Wardrobe Elements for Lady Nicolla

Wow....its only been how many months since I have posted last? A quick run down of what I have been doing...finished the IRCC 2 (will post more finished pics later) working on renovations with my husband, hunting, tanning hides, made a quilt for a customer, made two adult sized animated movie costumes for customers (Merida's green dress from 'Brave' and Rapunzel's dress from 'Tangled'), started on the first of many wall tapestries for our house and many other various little bits.

My current project has been pushed back to now, after being requested several months ago at Uprising. My dear friend Lady Nicolla requested some user-friendly camp garb. She is involved with both equestrian and heavy fighting and needs some pieces that reflect her late period Italian persona, while remaining feminine, being durable and easy to dress in by herself as she runs from equestrian to fighting to court etc with few minutes to spare.

So these are the ensembles I have planned;

l. Seafoam green linen doublet with black velveteen guards, plain black 'venetian' breeches, and over a lightly embroidered linen shirt.

2. Italian gamurra out of indigo linen, front lacing, with either a split skirt or very very full skirt to ride in, over a plain, fitted camicia.

3. Linen and silk, front lacing Venetian gown based off of the portrait; Portrait of a Lady with a Heron by Paolo Caliari c 1550's. over a long linen camicia.


And then, my favorite (not); she is also in need of a new arming doublet, her current one having been well used up over the last few years.

I ordered a few new fabrics, but allot of it is coming out of an overflowing stash that I don't mind using, since her budget is pretty low.

She lives three hours away, and we plan on seeing each other this weekend, so I am going to try to have the innards of all the bodice portions ready to fit her with.

I've started on the riding doublet. Unfortunately I must have been have crazed when I made the toile on her as I made quite a few parts of it really wonky, so I compared the usable parts with a doublet  pattern I had made for her several years back and it was close enough that I felt confidant going ahead and using that.

I started with cutting out the pattern on some extra black linen/cotton and then out of scrap quilt batting (unfortunately it probably has a rather high poly content, but was bulky to store in stash and needed used up) which I then trimmed to reflect a more feminine shape, and then pad stitched the respective pieces of batting to their linen comrades.

I am lining the doublet with the same sea foam linen/cotton, so I placed the lining layer atop the bare batting layer and then sewed the shoulder seams by hand, flattened and whipstitched the seam allowances down.

I then lay the outer layer (with shoulder seams also already sewn and pressed) atop the layer of black linen and machine basted along the long sides, ending up with two halves of a doublet. I then pinned the back seam and side seams together along what would be the seam allowance so I can fit her on Saturday.

Planing on cording the gamurra bodice, so need to run to town and see if Ace has what I need. The cord I have is buried behind flooring and boxed countertops and I do not have the energy to dig it out.

The fabric for the Venetian gown is pre-washing as we speak.

Skirt Attatched!

So I broke down and used the machine...shame on me.... but I only used it for two seams, so not too bad, right? I got a bit of ambition last night and just HAD to get the skirt on the dress. I tried a new variation of a technique previously used; first I sewed the muslin lining, the linen, and a three inch wide strip of wool all along the top edge with about a half inch seam. I then trimmed the perpendicular edges and sewed that up to be the back seam. Then I flipped the linen/wool to the outside, so that the top edge was finished and six layers thick. This was then pleated to a narrow strip of linen which I then whipstitched to the inside of the bodice. I went back to the outside and stitched the tops/outside of each pleat to the very bottom of the outside layer of linen on the bodice using invisible stitches. This aligned everything beautifully, and I loved how it turned out. 

I had any doubts about how this gown would turn out with using linen instead of silk, they are gone. The sheen and lightweightness of this gown so far are perfect, plus washable!!

Back to the skirt; instead of having side back slits to co-ordinate with the side back openings, I instead left about a nine inch portion of the skirt unpleated. Once the gown is finsihed, the excess skirt will close with hook and eye. I haven't tried this before, but saw it somewhere ( bad me, saw it somewhere and didn't document, bad!). It leaves a pretty substantial break in the even row of pleats BUT this will get rid of the gap in the skirt that shows camicia beneath (one of my pet peeves).

 Ive also been slowly working away on the sleeves. The first one is completely finished and the second one is ready to be assembled. Once i'm finished with both I will post more on the construction experiments I performed upon them.

On another note, I have been convinced by family and friends to pursue sewing as a business. I stay with my husband's granny during the week, making sure she eats, and all that fun stuff, which gives me oodles of time to sew instead of sitting and watching the Walton's with her all day. I'm slowly starting to work on a website where I can put things up for sale and take commissions. This will be an interesting pursuit, but I'm anxious to make a bit more cash and spend my time being productive and useful. Any thoughts or ideas for what I could encorporate? Or if i'm even skilled enough to do this?