peteyfrogboy

Today was a very productive day, though most of it didn't come from me. My student Serafina made the long drive down to visit today so I could help her get a chemise started.
( Serafina's Dress )
( Also A Chemise )
( Adela's Shalwar )
( My Hose )

I've been working on a new late 15c dress for my mother, who lives on the other side of Atlanta. This means I that I don't have easy access to do fittings, and therefore have been just plugging along with my sewing and hoping for the best. I took the finished bodice up this past weekend and tried it on her, and found that the best was not what I had. Fortunately, it was too big (too big being far easier to fix than too small), so I pinned the alteration I needed to make and took it home to fix it. I decided to take pictures of the process, just in case anyone might be interested. For those of you who aren't, I give you this convenient cut.

( Details and Pictures )

So I want to make a patterned belt for my 15c clothes, but I've never seen anything other than plain belts - usually narrow, though sometimes wide. Most of the time there's no fastening visible, but sometimes there is a bow or a buckle. Here's what I turned up in a quick survey today:

( Survey of Images )

So it looks like the vast majority of belts are undecorated and narrow. I'd wager they buckle or tie in back, but of course it's impossible to say. Some fasten in front, and some buckle and have metal mounts. It's possible that a patterned sash might work, but it's iffy. Overall, the belt doesn't seem to be a focus for fashion at this point.

Hose are finished. Now maybe I can focus on getting my Pennsic clothes made.

For years I've avoided making bias cut linen hose because linen was expensive, and cutting on the bias was wasteful, and I was generally scared of them. Now that I've finally bitten the bullet and started a pair, like so many other things, they're not as bad as I thought they would be.

Either linen isnt as expensive as it once was, or I've just gotten used to having to spend a certain amount for decent fabric, but this pair of hose constitutes maybe $15 of materials. Not too bad at all compared to buying them, even if I could buy hose that fit properly.

( Long winded construction details )

I whipped up this cappuccio today. It's made from the same tropical weight wool as my last farsetto, hand sewn with quilting thread for the construction seams and pulled threads for finishing. The roll is padded with cotton upholstery batting. I'll try to get a better picture the next time I have everything else on.

Pictures, as promised!


(click for more)

The cioppa is done. Overall, I'm happy with it, though of course there are some things I'm not entirely pleased with. If anyone cares, I can expound in the comments. It's not as heavy or stiff as the old one, which is very nice. Getting it on and off is a little ungraceful, but certainly no worse than putting on your typical woman's gown.

I also uploaded pictures of the sleeves. Here is the original shape (the camera angle makes it look like it tapers, but the overall shape is rectangular), and here is the adjusted shape (flipped because it's the other sleeve). It doesn't look like much of a difference, but it improved things immensely.

If anyone wants detail shots, let me know and I'll try to get them up.

The cioppa is done. Hand tired. Pictures soonish, I hope.

I spent all day getting the first sleeve put on the cioppa. I already had it cut out and the bottom guard put on, so today I finished the top edge and put on the guards for the front opening. I basted it into the armscye and found that it was too long and hanging at a funny angle. I marked where it needed to be, unpicked the tops of the guards, and cut it down from the top. The new length looks much better, but then I couldn't get the pleats to hang right. I tried knife pleats and rolled pleats,forward and backward, but it just looked bad no matter which way I tried it. Each attempt just word out my hands more. I finally decided to punt and do cartridge pleats, which aren't what I really wanted but look much better than what I was coming up with before. I probably should have cut the whole sleeve differently to begin with, but it's way too late for that. Now that I know what I'm doing, I should be able to get the second sleeve on with no problems tomorrow (knock wood).

I'm getting used to changing my plans on this thing. I had planned to have hooks and eyes all the way down the front, but the bottom part just wouldn't lay right. I ended up sewing up the front opening to the waist and having hooks and eyes from there up and it works much better. A little trickier to put on, but at least I have less hooks to mess with this way.

The top stay tape was also a bit too short, so it was pulling funny on the pleats and felt tight around the chest. The remedy there was to cut out the sections of the stay tape under the arms, where everything will be covered by the hanging sleeves anyway. It feels and looks much better now.

Once the sleeves are done that's pretty much all she wrote for this thing, unless I end up adding some more hooks and eyes. Haven't quite decided on that yet. I'm not quite as happy with it as I hoped I'd be, but it's still a damn sight better than the old one.

All sections are pleated and assembled:



The first stay tape is installed, and the second is pinned. Once they're done, all that's left is shoulder seams, hooks and eyes, and sleeves...

Here there be long-winded musing on sewing plans.

( Details )

This is going to be a somewhat excessively detailed description of how I'm assembling the pleated sections of my new cioppa. It's mostly for my own reference, so I'll put it behind a cut.

( Details and Pictures )

While looking for other things, I noticed some interesting details in this Mantegna fresco:



1) Unstructured Giornee
No big surprise at this point, but the children and, I think, a man on the right side have unstructured giornee.

2) Heraldic Giornea
Far more interesting is the man on the right, whose giornea (and the most visible leg of his calze) looks to be boldly heraldic. Never really seen this before.

3) Calze seams
The white calze of the man on the left show some interesting seams on the lower leg. There's a horizontal seam just below the knee, which curved upward on the outside of the leg and downward on the inside. There appear to be two vertical seams, one on either side of the leg. There are also seams that indicate a separate heel and vamp on the foot, unless that's a shoe. It's also possible that the whole thing is a very snug fitting boot. Very curious.

Sometime last year, THL Miramah asked me to help her with a secret project. She's lost a lot of weight recently, and wanted to play a little trick on her husband Guillaume. Her plan was to show up at the masked ball at Lusty Month of May this year, wearing a late period Italian gown (as opposed to her usual T-tunics) and dance with him (she had never done any dancing), to see how long it took him to figure out it was her.

( The Dance )

( The Dress )

( The Result )

I was just washing feast gear and I realized that I may not have ever posted about the faux majolica plate I made for adelavanbrugge for her birthday back in 2006. If I did, here it is again. :)

This is the first section of the new cioppa. I'm trying not to put in too much heavy interlining in this one, so I can wear it without getting heat stroke. This is one layer of satin and one layer of cotton/linen. It's all hand sewn, which wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, and gives good results. The pleats aren't as perfect as I'd like, but I think a lot of that is just that satin shows faults more easily than brocades.

I got the unstructured giornea done today, so it'll be ready to go for Pennsic. I still like the structured pleats better, but it'll be good to have something a bit more casual to wear when it gets warm out.

I need to stop staying up so late sewing, but it's addictive! Last night I got one of the doublet sleeves sewn up but for the binding at the wrist. It also needs buttonholes and attaching to the body, but it at least looks like a sleeve. Instead of attaching the upper sleeve to the lower sleeve with big ugly box pleats like I'd done on my old doublets (dead simple on a machine but not really much saved effort by hand), I gathered it. I didn't bother marking anything, and just eyeballed ~3/16" gathering stitches. By the time I finished, I'd figured out a better technique for sewing the seam, so the rest of them should go a little quicker. The sleeves will also be gathered at the shoulder where they attach to the body. Looking at the source images, it looks like I could also just make larger armscyes, but I'd rather have less interference with any future cioppa sleeves.

I'm trying to decide just how many buttons this thing is going to need. I'm contemplating spacing them 3/4" apart rather than my usual 1-1 1/4", which will make a for a whole lot of buttons...

I spent the weekend working on a new 15c doublet in wool lined with linen. I debated whether or not to sew it all by hand, and in the end craziness won out. Really, there's not that much that could be done by machine anyway. More details later.

As promised, here are some pictures of the new camicia and brache. WARNING: these pictures may not be work safe if you are a nun, or are getting on the internet through a time rift to the Victorian era.

camicia and brache

demonstrating how the collar folds over

showing off my drawers

In these pictures I turned the collar down a couple of inches. Sadly, I think I made it too tall and will need to trim it to this height before I wear it. It's a shame, as I originally made it with a selvedge edge. The sleeves of the camicia are plenty long, as you can see, but those should scrunch up inside my sleeves just fine.