12/28/04

This dress has a convoluted history. I purchased some wool gabardine that was a beige color and decided to dye it with acid dye to a nice burgundy. Instead it came out a sort of mauve/pinky color. I decided to use it for a cloak although I only had about 3 yards of 60” wide fabric. For some reason I thought that I could cut carefully enough to piece the whole thing into a cloak. As it turns out I was only able to produce a fairly full half circle cloak and the fabric really was too light to be very warm. I then decided that it could become a nice skirt with a bit extra. This extra, combined with some wide guarding could become a bodice, sort of similar in style to the dress worn by Maria de Medici in this Bronzino painting and in the Eleanora di Toledo dress in patterns of fashion.

Bronzino Maria de Medici	Patterns of Fashion Eleanora de Toledo

I couched some silver crochet yarn as decoration and added some black and silver braid as trim. Along the way I decided to make some sleeves even though I had run out of fabric, this was solved by getting some wool blend felt and dyeing it until it was the appropriate color, which was then cut into paned sleeves. The dress ended up looking decent although I was never quite happy with the fit.

I have already unpicked most of the seams and will be starting to redo the whole thing.

Original Front of Dress	Original Back of Dress

Things that will be changed:

• The original waistline on the gown is lower than I had intended. Fortunately this gives me the chance to make it into a much more curved front similar to the dress in Patterns of Fashion.
• After a while I started to dislike the silver couching and braid. I also think it may be more likely that folks who had enough time/money for embroidery might also have used at least gilded, or similarly fake gold threads. It does look to me as if the embroidery on Maria de Medici’s gown might be silver but it could also just be an effect of the light because her jewelry is also very light colored. I will go over the silver couching with gold embroidery thread and add some small fake pearls.
• The silver braid trim will be replaced with a gold and black twisted cord trim that I got on sale. It is made by Europa Trims and is mostly made of real copper.
• I will add boning to the bodice between the lining and interlining.
• The skirt will be lined and possibly padded with wool felt. Because of the way it was constructed with gores the skirt has the fullness of some of the skimpier Alcega kirtle patterns and doesn’t have nice full pleats at the waist. I’m hoping that lining it and adding some padding at the waist and possibly the hem will give it more fullness.
• The sleeve panes will be edged in black bias tape and attached together with small aiglets.

Progress

12/28/04

The entire bodice has been unpicked and all the trim taken off. I re-couched the silver going over it twice with gold embroidery thread. The color isn’t as dark as I was hoping for but I’m happier with it than with the silver. On the front of the bodice I added plastic pearls at regular distances along the couching. Next to do will be refitting the bodice and adding trim and boning.

1/26/05

I have finished re-couching the front and back of the bodice. Hopefully these pictures show that it is a light gold color and no longer silver. I only pearled the front. When I looked at the gold and black cord as edging on the bodice I thought that it looked too gaudy. Instead I'm planning on using some black velvet ribbon instead of the original silver and black braid.

The new embroidery with pearls and the velvet ribbon in front	New Embroidery on back of gown

I've also been thinking about adding a forepart to the front. Mostly because I think that skirt would be a bit skimpy for a dress with embroidery and pearls, even if they are fake pearls. I'm still not sure what to do about that

2/2/05

I still like the forepart idea and I picked up a yard of this nifty velveteen on the remnants table

2/25/05

There's quite a bit to catch up on in this diary. The night before we were leaving for Estrella I went to move the car to a better parking spot and it wouldn't start. I called up everyone in my family who is remotely talented with cars but there wasn't much help they could give from New Jersey. So I called AAA and had the car towed to the nearest garage. I was totally convinced that there was absolutely no way we were going to be going to Estrella and went on a sulking binge of trying to finish this dress. I ended up rooting through some piles of fabric and found the partially finished skirt of a dress that never really worked. I decided to make this into a corded petticoat since I had some thick hemp lying around. I sewed three parallel channels using grosgrain ribbon about 8 inches apart starting from the bottom of the skirt. I added some drapery trim to the bottom because i had it lying around and thought that it might be interesting. Over this I made a petticoat/forepart combo. Not really ever having done Elizabethans I'm not so sure how the whole forepart thing works. Is the forpart applied to the skirt of a kirtle, is it integral in a petticoat - I'm not sure. I decided to make mine integral. I sewed the velveteen onto a long rectangle of this nifty shot lining I picked up for $1/yd. The lining is probably 100% poly but I didn't want the skirts to stick together and didn't want to use my silk on something that wouldn't be seen. Also I hadn't washed the linen I'd intended to use. Besides, I really like shot fabrics, and at that point small things were making me happy. I ended up just pleating the whole thing - velveteen and lining fabric- into a waistband. At this point it was nearing midnight and Sebastiano was suggesting we go to sleep on the off chance that they might be able to fix the car in the morning. The rest of the dress had been finished except for hemming. The next day I called the garage at 8 am and they hadn't figured out what the problem was but were going to run some expensive diagnostic test, they said they'd call back later. At this point I though I'd start on a partlet. I had picked up some gold silk organza earlier in the week with the intention of making a venetian type of partlet as I felt this dress was steadily drifting towards being a venetian gown from the 1550s-1560s. I knew there wasn't much chance of me getting around to any embroidery so I figured I'd just go for fancy fabric. Here are some examples of the type of partlet I was going for.

Titian, Lavinia 1560	Unknown artist, 1560s

Anyhoo, here are some pictures of the dress. I'm not wearing sleeves because I never really finished them since I kept dropping them in puddles.

Front of Dress	Back of Dress	Loose gown and dress

4/14/05

Sleeves, almost done

I wore the dress to my friends Crystal and Steve's wedding this weekend. They wore garb, figuring they'd at least have the chance to wear the clothes again. The sleeves were made of black wool and some matching pinkish wool felt bordered with black velvet ribbon. I had intended to slash the tops of the sleeves, as seen in numerous Venetian paintings, but never got around to it.

Dress with the sleeves	Me and the bride, her bodice is based on the Eleanora of Toledo pattern from PoF	Steve the groom, he made most of his outfit

© Sahrye Cohen, 2004
Updated on April 14,2005.