Because there is so much work that needs to be done in preparation for the final version of this gown,
I decided to make this section as a sortof catch-all for stuff about finding the materials, making
foundation garments, and drafting the patterns.
I have been searching for the perfect fabrics for this project lately, and I think I've got most of the big areas covered now. I had a lot of trouble finding affordable black cotton velvet for the overgown, but I finally found some at the fabric warehouse district in Dallas. There was quite a bit of velveteen that was cheeper, but I really wanted some nice plush velvet, but the place that was selling it for the best price ($9.99 a yard) didn't have enough. I plan on going back again in a week or two, so hopefully they'll have more in by then. For the fur lining, I originally tried buying one of those creepy mink stoles with the heads and feet and tails still attached to the poor little critters. I thought that would give me enough fur for the collar lining and edges and I could keep one pelt for a stole like you see in the original painting, but because of all of the fur-edged shoulder rolls, it wasn't enough. I then bought a nice mink shawl for $11 on ebay, so now I have plenty of beautiful fur to work with.
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For the doublet, I've been looking all over town for something that matches the portrait, but I have come up completely empty-handed. I am guessing that the original garment was made from satin, but I couldn't find any decent silk satin in town that I could actually afford. I also thought about using a nice satin wool or wool/silk blend, but I couldn't find anything like that either. Finally, my wonderful friend Sarah came to my rescue and found some affordable silk satin for me out in California. It will have to be dyed, but as long as I can get the color right, I think that it is going to work perfectly. The stripes will be made from gold metallic tatting thread that I will couch onto the surface.
Since my first experimentation with hemp cord boning was for a bodice and not a separate corset, I decided to make a new corded corset so that I could use it for fittings and wear it with a variety of gowns in the future. I dug through my stash of linen, and finally chose some medium-weight rose colored stuff mainly because it was the color I had the most of. The cut of the corset is loosely based on the pattern of Elenora of Toledo's pair-of-bodies in Patterns of Fashion. Since Elenora's undergarment was also Italian and from the same general time period as my painting, I thought this would be an appropriate general shape. However, I decided to make mine back-lacing instead of having hooks and eyes in the front so that it would be more forgiving if I gained or lost weight.
I first fitted a mock-up of the corset with heavy twill, and I used this as a pattern for cutting out the linen. I wan to measure how much the cording made the corset shrink by comparing the final version with the original pattern pieces, but strangely enough, there was hardly any difference in the size... probably no more than 1/8 of an inch. Honestly, I'm a little boggled about this since everybody I've talked to has told me that the cording made their bodices shrink a good bit (and I even noticed this myself in my Florentine gown), but I think the type of linen that I used this time around was just so stretchy that it didn't have as much of an effect. It is a lighter weight, and I didn't even bother to iron it after it had been washed and dried, so the fibers were probably able to stretch back out a good bit when the cording was added. And actually, when I first tried it on, it was considerably too big, and I had to go back and take it in by at least 2 inches at the side seams. Sometimes I forget exactly how elastic linen can be!
The boning channels were made with vertical rows across the front and sides, with the back unboned except for a row next to the opening. After the first fitting, I decided to make the top 2 inches around the underarms un-boned to make it more comfortable. I was so pleased with how this felt that I started messing around with the waist as well. I've always been fascinated by the boning pattern seen in the corset worn by Pfalzgrafin Dorothea Sabina von Neuburg, which is also illustrated in Patterns of Fashion. The boning does not come down to waistline at the sides, and I have always wondered if this would be more comfortable. I went back and shortened the boning on one side and tried it on, but I didn't like the way it felt. The stress at my waist was better distributed with the cording, and without it, the fabric buckled in one spot when tightly laced and cut into my waist. So now I have to go back and re-bone that side, but at least I know now!
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I spent most of the day Saturday working on the corset, and I think it turned out pretty good. After
re-boning that one side, I dug out some homemade linen bias tape to bind the edges.
(I have a huge roll of the stuff that I made a year ago when I was bored one day!) I tried sewing the
binding straight over the cords this time, and while I was a little skeptical that my sewing machine
would like that, it actually didn't have any problems at all. I just made sure to stretch the boned
area as I sewed across it. I then trimmed the ends of the hemp down as short as I could and put
a soft cotton cord inside the binding to make edge at the waist and neck a little more padded. The
lacing holes are done by hand, and they actually weren't as annoying as they usually are.
Here's one more picture of the side.
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I got the silk satin for the doublet in the mail last week (thanks again Sarah!) and decided to just use some plain ol' RIT to dye it. The original color was an extremely pale green... more like a white with a tiny tinge of mint really. I washed the fabric and then chunked it in a pot with a box of Scarlet and a box of Wine dye, and then just let it simmer on low heat for an hour. The final color is really close to what I wanted. I would have liked for it to be a little more of a cool red instead of a warm red (it's just a better color on me), but I haven't decided if I'm crazy enough to try over-dying it for something that minor. We'll see...
After my little sidetrack into peasant garb, I'm now back to work on this project. Since the fabric for this costume is fairly expensive and I can't afford to mess up, I've decided to make a full mockup to work out all of the kinks. Besides, I always regret it if I try to skip this step!
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But going by the pattern the way it is labeled, I made up the petticoat with a different fabric on the forepart to see where the seams would fall. I hate it when an overskirt flips back and shows the less expensive fabric used for the back of the underskirt (and unfortunately, I can't afford to make the entire thing out of gold brocade), but I was pleased to see that the forepart on this petticoat comes all the way to the sides of the body. There isn't much fabric in the back to gather, which is a little disappointing since I was hoping I could cartridge-pleat the petticoat to create a bit of hip padding. I still haven't decided what to do about that yet. I could add a rectangular panel to the back for more fullness, or I could leave it like it is and wear another petticoat beneath it... but that's really more layers than I wanted. When you look at similar petticoats like these it is obvious that there isn't a lot of fabric being used in the skirt, but it still seems "fluffier" than the way mine is looking at the moment. Maybe it just needs a padded interlining at the waist to make gathers spring out more. hhhmmm... I'll have to come back to that one.
The doublet was made from the same pattern I made for my last Italian doublet. It already had the same shape as the doublet in Burguen's pattern, just with less of a point at the waist. I also opted to use a simple one piece neckband since my neck just isn't long enough to warrant all of that shaping. The only thing I think I'll change in the final version is to add some small tabs at the shoulder to better conceal the laced-in sleeves (I'm sure I'll get more use out of this doublet if I can go sleeveless in hot weather).
I was a bit worried about the two-part fitted sleeves since I have never made them before, but they actually went together with no problem. I used a tip that I think I read on the Sempstress site and just laid my arm on some fabric with a slight bend at the elbow and traced around it for the general shape. I then tried to make my shape look a bit more like the original pattern, cut it out, put it together, and tried it on. The first version was too big, so I just adjusted the back seam a bit, and the end results are just about perfect! These sleeves are very comfortable and not restricting at all, even though they are almost skin tight. Actually, I'll probably add a bit more ease to the final sleeves, since mine appear to be a bit tighter than what you see in the portrait. I was a little worried about how the stripes would work with a curved sleeve pattern, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. I carefully studied the 2 part sleeves in other portraits, and I noticed that you can see the stripes angle a bit at the wrist and shoulder, which would imply that the stripes are only perfectly horizontal at the elbow. If they didn't worry about the rest, neither will I.
Please feel free to skip this entry if you aren't really interested in hard-core period construction techniques. I know this stuff can be really dry if you are just mainly interested in the final look. Anyhoo... I've been doing a little cross-referencing to see if the majority of petticoats or underskirts would really use such a skimpy amount of fabric, or if the pattern I had used was in fact labeled wrong. I tried to round up the original Burguen pattern book to double check the notes (I was still a little suspicious about that "hood" piece), but I didn't have any luck in that department. But I was able to track down a copy of the Tailor's Pattern Book of 1589, and Alcega's version gives patterns for three main kinds of skirts. From what I understand from the notes in that book, they are:
To compare the shapes and proportions of different skirt styles, I copied and assembled the pattern pieces of the Burguen petticoat and a variety of the Alcega skirts on tracing paper. Once they were traced off so I could see the entire skirt shape, I measured the waistline, skirt length, and hem in millimeters and made note of these numbers. Then I took my normal skirt length (43") and divided this number by the skirt length of the little sketch, which gave me a standard number that I could use to convert the waist and hem measurements into inches (example--if my tracing had a skirt length of 50 mm. I would divide 43 by 50 and get .86. Then I could multiply the waist and hem measurements from the sketch by .86 to convert it to full size). What I discovered is that the Burguen petticoat is indeed correct the way I made it in my mock-up, and it is the exact same size as several of Alcega's vasquinas. These skirts (for my proportions) have 47-48" of fabric at the waist are 120-121" around the hem... which is what is used in my mock-up. This skirt is also very similar to a pattern for a saya and inner-doublet (if you remove the train). Both have a similar amount of fabric at the waist, but the saya adds 8" to the circumference of the hem. There is one other kirtle pattern in Alcega that is labeled "for a fat woman", and it adds and extra 10" to the waist and 20" to the hem of the average vasquina. I'm tempted to switch to that version just to get a little more fullness, but I'm not sure if I would actually qualify as a renaissance fat woman or not! The only skirt that used more fabric was a saya that is shown with an outer doublet. It has a waist of 56" and a hem of 146". This is probably the pattern that I will use for the skirt of my overgown.
I bring all of this up because I think many costumers have been led to believe that you have to use anywhere from 8 to 15 yards or fabric in a skirt to be "right". If you look at the pattern books and surviving garments, this couldn't be farther from the truth since the 16th century examples do not support such excessive skirt widths at all. Using more historically correct construction methods (which makes use of gored panels instead of rectangular ones), you can get by with a mere 3 to 4 yards (or less) per skirt. This saves a ton of money, plus the gown won't be so ridiculously heavy. If you want to read more about this subject, here's an excellent article that also discusses fabric usages from more of an English point of reference. Okay... climbing off the soapbox now. :-)
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I had almost given up on ever finding a better copy of the painting I am working from, but I finally found it! And just in the nick of time too! My biggest worry from the beginning has been about the stripes on the under-doublet, and I the more I looked at my original picture, the more I started doubting that they were created with couched gold cord, which was my original theory based mostly on a comparison with other doublets from that period and location. I could see glints of something there, but there really wasn't enough detail to see if it was really gold or something else entirely. As it turns out, it is something else, and I think it will look much better than it ever would have with the gold!
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I found this new image at a Southern Methodist University's incredible art library, and although I couldn't check the book out or find a scanner on the premises, they did have a nice copy stand available for making slides, so I was able to photograph the picture from the book and get fairly decent detail shots to share. From looking at this better copy of Moroni's painting (the full view is here), I now can see that the stripes are the same color and texture as the red satin, just raised a bit, and there is pinking between the rows. The stripes might possibly have been created with red cord couched onto the surface, but trapunto, or quilting over cords to create a raised line, seems like a much more logical solution. For comparison, I've found two Bronzino portraits that also show doublets that seem to be embellished with this technique. You can see it on the sleeves and codpiece of Lodovico Capponi from the 1550's and on the doublet in Portrait of a Young Man from the 1530's. Although I can't be 100% sure that the effect was created by quilting over cords, it definitely looks like that to me, and I think it will be a fun and easy way to add texture and richness to the fabric's surface.
And while I was there, I also took a picture of another Italian outfit from 1588 that has a striped doublet, underskirt of a different fabric, and high-necked overgown worn open in front. Here's the picture. Holy cow, that's a lot of embellishment! I think its fun to see a costume that has the same basic elements as my Moroni portrait, but is just taken to the extremes of late 16th century ostentation. Personally, I think the earlier simple version is much more attractive, but these late period gowns are still pretty fascinating.
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But seriously, my limited experience with slashing and pinking tells me that the success of it has to do entirely with the fabric you choose. Felted wool is ideal, but the weave of satin makes it also work surprisingly well. A different weave would probably require something to seal or bind the edges. Once again, people in the 16th century actually did know what they were doing! I've always wondered how those slashes garments survived 400 years without unraveling. I guess it wasn't such a big mystery after all - it just takes the right fabric.
Okay, I know I'm moving at a snail's pace on this project, but don't give up on me yet! I swore to my husband that I would re-do his bases from last fall since that outfit really needed some more work to get it up to par. I'm actually trying to be good for a change and not wait until the night before to make his costume, so I'm making myself finish his stuff before doing anything else on my own projects. It's killing me... but at least it keeps me motivated!
So anyhoo... I thought I'd give ya'll one last progress report before disappearing for a few weeks. I bought a double needle for my sewing machine to make the rows for the trapunto go even faster, and it looks like that is going to work wonderfully! Thanks for the suggestion, Truly! I also discovered that one of my small wood-carving chisels from printmaking makes a great pinking tool, so I'm expecting the embellishment for the doublet to be a complete breeze now. Also, I tried one more test piece with the rows closer together and smaller slashes, and I finally think I have worked out the scale that matches the look of the original painting.
My goal for the near future is to divide this project up into two stages. First, I want to make
the red doublet and an alternate skirt to wear to Scarborough Faire in April. There's no way it'll
be cool enough to wear the fur-lined overgown here in blazing hot Texas during late spring, so I'll just put that part off to work on at my leisure over the
summer. I recently picked up some wonderful cotton velvet for $8 a yard, so I'll be using that to make
the alternate skirt. It is an obnoxious orchid color at the moment, but I'm hoping to dye it plum since
I'm on a big purple and red kick lately. I'll use strips of the red satin to make guards down the
center front and around the hem, sortof like you see on this underskirt.
This version of the costume is inspired by the striped doublet/skirt combo that you see in
another Moroni painting, and also in the attire of a woman from Cividale del Friuli
in this print by Vecellio.
