Eva Andersson

Eva is one of my favorite online costuming friends, and I am so happy that I have gotten a chance to know her this past year! Although her area of expertise is with medieval clothing, this amazingly talented costumer has recently been lured into the 16th century... and I for one am thrilled to see the results! You can read a detailed description of her attire below the picture, and you can also email Eva at hisea(at)hum.gu.se if you have any other questions or just want to tell her how stunning she looks in this gown. And if you would like to see some more pictures her work, you can now take a peek at Eva's costuming page.

The dress is made of brownish yellow patterned fabric. The pattern is made with velvet pile and the areas around it are of a structured weave with small dots. It's made of cotton. It started out as four very long but only 60 cm wide curtains, that I bought at the Salvation army in 1994. They cost me a little more than 4 $. They were originally intended to be used as new fabric for some chairs belonging to some old oak furniture of my ex-boyfriend's, but we broke up before I did anything with them. (That was four years later and tells something about how fast I am when it comes to changing fabric on furniture, I've got 15m dark green cotton canvas standing on a roll in the hallway, to use on my sofa and armchairs. It's been standing there for almost two years now.) The fabric on the forepart is a cotton/viscose brocade that I bought on sale for ca 14 $/meter some years ago. I bought three meters so there's plenty left of it. The bottom in the pattern is off-white cotton and the pattern is in white viscose. The pattern is a little too big and too much acanthus-leaves for my taste, but it works.

The trims are a ca 6 cm vide velvet ribbon with stripes of gold woven into them. One could get 10m for a little more than 5 $, so I bought 30m. I used ca 10 m for this dress. All sewn on by hand of course. As you can see it goes around the neckline, from the neckline and down and along the front split and the hem. What you probably can't see in this picture is that the tabs on the shoulders are double; the over layer made of the same fabric as the dress and the ones under that made of the same velvet ribbon. The ribbon is wholly synthetic so I just melted the edges on the tabs before sewing them in, which was very nice compared to hand-finishing the cotton tabs.

The sleeves are of black, rather expensive, thick, cotton-velvet (20 $/meter). I didn't need that much of it though. I bought one meter and even got some scraps over for my very first French hood. The sleeves are decorated with glass beads in gold and small glass pearls that I bought at a craft store and large plastic beads made from an old necklace that I bought at some flea market. They are made up of three separate pieces each, edged with gold cord and held together with pearls. They are lined with some yellow brocade I've had lying around for the last six years. These sleeves were made especially for a coronation in the medieval group I'm a member of, where all the queen's ladies in waiting should have black velvet sleeves with gold cord and pearls. The design was up to each one of us and it was fun to see that nobody had done the same. They also have "the original" sleeves (no picture), which are open round sleeves in the same fabric as the dress, with the velvet ribbon along the opening and held together with large buttons in black velvet and gold (very expensive: a little below 3 $ each). They're lined with red, let's call it, "silk imitation" (another old curtain), that I had lying around. Both pair of sleeves are tied into the bodice with black ribbon.

The partlet is made of very thin silk. I bought it at a craft store and it's intended to paint on. It's not really of a high quality, but it's thin, transparent and cheap (ca 7 $/meter) The fibres are quite short and not spun, which makes it a very delicate fabric. The only way to make anything out of it was to sew it entirely by hand. The front opening and the lover edge of the collar are edged with 4 mm pearls. It's tied together with white satin ribbons.

On my head I have a rather large attifet. It's definitely too big, but I have this strange attraction for silly hats so I wear it anyway. It's circular and not tearshaped, after Sarah Goodman's suggestions in her sadly disappeared criticism on Winter and Savoy. Since I wanted something that covered my head (I sometimes wear a coif under it), being 33 years old and the mother of twins, I promptly made it too big. But I actually think it looks beautiful in some strange way. (Since my main interest the last 9 years has been making medieval clothes, where no respectable, married woman ever went without headcovering, it tends to be very important to me.) It s in the yellow fabric and lined with hand-woven linen (twill-weave, an old sheet). The lace edging it is made of brass wire and is sort of bronze-coloured. It also has a 1 cm black velvet ribbon around the edge and some brass beads and pearls. In the "dip" in the middle there's a tear-shaped pearl.

Under this I'm wearing a corset, farthingale and bumroll made after the descriptions on the "Elizabethan Costuming page" and a silk chemise that I made 7 years ago. It has turned more yellow in the colour and I have re-hemmed it (made it too long in the beginning), but otherwise it is like when it was new. Sometimes I even use it under medieval clothes, if I know that it won't be seen (it's really the wrong construction for the middle ages), because silk not only keeps you cool in the summer, but it keeps you warm in the winter, and we have quite a lot of events that involve cold weather and less than adequately heated castles. The corset is made of hand-woven linen tabby and has the same placement of the boning as the corset as the one worn by Pfalzgräfin Dorothea Sabina von Neuburg, but I used plastic boning (sometimes referred to as "german boning") because it's cheap and convenient. I'm also wearing linen stockings, but this you can't and should not see, roughly based on the ones in "Queen Elizabeth's wardrobe unlock'd", with embroidered turn-down upper parts. The pattern was the same as my regular sewn woollen stockings that I use with medieval clothes; separate sole, upper part and legs. Linen was more elastic then I thought it should be. If one gets hold of linen twill that would probably be the best since twill is more elastic than tabby.

This is my first Elizabethan upper-class dress. I made the underwear, a simple skirt and a woollen bodice for this summer's Gotland Medieval Week, but it was not half as complicated as this. Since then I've got hooked on Elizabethan costume, so now I've made an embroidered partlet with matching embroidered sleeves, a greenish woollen middle-class dress, a blue woollen doublet, a middle-class dress in blue satin with black velvet guards, an upper-class dress, doublet style, in red, thin wool and with more gold "lace" and pearls than I like to think about, a forepart and sleeves in gold brocade (another curtain), a smaller attifet and a bonnet, both in the red wool and with matching decorations, a loose gown of dark brownish green wool-twill with rabbit fur over the chest and as decoration on the puffed sleeves, a wool-flannel petticoat (for those dreaded winter castles), a hat (not very good), several ruffs with lace or gold cord or black edging, a new chemise, a French hood and now I've started my very first blackwork, around the neckline of a smock. And some say it's just a hobby...