Yvonne approached me a while back looking for a costume that was "easy to wear", with the same sort of shoulder treatment I used on my black doublet. Strict authenticity was not her biggest concern, so we settled on a kirtle with a built in corset, and a doublet. (Here's a note for those of you who insist you don't want to wear a separate corset, and that building the corset into the bodice is "just the same".... It's really not. If the boning ends right where the skirts attach to the bodice, the line of the skirt at the waist is affected. (By "affected", I mean "destroyed". Not that I have any opinions on the matter.) This is because the excess of the abdomen that poodges out where the corset ends pushes the skirts out and slightly up -- it looks like you're wearing some sort of skirt support or bum roll too high under your dress. It's not flattering. I mean, it literally makes women look larger, instead of smaller, in the waist. So if you *really* want to build the corset into the bodice, you'll want the boned lining of the bodice to extend at least a half inch lower than the outer layer of the bodice does. (You'll be hand tacking the outer layer of bodice fabric to the corset lining, which is basically fine, or binding over the join between the outer layer of the bodice and the skirts, and leaving it free from the corset lining along the bottom, which I think works slightly better. The slightly longer boned lining holds the body down below where the skirts join in, and the line of the skirts at the waist looks nicer.)
She also wanted a small bumroll for the costume. Now, y'all know I have a couple problems with bum rolls. Ignoring any issues of historical accuracy (or the complete lack of evidence therefore in the 1570s), there's another wee little problem: Women almost universally put them on too high. And it's not just the women at Bristol: Jean Hunnisett remarks upon the problem as well. "Never leave pads on tapes to be put on by the dresser or artiste as the nearly always pull them too tight, making the pad ride too high on the waist." (Hunnisett, Period Costume for Stage and Screen, p.29) Fortunately (or not, really),Yvonne and I are the same shade of blond when it comes to remembering underthings for costumes, so the roll that supports the skirts is actually sewn in to the bottom of the built in corset. Since the bodice opens to the back, the roll is made in two pieces, which meet when the bodice is laced shut. Now, she can't forget the roll at home, and I don't have to chase her around faire and redress her. ;) (And yes, I have done that!)
The kirtle is relatively plain and made according to my kirtle with fitted bodies directions. Well, ok, we all know I can't even follow my own directions, but that's the basic idea behind it. The doublet was made from the bodice pattern from the kirtle, with obvious extensions in the shoulder area. This was actually my first go at altering a pattern for a bodice directly into a doublet pattern, and it worked out well -- yvonne has nearly perfect measurements for that trick. The doublet is made of linen, with panes of linen over silk. (Lots of panes, actually.) The little yellow lines are cording couched down onto the top layer of the panes. Since I hate the look of zigzag stitches over cording, getting the cording down was more annoying than it really needed to be.
I like it, though. I think it turned out rather elegant, and I've been wanting to try a doublet with all that paning for a while. (Speaking of things I've wanted to do for a while, I've only been meaning to put together a page for this for the last, erm, 6 months.)
