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Tag: Support Skirts

How to Draft Gored Skirts for Period Costumes

If you’re looking for a way to draft gored skirts for your costumes, this is the eBook for you. The method shown is one I’ve worked out over the years, in an attempt to find a possibly period way to create a gored skirt. The instructions can be easily adapted to create a pattern using nothing more than a straight edge and notched tape.

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How to Sew a Gored Spanish Farthingale (Hoop Skirt)

The Spanish Farthingale is a stiffened underskirt that gives Tudor and early Elizabethan skirts their characteristic conical shape. You can make a very passable one with a full length gored skirt pattern (either a commercial A-line skirt pattern, or one you draft yourself), a lot of ribbon or bias tape, and boning.

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How do you Reproduce the Alcega Farthingale Pattern?

I’m totally obsessed with the Alcega farthingale. I mean, I’m always a little obsessed with it, because it’s sort of the great rock candy mountain for costumers, right? But I’ve been working on an eBook about drafting gored skirts for period costumes, and I thought I’d throw in a little bit of a redraft for the Alcega farthingale. Oh, silly me… I went back through some of my old notes (mostly questions, like “Why aren’t the gores at the same angle?!”), and I’m struck by how much there is to know about the darn thing. So I’ve been in obsessive research mode since yesterday evening, and I’ve learned some new things….

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Everything I Know About…. 16th Century Support Skirts

This is an excerpt from a research paper I did a while back. The paper itself is 40 pages and covers 4 centuries of support skirts and corsetry. I figure it’s more digestible in smaller chunks. Please note: my regularly scheduled writing style has been suspended in favor of something more palatable to the hardcore academia types. Special thanks go to Stephanie for her proof-reading skills.

And now for Everything I Know About 16th Century Support Skirts…

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