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2004: I am trying to organise my thoughts better these days, giving my
research, thought processes and reasons for why I do what I do rather
than keeping it all in my head...
Hopefully this will help others in constructing their garb (whether
it serves to show what to do... or what not to do)!
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Ah, the usual panic of 'what shall I wear', with only 4
weeks to go until Festival. Something cool, something easily
washed (for camping and tourneys) from existing mateial
stash:
While there are so many wonderful outfits on my wishlist, I
am trying to concentrate of florentine garb these days.
Right is a sample of some cotton furniture
material, I had managed to buy on sale at
Spotlight, last year. It was easy to wash and
should be cool, especially if I line it with linen.
I had some lavender linen in my material stash.
From the many early 16thC Florentine portraits I
had, Lady with a Basket of Spindles by
Jacopo Pontormo (Left) was one of the few with
patterned material. Many of the others have plain
materials.
So, I had a portrait to model my gowne on, and
materials.
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The gown left has a fitted body with a high waist
and voluminous 2 part sleeves with the lower half being
above the elbow - all in the same colour. The shoulder
straps sit on the very edge of the shoulder. The front
neckline is square.
Though Spanish (and a little later in the 16thC), I have
found this extant piece of 16thC material (Spain fragment 1575-1600
Silk & linen Brocatelle from LACMA) that shows a similar colour
combination.
I have a few sources for 16thC patterns:
- Milanese Tailor's Handbook (Italian)
- Alcega's Tailor's Pattern Book. (Spanish)
- Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion (English mainly)
Unfortunately these are from the middle to late 16th C.
To date, I have not found pattern books or (wouldn't it be
lovely) extant examples of early 16th C (esp. Florentine)
gowns!
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Also, I have a wonderful picture of Eleanor de Toledo's
burial gown (from goldsword.com). Eleanor married
Cosimo d'Medici in 1539 and resided in Florence. She died in
1562. This gives a time line of the early to middle 16thC.
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This is the closest I have to any extant gown of
the early 16thC in Florence. I have interpretted my
pattern based on this. (above Right) showing the
pattern lines (in blue).
Looking at other (non Florentine portraits) such as
Bartolomeo Veneto's Portrait of a Young
Lady, 1520-1530 (left) show seam lines that
would appear to be similar to the front skirt
pattern of Eleanor de Toledo. (below)
(A Diary for this dress can
be found here)
Though not Florentine, it seems to suggest that a
simlar pattern construction was possibly used, in
Italy, 30 - 40 years earlier than Eleanor's burial
dress. So I feel it is not impossible to think that
a similar method could have been used for the gown
in Portomo's portrait.
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The other side of this theory is the very economical
use of available material. Below is a sketch of the pattern
layout I was to cut from the material I had (I folded the
material in half to give a 58 cm 'loom width' represented in
the pattern layout. It appears that narrower (than modern)
loom widths were used in the 16th C.
I decided to cut the front skirt panels on the fold, to
preserve the pattern (modern sensibilities?). The 2 side
gores attatch to the front panels. I tried, as much as
possible, to match bias seams (on gores) with straight edges
and selvages of other skirt pieces. Alcega promotes this
(see farthingale) as it will reduce the drop of the skirt
and give less stretch on the seams.
I also cut the back panel on the fold, for the same reason.
The small gore, cut from the top of the skirt, was flipped
and sewn onto the bottom of the back skirt panel.
This gave a skirt with a wide hem width, less bulk to sew
in at the waist and very economical use of material. I used
1.5 m less than I would have used on my 'standard' skirts of
2 panels of 140cm wide material sewn into a tube. Wahoo!
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Far L: cutting the small gore from the back
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L: Where the gore goes on the back panel
Above: the side front gore - how it attatches to the back
pieces (the front panel would be on the far right)
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Left: the skirt pattern pieces all pinned together (minus
the front panels).
Below is a sketch of how the pattern pieces were sewn
together.
The first is half of the pinned pattern (on the left)
here. The second shows where the front panels attatch to
this (it would not fit in the photo left).
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Total amount of material required for the skirt: (2x
125cm of full width) = 2.5 m + 125 cm of half the width (for
the front gores). The other half of this was used for
cutting other pattern pieces from the lower half of the
sleeves.
Attatching the skirt:
Firstly to make the bodice.
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Gown Body:
Below are some examples of contemporary paintings (mostly
Florentine) showing examples of gown 'body''. These show a rounded
back, square fronted neckline. Waists could be waist level or higher.
Most sleeves seem to be tied to the body at this time.
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Bacchiacca Preaching of St John the Baptist , 1520
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Fra Bartolomeo, The Deposition 1515
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Palmo Vecchio The Three Sisters, 1515
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Many contemporary portraits show the skirt pleated into
the 'body'. This can be seen in the examples, right:
Raphael's Lady with a Unicorn and Giuliano
Bugiardini's Portrait of a Young Woman, 1525. The
front skirt of the extant gown of Eleanor de Toledo appears
to have been pleated.
This is the method I was to use to attatch the skirt.
Again, these also show waistlines at the natural waistline
or higher. The shoulder seam can be seen to be 'on the
shoulder'.
Eleanor de Toledo's gown shows a side-back lacing. This is
seen in many Italian portraits. There is no front opening in
most of the portraits. The 2 options are side or side-back.
I decided to use a side-back lacing.
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With my dear hubby's help, I now have a dress dummy. This
will make my life easier to make patterns. It has been many years
since I have had an accurate one on which to make a toile. This is my
first real attempt at fully toiling a gown and not using an existing
pattern, or a calculated one as drafted in modern terms. With this
gown, I tried to use methods that were more plausible for the
time.
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Toiling the back...
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the front...
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making the wider neckline back
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and the wider neckline at front.
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Janet Arnold's Pattern of Fashion (though later
16th C and English) show linings being often made of linen
and are hand sewn (blind stitch) to the body. Thanks to some
sage advice, it was suggested that this is a more likely
method used at the time. (left).
Right is the knife pleating for the skirt being attatched to
the body of the gown.
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The original painting of Pontormo's shows what looks like
pleating for the sleeve. For this gown, it was to be more
practical for camping and tourney, so I used a less
voluminous sleeve. I tried pleating, but there was
insufficient material at the sleeve head to give decent
pleats. Honestly, they just looked plain silly... and I must
admit, I prefer cartridge pleating.
An example of contemporary (Venician) cartridge pleated
sleeves can be seen to the left (Vecchio's The Three
Sisters).
Right are the final sleeves (1: from back/ 2: from front.)
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Some pictures of the almost finished gown: Left
Right: To finish, some more hand-sewn eyelets on the
side-back openings, with a spiral lacing.
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Finally... though I wore this dress at Festival, I did not get any
pictures. I wore it to the Baronial Championship tourney.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
- epee.goldsword.com/sfarmer/SCA/Paintings/
- LACMA website: http://www.lacma.org/
- Festive Attyre http://homepage.mac.com/festive_attyre
- Web Gallery of Art: http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/
- Arnold Janet, Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd, Maney,
Leeds, 1988, ISBN:0-901286-20-6
- Arnold Janet, Patterns of Fahsion, MacMillan, London, 1985.
ISBN: 0-333-38284-6
- Juan Alcega's Tailor's Pattern Book, 1589 Facimile, Ruth Bean,
Carlton, Bedford, 1979.
- The Milanese Tailor's Handbook http://costume.dm.net/Tailors/
- "How much yardage is enough" Susan Reed, 1994.
http://patriot.net/~nachtanz/SReed/fabuse.html
- Raphael, Magna Books, Leicester, 1995 ISBN: not listed
Diary/ Photos: copyright D.Carlisle and K.Carlisle. c. 2004
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