Sempstress

The images above and to the left are pictures of my new italien style woman’s
doublet being worn after the italien fashion; that is, sans farthingale. This
is always a nice option to have if you anticipate ending up in a crowded room.
The doublet was finished in time for the winter faire party for bristol back
in january. Theoretically, I have some better pictures of the full dress with
farthingale coming along any time now, but for the moment, I’ll just put up
the polaroid scans that I have. (Note: better picture have been procured, and posted above and to the right….)

The doublet and skirts are made of a heavy brushed cotton –
another $2/yard special. My mother said the fabric was a ‘heavy small whaled
whaleless corduroy’, or something like that. She knows these things. This one
did not need to be dyed. The doublet is fully self lined with the cotton. There
are two lines of boning in front. The boning casing is made with biased tape
sewn to the inside of the lining piece, so that there are no stitches visible
on the outside of the doublet. The boning runs to just below the corset line.
The doublet is shaped by a pair of curved seams at the side front and side back.
In the closeups on the dummy, you see an epaulette at the shoulders. The epaulette
is there as a mounting for the double shoulder roll in the finished doublet.

The trim on the doublet is rows of open work oatmeal colored
midi-braid surrounded by dark red gimp, layed chevronwise (in V’s, for the non-heraldry
literate) on the front and back of the doublet. Please see the closeup of the
front of the doublet, modeled by my dress dummy (the Lady Jane Beige). Actually,
the trim had to be put on the doublet pieces before they were sewn , so that
they raveling ends of the braids could be safely hidden in the seams. Getting
the braids to match up at the center back seam is more difficult than you might
imagine – not only do you need to measure everything so it comes out in the
same place, but you need to keep the braids from slipping past each other while
you sew. I don’t think I will do anything quite like this again!

The
skirt is lined with very cheap costume satin, so that it moves freely. Had I
been thinking, I would have gotten the satin in yellow or green or some color
that I am not likely to use as an underskirt. I didn’t realize this until the
night before I was supposed to have pictures of the costume taken, and then
I had to go on an emergency fabric run to try to find an underskirt fabric that
did not clash with the red, and did not make me look like I was decorated for
xmas. The green underskirt in the full pictures above is actually striped, with
a triple row of gimp braid along the bottom. The back and top two halves of
each side of the underskirt are faked with cheap black broadcloth. The overskirt
is just shy of 6 yards of fabric gathered down to the waistband. It is heavy.
(Combination clothing and exercise equipment.) It drapes beautifully, though.

I was happy with the end result.

Well, here it is, finally- the fully constructed dress from
‘A Diary of a Work in Progress’ The image
processing isn’t quite up to par, so these may take a while to download. (The
sempstress recently changed jobs – I’ve gained more time for sewing and significantly
lower stress levels, but lost access to all the cool graphics utilities I used
to have at my disposal. I’m working on it….)

For technical and construction details, please get ye over
to the aforementioned diary. This particular gallery page is mostly a gloating
area. (She says, as though the rest of them *aren’t*?!)

All in all, I think the whole thing turned out rather nicely.
As far as the rather peculiar angle of the hat feather goes, well, it was windy
when my dad took the pictures. Really windy. Windy enough to move the skirts
on this thing around. (Note: I estimate the weight of the dress (dry) at 50-60
lbs total. Most of that is in the skirts. Note re: Note: I said dry. The first
day I wore this dress to faire, it up and poured in the afternoon. As the dress
is not water soluble (unlike some others), I tromped around in it. In case you
are wondering, that much cotton velveteen/heavy cotton interlining holds a *lot*
of water.) These are pre-season shots, so I was still working out a few technical
bugs in the way the whole thing went together. I have a theory that no dress
is ever fitted properly until it’s been worn a few times and you have found
out how it reacts to heat, movement, sitting for long periods of time, attempts
to scratch one’s own back, how it resettles after the Great Adventure of the
Privy, etc etc etc. It’s one thing to get it all right on the dress dummy –
but Janey doesn’t move! Most people who sew historic garments are not employed
in the making of museum replicas. We make clothing. Clothing is a moving, living
art, and you have to account for that. That means that if you want the darn
thing to look “right” on the first day of faire, then you prolly ought to find
an excuse to wear it for at least a few solid hours before opening day. Alrighty.
Enough of that rant.

Actually, for the moment, that’s enough of the words entirely. The couple people who have
mailed me politely requesting that I get off my rump and post pictures were, frankly, more interested in the pictures than the
words anyway. And I, obsessive little beastie that I am, have a few hats to whip out and some vague notion of making a href=redochre.shtml>new lower middle class dress before saturday (it is thursday today) based off of the utterly charming
picture of the spinster on page 716 of my Norris (Tudor Costume and Fashion). I haven’t had a new dress to wear to faire in
weeks now. ;)

Oh, as a bit of a spoiler, the next set of pictures on this
one will show the complete waist skirting (27 $?*!! tiny little tabs), my new
attifet (of the constructed french hood variety, not the ‘attacked by a rabid
doily’ variety), and more beads. “When in doubt, add more beads” is the motto
of the noble, and I, my dears, am simply not a very confident person. Lots and
lots of beads……

For a large closeup of the paned sleeves and ruff, href="../pictures/realpieces/noblesleevecropped.jpg">click here.

This dress is my “one day special”. (I was having some issues and needed to spend some
quality time with my sewing machine.) The doublet and skirts went from pattern drafting
to done in about 16 hours. (Yes, yes, quite that many issues to work out.) The doublet
is based on the picture of a spinster on page, erm, 794 or something in Norris’ “Tudor Costume
and Fashion”. The book is out in the car just right now, so I’ll have to get the page
number later.

When I started working with elizabethan costume, I only wanted
to do noble. (I wasn’t quite doing it, mind, because I wasn’t entirely clear on
the concept, but I *wanted* to do noble. *laugh*) My sewing skills have improved over the
years, and my focus has shifted a bit. I still love to do nobles. But I am developing
an increasing fondness for middle class dress. In a way, doing middle class well is
more of a challenge than doing noble. With noble, you reach a point where you are constrained
as much by your budget as your abilities. If you start with 9 yards of cotton velvet,
it’s pretty difficult to come out with something less than impressive. (Not impossible, however.
I’ve seen it done.) For most people, noble is about fancy, expensive fabrics, fancier
and more expensive trims and laces, and beads beads beads. Middle class is different. Your options
for fabric and trim are limited by an imaginary budget and faire guidelines. (In many
cases, that “imaginary” budget is pretty close to what your real budget should be.) You
can’t just assume that you can cover all your errors with beads.

A well done middle class is more of an exercise in economy,
creativity, and tailoring than most noble gowns turn out to be. Economy and
creativity go hand in hand. You are working with the idea of a budget, and you
want to get as much impact, as much detail, and as much “period” value as possible
into a reasonable small budget. Most of the entrants for the middle class category
of the costume contest at Bristol represent the upper end of the middle class
– the really uppity types who would have paid sumptuary taxes to dress on par
with members of the nobility. Very few people think to do something with the
less pretentious, and far larger, segment of craftsmen, tradesmen, and comfortable
merchants who had enough money to be stylish and possibly purchase tailored
garments, but not enough money for silks and pearls. The tailoring of middle
class costume really stands out. There are no jewels and such to distract the
viewers eye. The tailoring, therefore, will either make or break the garment.
The fit and silhouette speak not only to the skill and research of the costumer,
but also to the apparent rank and status of the wearer. This dress is made of
an ochre shade of brushed cotton, and a reddish wool. Both fabrics are equally
suited to (and often used for) peasants. The fit of the costume, as well as
the use of metal buttons and aiglettes and the modish tall hat, are what makes
it middle class.

The bodice is red wool, and the inside of the collar is lined
with a double layer of white wool (scraps from a chemise). The whole thing is
lined in green denim (left over from last year’s corset). There are shaping
seams on either side of the front and back. The only piece of stiffening is
at the center back, to keep the standing collar standing in the back. The front
edges of the collar are as stiff as they are because of the amount of material
in the seam – the inner and outer wools, the denim lining, and the grosgrained
ribbon I used for decoration. That thick seam is sewn again 3/4″ inside from
the edge (from where I sewed down the other side of the ribbon), which creates
a ’stiffening by quilting’ sort of effect that was popular in period. The ribbon
serves two purposes. Most obviously, it is decorative, but it is also there
to hide the back ends of the loop closures on the front of the doublet. The
doublet buttons up the front with alternating loops and buttons. A number of
people told me they thought that was a very nice touch, but it was actually
a born of desperation – the buttons were from one of those ‘jumbo tub of buttons’
assortments, and I only had about 2/3s as many as I needed. I think it turned
out rather nicely, though. One thing I will point out is that I started the
curve to the center point of the bodice two far back on the hips, which is what
causes the wrinkling at the waist. Ah, well. I’d never made a bodice with this
much of a point to it before, and I got so hung up on getting the right length
for the point that I made a mistake on something I know how to do! These things
happen.

The shoulder rolls were made as separate pieces, wrapped tightly
with yellowish soutache cord to create the sort of puffy effect, and the whip
stitched onto the shoulders of the bodice. The sleeves are made of the ochre
cotton. They are unlined. The top edge is finished with more of the orange gross
grained ribbon used on the bodice. The cuffs are finished with red wool, and
have an appliqued placket looking bit at the back seam that I keep meaning to
put buttons on. They are made from a single piece “pattern” for a bent sleeve.
(Actually, I put my left arm down on the fabric with my elbow at an angle, and
cut along the outer edge of it with my right hand. If this inspires a pretty
odd vision, that’s because it was a pretty odd posture. Then I cut the top curve
of the armscye, folded the thing in half, cut the other side of the sleeve,
and took a triangular piece out of the middle of the lower arm area. It doesn’t
sound quite like it should work out if you think about it, but it was late enough
that I had stopped thinking almost entirely and it all worked out. The sleeves
tie in with the points at the shoulder. There are ribbon loops inside of the
sleeve for the points to thread through.

This is the grey and silver costume that I made the week before
Bristol opened this year. (Apologies on the image quality – you can only expect
so much from a 50$ toy digital camera.) The costume itself is representative
of the particularly uppity segment of the Elizabethan middle class. It is made
of grey corduroy . If you look at the larger photos, you will see that the center
bodice pieces and alternating skirt pieces are cut on the bias and have silver
lame thread couched between the wales of the corduroy (every other wale for
the bodice pieces, and every 8th wale on the skirt pieces). There is also blue
velvet cording between all of the pieces of the bodice and the skirts. The hanging
sleeves are of blue velveteen, lined with silver windsor satin. The decoration
on the sleeves is made from blue satin ribbon with grey gimp on either side
of it. The doublet collar/center is edged in black fur, and lined in blue velveteen.
The forepart is also blue velveteen. The decoration on it is blue satin ribbon,
edged in a silver trim with small poofs of silver thread. The very bottom of
the forepart is done in silver twisted fringe. The hat is an escoffion, done
in the blue velveteen. it is decorated in the silver trim from the forepart,
and with some silver lace and blue sparklies on the flat back. The feathers
are antique burnt ostrich, with little spangles on the tips. They are very hard
to see in this photo.

The costume started with 8 yards of grey corduroy that I bought
from another costumer about two weeks before faire opened. I think he was a
little surprised when i wore the dress opening weekend. ;) There’s about 4 spools
of heavy silver lame thread in there – I used two threads together for each
line of couching so that it would show up better. It’s pretty spectacular in
sunlight.

The costume is officially upper middle class, and not lower
noble, for two reasons. The first is that I have sworn up and down that I would
never ever *ever* try to make a noble out of corduroy. (I know it existed, I
know it was obscenely expensive, but these days it generally just looks cheap.)
The second reason is that I have also sworn up and down that a noble gown cannot
be made in a week. Therefore, it is upper middle class. Trust me, it all works
out ok this way.

On a construction note, the bodice is made differently than
I normally make bodices. In order to get the bias cut panel in, I had to redraft
my bodice pattern to move the center seam a little more towards the center and
higher onto the shoulder. Essentially, I have redistributed the bustline curve
over two seams, instead of just one. I don’t recommend this at all. First off,
it’s kind of a pain. Second off, enough of the bodice is cut on the bias that
it does stretch and shift a bit. It’s probably not noticeable, but it really
annoys me.