This dress was inspired by the Domenico Ghirlandaio painting of A Young Woman and by the fact that most of my garb is unsuitable for shooting archery because of big puffy sleeves and dangling aiglets.
In an effort to also have more camping friendly garb I have decided to make this dress out of a very nice brown linen/cotton blend with a linen lining. Having read Dressing Renaissance Florence by Carole Collier Frick it seems as if most dresses for the middle and upper class would have been of wool or silk, but for now I think that practicality and not getting heat exhaustion take preference (I wore both wool and silk at Beltane this year and my campmates can probably tell you what a bad idea that was).
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| White/grey check is the linen lining; the brown is the linen/cotton blend |
Since I’d like to have this ready to wear by Oct. 9th (conveniently right after an intense week of fish sampling at night, a midterm, and a regional conference presentation) I am planning on using the pattern that was drafted for my 14th c. gothic fitted gown. I was fit for this dress by my dear friends and conspirators who attended one of Robin Netherton's classes and needed a willing victim to practice on. The resulting 14th c. gown is extremely comfortable and I have shot archery in it. Unfortunately, it is made of very heavy almost coat weight wool with a heavy linen lining and is most suitable for wearing at night and at very rainy archery competitions (I was the only girl shooting and didn’t want to be a big wuss when it started pouring, but I was fairly warm in all that wool).
I am going to copy the bodice portions of the pattern, redraft the front so there is more of a gap and construct a simple rectangle and gore skirt. I think I have 6 yds total of the brown fabric, although it is in 3 similarly sized pieces (designer samples and bolt ends).
I have measured my fabric and I have 3 pieces of fabric that are 2 yds by 41 inches long. This is, unfortunately, a bit too short to use the selvages as the bottom hem. Therefore I have come up with the following more complex plan:
I put the pieces of the 14th c. gown up on my dress form. It was constructed using the directions in Threads Magazine. For some reason most of the measurements are about 3 inches larger than actual size, but the shape is basically the same. Anyway, I figured out where the waistline should go and drew a line around in orange highlighter. Then I started cutting out the pieces of the bodice.
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| Gothic fitted gown pattern with waist marked in orange highlighter (it was the first thing I grabbed) |
I've been thinking more about the bodice construction. When I tried on my 14th c. gown it supported but had a couple of wrinkles. This could be because I gained a bit of weight this summer, you'd think being a grad student wouldn’t encourage the Freshman 15 but I haven't seen my running shoes in months now. Anyway, I've been considering adding a stiffening layer, maybe cotton canvas, or canvas with some light hemp boning like Jen Thompson did in her dress.
Going to see the Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged tonight at Shakespeare at Stinson. We went last year for a different show and it was great. Unfortunately I waited too long to make a reservation at my favorite campground and when I called this morning there were no cancellations and no hope of getting a last minute spot. No camping in beautiful places tonight, sniff, sniff. The good thing is that instead of having to run over there during lunch to set up a tent I can go to the garden store and try to find some smaller hemp cord than what I currently have hanging around.
Cut out the remaining pieces of the dress. Instead of using canvas as an interlining I'm just going to cut an extra lining of the heavy linen used for the lining and will use that to make some channels for hemp boning. I didn’t wash the canvas and actual clothing has priority for the next Laundromat run. I started on the hemp channels for the bodice. I didn't get too far on the gamurra as I was distracted by working on the partlet and camicia.
I finished adding the hemp to the fronts and attached them to the back. It all looked fine but I realized that I had done it inside out. I'm thinking it might be best to just unpick the seams and redo. I also put the skirt together and am trying to decide whether to pleat it or gather it to the bodice. I think that personally I'd rather pleat it since I can figure out how to do that on a sewing machine while gathering seems like it might be a hand sewing sort of thing.
I finished sewing the gown today. Actually I finished a good part of it a couple of days ago but some details remained to be smoothed out. I basically decided to gather the skirt to the bodice in really small pleats. It ended up being too much material for my sewing machine, even with the presser foot all the way up so I did it by hand. The front of the skirt ended up being at waistline but I do think that the bodice droops below my natural waist at the sides, if I get the chance I'll fix this before the weekend. The gap in the front is about 1.5 inches in the front when laced, which is a bit more than I was shooting for but looks ok. I used toggle rings in parallel pairs to lace up the front. As I was lacing it the first time I somehow got one of the toggle rings to snap. Luckily I had more rings but the incident has encouraged me to add a bit of a modesty panel in front. For that I got out a spare piece of canvas, covered it with some linen leftovers from the camicia added hook and eye tape up one side and whipstitched the other side inside the dress. The dress still laces up smoothly and it is actually easier to get the lacing straight with the hooks holding the ends together. If I were to make this design again I think I would add a bit to the front, at least now I won’t have to worry about things coming undone during an archery round.
I wore the gown on Saturday. The weather was sunny, a bit windy and not too hot. I was quite comfortable until the sun started to go down and then I borrowed my boyfriend's wool hood. The dress was very comfortable, there were some horizontal creases at the waist, which I think is slightly below my natural waist (this would explain the creases). No toggle rings popped off while shooting archery, although my score was lousy. The sleeve lacing didn't work at all and I'll have to come up with a better plan for October Crown this weekend. Hopefully I'll remember my camera and take some pictures!
I wanted plenty of the camicia to be able to puff through the sleeves so I looked at a bunch of folk's diaries online for some good hints. When I wore the dress on Saturday I had sewn split rings (from jewelry stuff) and laced those. It was a disaster and required several emergency safety pins to keep the whole thing together. Thus, on to Plan B. I cut apart a matching shoe lace and sewed those in parallel lines across the sleeve, somewhat like the Bronzino picture of a plainly dressed woman. I guess I'll see how that works this weekend.
I've decided to make a new camicia to go with this gown. Camicias are like interesting socks, a girl can't have too many. This camicia is made of some sort of linen blend, after consulting with the local expert my best guess is that it is a linen/cotton blend. It is light weight, but not sheer, with a fairly close weave. I used a basic rectangle and gore pattern for the camicia, the selvage of this fabric is 50" so that is the width and since I'd like to wear the chemise with my later Florentine garb I'm going to make some fairly ample sleeves. I got a fair bit of sewing done today. The sleeves, body pieces and gores are all sewn together with French seams and only gathering the neckline and putting in a band at the neck remains. Upon reflection this is a huge amount of fabric, not only the sleeves but also the body, and paintings of this period do not show excessive camicias so it remains to be seen if the camicia will be too big for this dress.
I finished the camicia today while watching the presidential debate. I gathered the neck into a band and then decided to put some cuffs on the ends of the sleeves. I made some ties out of braided embroidery floss because I wanted to be able to push the sleeves up over my elbows.
I got very excited about the partlet today because I realized that even though my dress form isn't really the correct size for me it is still a great surface to make things like partlets that would be very difficult to drape on myself. Because of the unusual shape of partlets from this period, the sheerness of the fabric, and the travails of other costumers I have decided to make my partlet out of some stiff silk organza from Dharma Trading Company. To make a pattern before I cut into my silk I draped a sheet of tissue paper over the dress form and started pinning, taping, and drawing until I came up with something that approximated what is in the painting.
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| Tissue paper being a partlet |
Finished hemming the partlet in silk organza today. I started with a rolled hem but everything got all wavy along the margins so I decided to just sew the edges down instead. I don't know why it is still wavy, it wasn't before it was hemmed, maybe it has something to do with a lot of the partlet being cut on the bias. Anyway, I'm going to wear it this weekend the way it is, at least it stretches out when pinned.
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| Silk partlet after being hemmed |
I wore the dress on Saturday to our local archery event, Debardchery. I ended up wearing a gold net type thing in my hair because I didn't have a chance to make a coif. So yesterday I made one. I measured around the back of my head where I thought the coif would sit and then across the sides and from front to back. This basically created a 9 by 9 inch oval needing to fit into a 21 inch band. From looking at a bunch of paintings it appeared as if the band was not of uniform width and was a bit thicker in the front. This is the pattern I came up with and my stuffed elephant is modeling the finished product.
I'm still searching for fabric for the Giornea. I'd like something with a brocade pattern but so far haven't found any in my price range that I really like.
I found the fabric for my Giornea! I got about 3.5 - 4 yards of the fabric, it is a dark buttery yellow/gold color with a large symmetrical pattern. After washing the fabric was about 57 inches wide, which would be fine except that the pattern is railroaded. I was originally going to use the pattern that Marie Chantal came up with in her Florentine dress diary, except that the pattern uses gores and that would look weird with a symmetrical brocade and I don't think that I have enough fabric to make the pattern match at each of the gores. One of the ideas is to just match the front gores, another is to cut the fabric as if there were gores and just have a bunch of bias edges that might droop. If anyone else has any good ideas on how to make this work please share.
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| This gives a fairly true to life idea of the color of the fabric. |
The brocade pattern |
After looking at several Ghiralandio frescos with women wearing giornea I think that several of these have sleeves that are over the gamurra sleeves. Therefore I'm planning on piecing some sleeves, at least elbow length, out of whatever fabric I have left. I think I'll fasten these with some ties and aiglets.
The things I thought were giorneas with sleeves I now think are cioppas. That makes much more sense given the range of styles in the frescos. I think that what I'm going to do is cut out the yellow fabric like a giornea but make sleeves for it anyway. I really like this fabric and since the pattern is railroaded I don't have enough to make both giornea and cioppa out of it. Hopefully I can figure out a fairly hidden way of attaching the sleeves.
I've finished the giornea. I decided not to line it and instead went with french seams. The fabric is fairly stiff so it doesn't drape as well as I'd like. I'm still thinking of closing up parts of the side seams and adding sleeves and making the whole thing into a cioppa. Maybe if the kazillions of other Estrella projects get finished first! But, for now here it is on a hanger.
This project is finished! I ended up making the giornea into a cioppa with some sleeves and I like the way it turned out. Here are some pictures of how it looked at Estrella.
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| Sebastiano and myself in our Florentine garb at Estrella. |
Frick, Carole Collier. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002
Thompson, Jen. A Festive Attyre.
© Sahrye Cohen, 2004
Updated on February 25, 2005.
