I whipped up a pair of sleeves for the dress, and this is probably the first part of his project that completely fun and painless! I drafted the sleeve pattern mainly by draping, but I was able to get the basic gist of the cut by studying examples of later round sleeves from the late 16th and early 17th century tailors' pattern books by Alcega and Burguen. Like most other sleeves from the period, the seam line runs up the back of the arm instead of underneath it.
The sleeves are also reversible and made from two layers of incredibly soft and lightweight super-fine
wool. The red fabric has a small diamond-weave that adds a nice little touch of texture and embellishment,
and I chose the cerulean blue material to mimic Florentine tastes for bright, contrasting colors in
their attire. The ties at the shoulder are made from the same velvet used for the guards, and they will eventually
attach to loops or rings or a lacing strip (I can't decide what would work the best!) under the shoulder
strap. I also decided to add aglets to the sleeve-ties. This doesn't seem to
be a common practice in this region at this time, but gold tips do appear in this
image, and well... I just really like how they look! ;-)
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One other interesting thing that I discovered when I tried on the sleeves, is that some of the length of the camicia sleeves also needed to be gathered and secured at the shoulder in order for the "poofs" to look right. Without the gathering, the poofs didn't have those characteristic folds, were not full enough, and drooped all the way down past my waist; but with the gathers, they look perfect! This solution could be accomplished by simply securing the material in place at the shoulder with a safety pin, but I'm going to make four small eyelets on each sleeve so that tiny ribbons can gather up the fullness as shown in this diagram. I don't think the eyelets will be very noticeable among all that fabric, and it would be much easier to arrange the poofs and less likely to rip the linen than if I used pins.
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With only two weeks left until the beginning of Scarborough Faire, I finally quit putting off the dreaded hand-sewing work and finished the gamurra. I didn't have enough silk left over to do a full lining on the bodice, so I just bound the inside edges with some left-over scraps. The eyelets for the lacing are hand-stitched with cotton embroidery thread because I couldn't find any silk thread to match the color of the gown, and the holes are staggered for spiral lacing (see this article if you are not familiar with spiral lacing). I might go back and continue the lacing down onto the skirt opening, but my fingers really hurt after doing 32 holes, so I decided it was just fine for now. The cord at the moment is just some small grosgrain ribbon, but I'm planning on ordering some wool or silk tape from Wooded Hamlet eventually.
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I had originally planned on wearing a coverciere (an early Florentine version of the partlet) with the gown, so I ordered the finest, more transparent silk I could possibly find... and it was still thicker than I wanted! It just boggles my mind to think about how amazingly sheer veiling fabric from the period must have been! I guess it's not all that bad, but these neck-coverings only appear in a few portraits from very early in the century, so wearing one seems to be completely optional. I think I'll leave mine off most of the time.
But just to share the details anyway, it is made out of 3mm silk chiffon (I'll try a different weave next time). The gimp trim edging is just some ordinary synthetic stuff that I found at the local craft store, but it looks amazingly similar to the edging in this portrait. Although you might think that these neck coverings are made out of a simple triangle, it is impossible to get it to lay smooth unless you shape it to fit the contours of the shoulder. My pattern ended up looking similar to this diagram.
By the way, you might also notice from this latest picture that the color of blue sleeves looks quite different from the last set of pics. I forgot to mention that the wool is a shot twill made with teal and midnight blue threads, so the color varies a bit depending on the light.
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For the accessories, I made a turban, sash, and necklace to complete the look. The turban (or roundlet, or balzo... I never did figure out what to call this thing), is based on a combination of headdresses from period images. You can see stripes in this portrait, the twisted wrapping on a woman in the background of this fresco, and gold and white coloring in a third painting. My version is made from a silk shawl that I bought on ebay, but unfortunately, it was way thinner than I had hoped, so I had to back it with some white muslin to make it more opaque. The fabric is just rolled into a tube with some scrap muslin in the middle to pad it out, and this is twisted into a ring with the end hanging in back. Although you could just wrap it around your head each time you wore it, I decided to tack it down permanently so that it would be faster and easier to get dressed.
The sash is made out of black and burgundy shot silk with some handmade polymer clay beads and store-bought tassels on the ends. The beads have gold zig-zags on them like the beads found in two paintings from this period seen here and here. The necklace is made from glass beads that were given to me by my mother-in-law (her second wonderful contribution to this project! Thanks Susan!), and similar simple necklaces can be found in a large number of paintings from the period.
I might play with the accessories some more in the future to change up the look (I wouldn't mind having
a net caul or braid-casing, a fancy pendant necklace, and some additional sleeves), but for the most part,
this is it! You can check out pictures of the entire outfit on the new
gallery page, and I will add more pictures with the blue sleeves after this weekend. I also still
plan on making the doublet and slashed sleeves for the other incarnations of this dress, but I will probably
take a little hiatus to work on other projects and come back to it this summer.
