I sometimes get questions about linen. I will try to answer those questions here, without getting too technical. But here are some technical facts anyway 😉 The linen fibers are straight (think of straight hair, the fibers look very much the same). This means they have almost zero flexibility and stretch. They contain natural glue. When spinning the thread, water is added to the fibers and the glue sticks them together, which makes the thread really strong.
1. When buying fabric. It’s preferable that you wash your linen before you make something out of it. Linen shrinks about 5% during the first washing. Some qualities may shrink as much as 10%.
2. To avoid permanent breakage of the fibers you need to pre-soak the fabric. This is easiest to do in a bath tub. Try to lay the fabric down as flat as possible. I always try to go from…

View original post 624 more words

I also wore this wool Saxon gown to my local Harvest feast, but with a different brustfleck and a linen steuchlein. Many thanks to Katafalk and her blog to help me with the pattern.

The lovely wool hat is from Pimp Your Garb on Etsy

Here I’m wearing my velvet and fur lined gollar.

I love my apron! It’s a honeycomb pattern that looks so sweet.

Love this hat.

I hope you enjoyed the bonus fashion show!

After much delay, It’s time for the second installment of the Wool Saxon gown. I wore this gown to the West Kingdom 12th night in Sacramento, and it was a huge hit. It felt like the perfect gown to be inducted into the Order of the Golden Poppy.

Wool and velvet Saxon gown

I didn’t copy any one gown specifically, but I looked around at German styles from about 1520. Here are my inspirations.

My inspiration for the sleeves and guards

I love the gold brustfleck and sleeves

I love the cut of the gown and the brustfleck

I like the lines of this dress

So let us begin, naturally, at the beginning.

First I started off drafting and sloping a bodice using the above portraits as inspiration. I cut out 2 separate halves out of a heavy canvas. I have here 2 different cuts for the neckline, I wanted to see what I liked better, and to try it on and make sure that the front was at the right length.

The neckline on our right was the one that I liked the most. It seemed to follow the portraits more closely.

Here I am checking the fit. The front could do to be about a half inch longer, but overall it works.

After I was happy with the canvas toille, I cut out the linen lining, the heavy canvas interlining, and the green wool and stitched them all together, treating all 3 layers as one piece of fabric.

All the layers are stitched by hand, and then folded over and tacked down.

… and testing it on the form. I hope you figured out by now that I obsessively test almost every step.

Now I needed to install lacing strips and channels for the supportive zip ties.

I got this great suggestion from the Elizabethan Bees Facebook page after my frustration with cane, reed, and other wooden methods of stiffening. Wood can splinter and snap, you can’t really get it wet and of course once it bends out of shape, you can’t put it back. Modern spring steel is way too stiff for these purposes, and can tend to be uncomfortable. I used heavy duty zip ties from my local hardware store for the stiffening, and you can easily cut them with scissors and round them off without any effort at all, so big bonus!

For the lacing rings, I used an awl to puncture a hole and used very strong thread around a ring to keep it open and give it even more strength. This all had to be done by hand, and reinforced because this was the one thing that was going to take the most abuse.

Reinforcing the eyelets with rings and heavy thread

inserting the zip ties into the channels.

Sewing the lacing strip down into the bodice. I ran this through my machine for a quilting effect.

Time for guards! I decided to use a really pretty red cotton brocade as the base layer. You can’t see the brocade very much in this photo, but it’s the same fabric as my red petticoat without bodies from earlier (the red skirt with the blue band on the bottom). First, I made a paper pattern by laying it down over the bodice to make sure I got the curve right. I then cut two mirrors out and pinned them into place, once again, checking to make sure that everything was lining up and laying properly. I like this red and green combo though! I almost regretted not switching the red and black at this point, but I didn’t have any red wool or velvet for the guards then.

Red gaurd lining pinned into place, you can see the lacing strips extending past the bodice to help keep the lower tummy flat.

Checking the guards on the dress form.

Now for the hand-numbing and cramp-inducing part! (yaaaaay). So, in period, tailors had these really cool sharp stamps that they would use to cut out the pattern in one strike of a large hammer. I don’t have a die, a lead sheet, or a very large hammer. So I was stuck with making a stencil and then using some tiny scissors to cut out each. Individual. Little. Leaf. Needless to say, this was my least favorite part of the gown. After I cut out the velvet, I used fray-check to help reduce any fraying. If I had used wool, then the felted nature of the wool would make fray check or hemming unnecessary. I sewed a red glass bead in the center to help tack everything down and then applied it over the red base.

Starting the cutouts on the back of the velvet.

Pinned down and ready to sew

One side done. You can see the quilting on the other side!

And done! Closes shut perfectly.

Now, even with obsessive checking and measuring, mistakes can still happen. Somehow, one of my guards ended up about an inch too short in the back! I was really bummed out, but there was no way I was going to remake an entire guard and go through all THAT again. So I thought, what would they do in period for oopsies? They would make a patch! So I just cut out a little trapezoid and sewed it down. Asides from it being a little asymmetrical in the back, its perfect. No would even know! It bugged me for all of 10 minutes before I remember the cramping in my hand and I promptly forgot about it.

Oopsie!

Oopsie fixed with a patch.

Now that the bodice was complete, it was time to move on to the skirt! I had to make 3 panels of wool at about 150 inches wide each. So that’s a lot of fabric! The guards for the skirt were done the exactly the same as the bodice, but blown up and wider. I also machine sewed around the edges of the leaves in case my skirt caught something while I was walking by, it wouldn’t rip out and tear.

The skirt was too short, so I cut it horizontally to add a red stripe for the guards and to lengthen it.

The skirt at the right length, with the red guard backing.

More cutting out!

Machine sewing the edges so that I don’t snag the holes on accident.

Guards ready to be sewn down!

One panel finished! 2 more to go….

All 3 panels complete!

Now that the panels of the skirt were finished, it was time to cartridge pleat! I could have also done rolled pleats, but the amount of math involved hurt my brain, so I decided to do something much simpler. I used this heavy striped cotton to help me make even pleats. I just ran my needles in and out with the pattern of the stripes. It also makes a very nice stiff edge so the skirt hangs properly, and finishes the skirt in one step. I then just divided up the yardage evenly about the bodice edge and used a very strong thread to tack the outer pleat to the bodice bottom.

Pulling the pleats tight.

Sewing down the pleats to the bodice.

Skirt is attached!

You’ve stuck with me this long, and we’re finally moving on to the sleeves! I wanted to make a gentle trumpet sleeve like in the German portraits. I wanted to be able to roll them up or pin them without needing to take them off, and still have them look elegant. This much easier than the dress part! I just drafted a trumpet shape sleeve and cut out the wool and lined it in linen. The guards are done the same way as the bodice. After I was finished with the guards, I sewed the sleeves closed and attached them to arms scythe by hand.

Guards finished on the sleeves

Sleeves sewn shut

Well, this is the last step, believe it or not! The Brustfleck. This is a simple panel that is a half circle in shape, with lacing rings on the edges. There are also lacing rings sewn into the lining of the neckline for them to attach. It’s really awesome because you can exchange it and have a whole new look. I personally believe that this was used for nursing. With a low square shirt, all you need to do is unlace one side of the brustfleck and the panel swings open like a refrigerator door, ready for baby to nurse without needing to get undressed. This also hold you up like a sports bra, so it was very comfy to wear all day. This design was done the same way I did all the guards, a gold silk backing with green velvet cutouts. The beads in the center are just gold tubes to look like the stamen of the golden poppy, with a grid of white glass beads to frame them.

Stencil prepared on heavy paper.

Velvet is cut out and mounted on the frame.

Beading is completed. Time to remove it off the frame and finish the edges!

Brustfleck is almost finished. Just need to add lacing rings on the edge and hem the top.

Brust fleck on with the gown!

And now, the moment you have been waiting for: the fashion show! I hope you enjoyed this post, even though it was very long. Let me know if you have any questions. I would love to see your German gowns, too!

🙂

❤

From behind

Close up of brustfleck and my Poppy medallion.

The award ceremony.

I need a new dress to work in and to haul stuff in and to run around after my 4 year old in. After looking around on Pinterest, I really fell in love with the German gowns. I realize now that I am incapable of making a simple dress. My design sketch ended up like this:

I love how tall and thin I am in my imagination.

For this outfit I need:  A hemd (shirt), wulsthaube (padded head roll)and steuchlein (covering veil), honeycomb pleated apron, shoes and stockings, a petticoat (in red), the green gown, with a brustfleck, a gollar, a tellerbarett, and a purse. WHEW!

So the good news is, I already made the shirt, a simple square necked linen shirt with plain cuffs and cloth buttons. I dug out some cotton brocade that I bought over 6 years ago and I made the petticoat today. I inserted rolled pleats into a waistband with two openings on the sides. A simple cord with brass points holds them together. I decided to do a petticoat without a bodice because I really want to keep this gown light. If I hate it, I can always tear the waistband off and make a bodice for it. I’m hoping that the gown will hold me in alright with no boning or real support since I don’t have very large breasts (yay!).

So my next step is drafting the pattern for the bodice. Wish me luck!

Eleonora di Toledo, c 1572

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I wanted to try out both new techniques and new styles on American Girl dolls. I had decided to make a red Italian petticoat and overgown, a combination that  Eleonora di Toledo was famous for. I fell in love with a painting by Allesandro Allori, circa 1572. The painting itself is posthumous, showing Eleonora in the fashions of the 1570’s.

I got most of my information about the petticoat and coordinated overgown as well as the undergarments from Moda a Firenze: Lo Stile di Eleonora di Toledo e sua influenza by Pagliai and Polistampa. Since I have plenty of red fabric, in all different shades and textures I thought It would be good to give it a try. The first thing that I did was make the undergarments. This included the smock or camicia, a pair of bodies, and a soft farthingale.

I started with the smock, and the first problem I ran into was that I kept forgetting how big an American Girl doll’s head is in comparison to an actual person. I made a nice little smock only to discover that I couldn’t get it over her head. I scrapped that and made a new one out of a soft pink cotton, machine embroidering the edges as decoration. Patting myself on the back, I moved on the the stockings. Since I don’t have the time or the method to knit a very fine pair of stockings, I cheated here. I bought a pair of doll stockings, cut off the tops and whipped them closed with a spiral stitching. Add some nice garters and you are done!

Next she needed shoes. I want to eventually make them out of a soft leather and have them decorated with beads and cut work, but for the initial pair I decided to make them out of a vinyl to make sure that I had the pattern correct. Let me tell you these shoes were the most annoying thing to make in the world. Since I don’t have a form of the foot, I had to mold it on the doll, and then sew it by hand in mid air. I had quite a few red marks and sore fingers pulling the needle through to get this done, and the end result is still not something that I am pleased about, but I think for a first pair of shoes that I have ever made they turned out all right.

Next, I thought that it would be a good idea to make her chopines or pattens, a type of platform shoe that was worn over the slippers to add height, keep the long trains out of the dirt, and to impose importance on the wearer. Chopines are an interesting subject that I will go into more detail in a later post.

Then I made her pair of bodies, or a type of corset if you will, to flatten her chest (as if she needed it), and give her “proper posture”.  Lastly came her soft farthingale to hold her skirts out away from her and distribute the weight of the petticoat. Again, I will go into more detail later about these garments and how and if they were worn in Italy.

The Arrival of Leo X in Florence, detail, 1559 Giorgio Vasari and Giovanni Stradano

This post is about failures though, and now we come to the place where I failed. Logically, after all the undergarments were completed I started on the red petticoat. I had a lovely stiff bright red cotton fabric with an interesting texture on it that I thought I could free hand embroider with my machine to make it look more like the petticoat in the picture. I decided on a side lacing, to match the petticoats that you can see in the painting of the women greeting the Pope. Everything was in order, so I cut it all out, embroidered it freehand with my machine, and put it all together. This is where it all went wrong…

Side lacing of the petticoat

First of all, free-handing a symmetrical pattern with out any guides is a bad idea. Even though everything looked fine when it was in pieces, as soon as I put the trim on and attached the skirt I saw that everything was lopsided. I decided to move on and hem the skirt, I can salvage this later, I thought. As I attempt to put the dress on over my doll’s head I realize I made the same mistake with the petticoat as I did with the smock. I forgot how big those doll’s heads are! I sewed the dress to make it over the head of a normal sized human, not an American Girl doll. Since I had sewn everything down, there was nothing I could to to fix it, except to cut the shoulder strap and put in a hook and eye closure. Yuck.

Trying to get the petticoat over her head

When I finally got the dress hemmed, I realized that the fabric was indeed, too thick and did not lay correctly at all. Once again, I made the dress as if it were for a normal sized human, not an 18 inch doll.

The whole thing is a scrap, but there is a reason that I am posting this. Like I said before, I have a huge problem with failure. If something is not perfect, than I will quit and give up, or start over if I still have the steam for it. Forcing myself to remake and fix these little things was torture. I wanted so much to just throw it all away and start over. But now I realized that I think I saved myself several mistakes by just plain finishing it. The moral of this story: Failure happens, but it is racked up as experience that you use as ammunition later.

Finished petticoat, although not at all what I wanted.

In order to avoid failures as much as possible, and still learn from them it is best to create models in miniature to see how they function. Working in miniature is an obvious way to work out problems and to ensure an aesthetic flow. I have wanted to make 16th century fashion dolls, but I had two major problems: 1. I had no dolls to practice the clothes making on, and 2. when I tried to make the dolls, I always got stuck on the casting and curing process.

So for months, or maybe even a year, I didn’t progress at all in my endeavors. How could I sew clothes for a 16th century fashion doll, when I didn’t have a doll? Then, brilliantly my problem solved itself. I decided to practice making authentic replicas of period clothes on my American Girl dolls! Once I get that down pat I can then worry about carving/casting/sculpting my own.

So thank you, once again American Girl for helping me out when I am in a tough spot.

When I was at the ripe age of 12 in the mid 1990’s, I had a little neighbor friend, at whose house I would spend a lot of time.  Her name was Sarah, and she had not just one, but five American Girl dolls.  To me, these were the most beautiful and interesting things I had ever seen. What made them fascinating was that they each had their own set of novels, a six book series that would tell their stories and how it was like to grow up in their particular time period. These dolls had everything: clothes, underwear, food, horses, carriages, prams, book bags…

Since I didn’t have one of my own, I would play with Sarah’s dolls. I had a shock one day when I was brushing the hair of ‘Samantha’ and pulled out her ribbon. She cried out and yanked the doll from my hands and on the verge of tears told me that I ruined her doll, and she would have to send it back to Pleasant Company to have them properly re-do her hair. Ouch. From that moment on, I decided it would be best to persist my mom and dad ceaselessly until I got one of my own, and not have to be punished if I moved the wrong hair out of place. I got the catalogue request card and mailed it in, then waited.

I would drop hints for months, and when my mom didn’t understand why I wanted a doll at the age of 12 I told her flat out that it was more of a doll, but a cross section of history! I pulled out the catalogue and pointed to ‘Felicity’, who was a spirited girl growing up just at the start of the American revolutionary war, and my favorite.

Felicity Merriman

I was about to give up after a few months, but one day my mom gave me a box. I open it up and see it’s from Pleasant Company! But when I took off the top I didn’t have Felicity smiling up at me, but Samantha. I was disappointed, but my mom seemed so proud of her purchase and she beamed “I got you this one because it looks just like you! She has brown hair and bangs and has the fanciest clothes!” I thanked my mom and gave her a hug, because at $100 a doll I knew it was a difficult gift to give.

Over time, I grew to like Samantha and my parents would buy me her accessories and clothes from her part of the catalogue. I learned her story and how she overcame class barriers to befriend a servant girl, and then eventually helped her and had her adopted into her family. My mom never bought me Felicity, even when I asked for her as a Christmas present. She simply said that one was enough. But my mom is the type of person that thinks one Super Nintendo game is enough as well.

There is a happy ending to this story, and also a point. For my birthday this year my husband finally bought me Felicity, 14 years later. I love these dolls. Some people think that they are for kids, but for me they opened up a world of history. They are the reason I love costuming, why I love to sew and create. This my homage to them, and how they made me who I am today.

And Samantha? I found her again in my parent’s attic a few months ago when we were helping them clean. She still looked as pretty as ever, even though I might have to send her back to the Company to have her hair properly fixed.

For over 6 years I have been researching and sewing costumes for various SCA and Renaissance Faires and I think it is time for me to branch out and actually attempt to do something interesting. I am hoping to catalog my projects and the various stages that they are in, and show my successes as well as failures. I fail often, and I get very discouraged because of it, and mostly quit or give up. I also think in a very unusual sense, that I need to work everything out in my head before it can even go down on paper as a sketch. These have not been very good methods of production, as you can imagine, since I get everything  jumbled up and confused.

At the moment, since there has been a lot of things going on with family and health, I have decided to take a mental break from making costumes for friends and self, and have been working on making dolls’ clothes. A lot of people laugh at the idea of making doll clothes, mostly because it seems like a waste of time, or very juvenile.  I can understand that point of view, and if you are dealing with cheap, modern materials and you are going to dress your Barbies then you might have a point. For two years I have been hoping to create, manufacture, and sell historical fashion dolls. I have always encountered road blocks and heavy doubt whether or not it’s even worth attempting such an expensive and possibly futile business effort. Not a lot of people know what these “dolls” are. Or what they were used for. Or their heavy social impact. People don’t really know much of anything for that matter, and that is fine… I am an experimental archaeologist, even if the title is self-given.

This journey shall be an interesting one, and I will have many blocks in my path that will deter me. I will be having a baby in March… that takes a lot of time. I have a problem with running out of steam, or like I mentioned before; failure. I can only hope that these projects will enrich me and take me into a new understanding of our cultures in the past and hopefully, the present.