Pennsic is on its way and I need clothing before then. Time for a new dress!
I really liked the bright blue dress I made a few months ago and I have been looking at some of the gamurra dresses others have made, and thought that I would like something similar. Thus the lacing rings you see. But I forgot about rounding out the neckline; too mentally stuck on the later style I guess.
My mom had a bunch of this pale lime green (if you can imagine such a color), that was a really nice weight, but kinda lame color. I had some Rit navy blue dye on hand, and thought to try and dye it. Now, I didn’t use the whole bottle, and I was dyeing 5+ yards of fabric, AND I didn’t remember to add the salt that the package recommends. So the color I got was definitely not navy blue. I would call it a Bluish Grey, but I have already had a few comments about it being light purple, so take your pick. Whatever the color, I was much happier, and ready to use it for garb.
I didn’t think to take a picture before I sewed the bodice together, but the pattern was taken from my bright blue dress, with a few alterations: Made the back and front necklines an inch lower, and added a bit of curve to the bust area, to make it a better fitting supportive garment.
Very pleased with the fit of the bodice. I could have gotten away with making it just a tiny bit smaller, in order to have a larger open area for the lacing to go across. I am thinking that it might stretch, and the lacing might not look so nice using lacing rings. If it becomes an issue later on, I can remove the rings, and sew some of my usual eyelets instead.
After the bodice came the time to pleat. I really debated a long time on what I wanted to do with the pleating. Usually I go for your standard cartridge, but I was maybe thinking something different.
What I ended up with was something I might call “Lazy Cartridge”. I wanted the look of bigger pleats (not tons of tiny ones like usual), so I sewed the skirt down in approximately .5/.75 inch sections. I saw something similar in VMG’s flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13_costumes/5
I started sewing the skirt on, curious to see what the ‘Lazy Cartridge’ might turn out to look like when the dress was being worn.
And this is what it looks like! If you really fluff out your skirts, which I did indeed do for this picture to show what I was talking about, you will get a bunch of funny U shaped wrinkles in the skirt. On the bright side, it almost doesn’t even really do that unless you go out of your way to fluff up your skirt. It is also super easy to fix, by inserting your hand into the U, you can smooth the pleat back against the body, and the funny U shape completely disappears. Also, it seems to make the skirt pop up a fair bit at the waist, which I have never quite gotten with regular cartridge pleats.
The dress is still a ways from done. I need to hem it, and even though I love the way the puddle of fabric looks around my feet, I don’t love tripping, or having to constantly hold up my skirt. I will likely add black guards to the bottom of the skirt, because I really really like the way they look. Also, I am sort of trying to make this a bit of a chimera kirtle, usable for several different counties (namely Italian, German, English, and Flemish). With the right accessories, I could hide the features that make this dress distinctly Italian, and pass off as middle class from various other places. Guards on the bottom of skirts is something that all of these places have in common (I don’t see it much in the Netherlands, but I bet there’s a source for it somewhere).
Aside from any alterations I might need to make to the dress still, I also need to make a partlet, a shift, an apron, a pair of sleeves, a pocket, maybe a coif, and so on. So expect more updates on those things within the next month.
UPDATE: Sleeves have happened! They are very simple, but fun, and complete the dress nicely when I wear them.
I got to wear this dress to Pennsic, with a pair of new red socks that I am absolutely in love with and simply must find more pairs of the same.
So those funny little ‘u’ shaped folds I mentioned earlier? I ended up sewing several pleats to each other on the inside, about 4-5 in a group, and that has pretty much gotten rid of all the funny U folds.
Very silly poses aside, you see that matching doublet that my Mr is wearing? It was a little bit small for him, so when I was figuring out doublet pattern stuff for the second IIRC competition, I remade it into a doublet for myself.
And as it turns out, this dress actually works pretty well with a corset! There’s some silly wrinkles from pins to keep the bust from drifting down, but that’s fixable with more attentive pinning next time.
I often do not wear the matching blue sleeves on my arms, but instead I’ll pin them to my shoulders, and let them hang behind my arms. You can see women doing similar things in Alessandro Allori’s Birth of a Virgin (1595).
