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Rachel of WhitehillThis gorgeous gown was Rachel's first attempt of making a Tudor costume, but the results, as you can see, are absolutely brilliant! I especially love the fabric of the underskirt and lower sleeves--that color combination with all of the red is just too beautiful! You can see another side view of the gown here, and finally, Rachel has also been kind enough to write up a great description of the construction and inspiration for this costume, which you will find below the picture.
The dress was made to give me something a bit posh to wear for this 12th Night Revel, since I'd been asked to preside over the event as Mistress of Misrule. The Autocrat had decreed that the theme for this event was to be "wide sleeves", so a posh Tudor gown with some big turned-back fur-lined sleeves seemed to fit the bill. Besides, since I had access to a suitable corset, farthingale and underskirt (and some leftover fabric from it for matching undersleeves), all (ha!) I actually had to make would be the gown, chemise and forearm sleeves. Which was fortunate as I only had a bit over two months before the revel to put it all together! The chemise was fairly straightforward, being based (like those I've made before) on Drea's pattern generator, but with the neckline shaped to suit the bodice (and yes, alas, it should all have been evened up before taking the photos!). The gown design was loosely based on the style of the Jane Grey/Katherine Parr (depending which art historian you ask) portrait, but somewhat more simple/plain to reflect a far more limited in-persona budget! So the gown fabric was plain (if bright!), and its decoration was braid rather than jewelled. (And I'm still expecting the 'free press' of the Kingdom to ask awkward questions about where the Lady High Steward 'found' the money!) The (fake) fur sleeves were pieced together from a coat I'd found a while back in a charity shop, whilst the forearm/undersleeves are false, as are the buttons and the visible chemise puffs/cuffs. The pomander is again borrowed, the girdle is a length of decorative chain bought from a DIY store and the cross/necklace was found (really cheap) in the New Year Sales. And the head-dress was a real stroke of luck (as I had hadn't had time to make one) since I was given it by another friend as a really rather lovely (and immediately useful) 12th Night present! Patterning was basically done by my friend and mentor Teddy (to whom, as usual go myriad thanks), with an adaptation from other bodice patterns being mocked-up around me until it fitted! There was a certain amount of guesswork to get it right (as he hadn't been involved in making one in quite this style before) so it probably wasn't too surprising there were some times when it didn't! In particular, we found the sleeves just didn't hang right as made - they were fine with the arm out straight but twisted when they were brought forward to the usual hands-in-lap position. And since I had neither time nor inclination to unpick and re-(hand)sew the arms in at the shoulder (outside and lining), we ended up cutting them across the upper arm and rotating them there. Which wasn't ideal but did fix the problem fairly quickly. We also found the gown ended up too wide across the shoulders and so needed a dart in the centre-back (with the stitchline extended down to appear as a centre-back seam). This was the first outing for this gown, so I was very pleased (and
relieved!) with how well it worked. Not to mention that I actually got
it in finished in time (or at least finished *enough* But all in all, I'm delighted with how it came out. Especially as I can
now take a welcome break from frantic sewing - at least for awhile!
Rachel of Whitehill | |||
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