folio 52

What, Where, When:

• This dress is based on an image from the manuscript BNF Latine 1673[1], a Tacuinum  Sanitatis that was copied and illustrated in Milan around 1390-1400.

• It is an overgown, intended to be worn over a second, supportive undergown with long sleeves.

Source:

The gown is based on manuscript BNF Latine 1673, folio 52v. Further details are taken from folios 46, 79, 82v, and 84.

Materials:

Fabric:

The exterior fabric is a silk/wool blend, chosen for its color and drape, which closely match those in the illumination. (Actually, the illumination was chosen to best utilize the fabric, as many of this sort of projects begin.)  It is lined in a plain-weave silk, dyed using modern methods  to approximate the color in the illumination.  Both the purple and the pink/orange are colors which can be achieved with period dyes, logwood for the purple and madder for the pink/orange[2].

Mixed fiber fabrics such as silk/wool, wool/linen or silk/linen were common in period, although mixed fiber *threads* were not. For instance, a fabric with a silk warp and wool weft was known as “buratti” in Venice[3].

Threads and other Embroidery Materials:

The embroidery is stitched with twisted silk threads – a single strand of (12-stand) Splendor silk for the leaves and couching, a less-twisted shinier silk for the flowers. Gold is “Treasure Braid”, a nylon-based synthetic, as I did not have the money nor the skill for real metallic threads. The pearls are freshwater pearls, stitched with polyester thread. (Since this garment will be worn fairly often, strength was important, and I was unable to find silk thread that felt strong enough to hold the pearls and that also matched the garment well.

The gown is also stitched in polyester – the original plan was silk thread, but when the decision was made to use the machine for seams, I was afraid silk would cut the fabric of the dress.

Tools:

Due to the size of the work, I used a modern embroidery frame; although I attempted to use a smaller, period (slate) frame I was unable to mount the fabric to maintain tension over large areas like the sleeves.  Likewise, using period needles was outside the scope of this project.

Design and Techniques:

Dress Pattern:

The gown pattern is based on 4 panels and 4 gores, for maximum fabric conservation. The panels are cut as rectangles, approximately the length of the gown + several inches and a quarter of the width of the fabric (60 inches). They are fit directly on the wearer, who must be wearing the supportive underdress intended to be worn under the final gown.

I used a straight front technique for this gown in an effort to improve the shaping around the bust, all shaping is done on the side and back seams[4].  (My first attempt at this gown had a curved front seam, which when combined with the natural stretch of the wool twill it was made of, led to unpleasant bagginess.)

The sleeves were cut to maximize the drape of the fabric – the wrist edge is on the straight of grain, and flares naturally from the shoulder. They are slightly larger/more dramatically flared than those in the Tacuinum ; however, the sleeve styles varied extensively throughout the Tacuinum and I wanted more “canvas” for embroidery, so I feel the larger size is appropriate.

Embroidery:

Several of the gowns in the Tacuinum appear to be embroidered, specifically folio 84v appears to have embroidery on the neckline and sleeves. I choose to use gold and pearls for the embroidery because I had recently read an inventory[5] of a French Countess’s wardrobe after her death in 1426, which mentioned several dresses “with large sleeves” so embellished. The vinework pattern is based on illumination of the time. It is executed in chain stitch, couching and satin stitch, all common to 14^th century embroidery.

Gown Construction:

The gown is machine sewn (the original plan was to handsew it but time and other considerations intervened). It is flat-lined (exterior and interior fabric are treated as one) – I have not found documentation of how linings were treated in the 14^th century, and treating them as one improved the drape of the fabric.  Seams are finished by flatfelling[6].

Accessories:

The gown itself is worn over a supportive undergown, which shapes the figure, especially the bust. Chemise, stockings,etc. are also worn.  Unlike French images of the same time period, the ladies in the Tacuinum wear their hair in braids wrapped around the head, and veils are very rarely worn. To achieve this style, “Italian hair taping”, in which a braid is sewn to the head with a blunt needle and decorative ribbon, is used (in my case with false hair). A thin, decorative silk veil is worn over the hair, as shown in folios 42 and 79 of the manuscript. The stuffed ermine? Not period in the slightest.

[2] Information from a class by Baroness Magdalena de Hazebrook, taken at Atlantia Winter University 2006.

[3] Mola, L., “The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice”, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2000; referenced at http://www.classactfabrics.com/information/glossary.htm

[4] Fitting was assisted by Lukas Byerly, without whose assistance this project could not have been completed – I am not dexterous nor flexible enough to fit this style gown on myself without help!

[5] From Revue des Sociétés Savantes des Départements. 6th series, volume VI, 1877, 2nd semester
The goods inventoried apparently belonged to the Provencal Countess Elipde, d’Avelin after her death.  She was the daughter of Raymond, Count of Aveline and Jeanne de Beaufort, wife of Odon de Villars (1) and Conrad, Count of Fribourg and Neufchatel. A translation of this source by Katharine Barech can be found at http://jillwheezul.livejournal.com/34448.html#cutid1

[6] Flatfelled seams are documented in medieval wool garments, as seen in Heather Rose Jones’s article on the subject. http://www.heatherrosejones.com/archaeologicalsewing/index.html