This was a commissioned costume for a very nice fellow who is playing Robert Cecil, the incredibly cranky hunchback. The costume was a challenge on a couple of levels. The most obvious is that the actor wanted to actually have a hunchback, which means that I got to make, and draft all my patterns around, a prosthesis (ie, "oddly shaped little shoulder pillow"). That wasn't so much of a problem with the weskit (the red bit that you barely see behind the black slashed doublet), but it was a royal pain in the patoot for the doublet. See, the doublet has very long vertical slashes across the chest and back. If you're machining something like that, it's easiest to make up a bunch of separate panes and attach them to each other where they are supposed to be attached. There are three slashes on either side of the chest and back, making for a total of 15 pieces on the body of the doublet. Each of these pieces is lined, which means they are all sewn right side to right side with their linings, then turned. The right and left sides of the doublet are completely different shapes and somewhat different sizes. And I *cannot* tell left from right to save my life. (Honestly. I have to take my hands off the wheel and do the "Left makes an L" think to follow directions while driving.) Needless to say, the doublet involved about 15 nervous breakdowns and a lot of double checking. I was doing very well until I suddenly realized that I had done an entire set of panes backwards, started ripping things out, then realized that that was the *back* section of the doublet and backwards was, technically, correct. I really have to get a handle on that left and right thing.....
The costume consists of a weskit (semi-boned underdoublet) in dark red wool crepe, the doublet, which is black wool pique trimmed with matte silver soutache, sleeves, which are made of black fine wool and edged with silver cord, venetians, which are of the same wool as the sleeves and have a stripe of black velvet edged in red velveteen running down each side (the stripe on the right conceals a pocket), and a nearly full circle, knee length black velvet surcoat with a red velveteen turnback edged with matt silver braid. There was a surprisingly large amount of handwork on this costume - the edges of the weskit are neatened by hand, the doublet hem was completed by hand and several panes in the doublet had to be edged by hand, the cording on the sleeves had to be attached by hand, and of course, armscyes are almost always done by hand (this was no exception) and the hook and eye tape on the weskit and doublet was secured to the front edges of the respective garments by hand. There's also a hat and one of those silly nightcap looking coif thingies that go with this costume, but I was a doofus and did not bring them to the dress rehearsal where these pictures were taken. I'll get more pictures with those later.
