In the spring of 2003, my friend Lucia was pregnant and beginning to show. She needed something to wear to SCA events which would accommodate her pregnancy for the next 6 months.
We looked at a bunch of sources, and decided on a loose kirtle and gown based somewhat on the ones in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion (I was already familiar with that pattern, as I'd made a gown and kirtle for myself from it). We took further inspiration from Italian portraits of the late 16th century, as Lucia's persona is Italian.
This was the first gown we liked the look of. It's from the Milanese Tailor's Handbook. We noted that it had
straight edges down the front (no A-shaped opening showing a forepart
like English gowns of the same period). But we didn't much like the
sleeves.
We liked the sleeves better on this second one, a portrait by Paolo
Veronese of Lavinia Vecellio (undated, est. 1580). Unfortunately it had
a low neckline, which we didn't like so much. We wanted to find
something with similar sleeves but a high collar.
We found this portrait by an unknown artist, dated around 1565. Finally
we had a combination of our favourite sleeves and a high collar.
Our first step was to create a pattern. The basic pattern is an A-line dress with a simple circular neckline and a slit down the back with lacing. The same pattern can be used for the gown, simply making it open at the front and adding whatever sleeves and embellishment are desired.
The kirtle was made of a beige-coloured wool (or it might be a bit of a blend, I'm not quite sure). The gown was a lovely red wool. We talked a bit about whether to pre-wash the fabrics. I recommended pre-washing the kirtle, as I'd used that fabric for a kirtle of my own and found that it washed up quite nicely and didn't shrink afterwards. When we washed a small piece of the gown fabric, however, we found that it shrunk and wrinkled and felted in an unattractive way. We decided to leave it as it was, which would make the gown dry cleanable only. However, we didn't think it would need dry-cleaning more than once a year (based on my experiences with similar gowns) so we thought that would be OK.
The kirtle and gown were cut out and I did the basic construction. Both were lined with cotton as that's what we had handy (the kirtle's lining only comes down to about the hips or upper thighs).
The kirtle was constructed as follows: I cut a single front piece (folded down the centre) and two back pieces, and the same for the lining. Using the outer wool fabric, I sewed it together across the shoulders, then down the side and back seams (starting the back seam at the small of the back, to leave a slit for lacing). I then repeated this with the lining. Then I put the lining and the outer fabric wrong sides together, and sewned them together around the neckhole and down the lacing slit. I then turned them the right way through (snipping as necessary on the curves and corners) and overstitched by hand with a small running stitch, to make it all sit flat and nice. The armholes were finished by turning the edges in and hand-stitching them in place with a row of small running stitch. I'm not sure if this is a historically accurate construction method, but I find it fairly quick and it results in no visible machine stitching, which is important to me.
I did the lacing holes by hand, using an awl to poke the holes. Actually, Lucia's husband Giovanni did most of the lacing holes, but he found it difficult to make them large enough. The trick is to use a wide enough awl (mine's about as wide as a pencil), poke it right through to the thickest point, and wiggle it around. In fact you may have to wiggle it, and/or poke it through from one side and then the other, to get it to the thickest point, depending on the fabric. The lacing holes were then stitched with a circular buttonhole stitch, using buttonhole twist thread in a matching colour. The good thing about the lacing, which goes down to Lucia's lower back, is that it gives very flexible fit for when her pregnancy advances.
Giovanni also made a white linen shirt with ruffs on the collar and cuffs, and sleeves for the kirtle. You don't see the kirtle sleeves in the pictures below, because the weather ended up warm and Lucia decided not to wear them.
The gown was constructed on similar lines as the kirtle - I cut one back piece and two front pieces of both wool and lining, and sewed them together in roughly the same way, including the armhole finishing.
The sleeves were quite interesting to make. Giovanni and I made a rough pattern of the sort of sleeve we wanted, and pinned it in place on Lucia. We then used a marker to mark where we thought the slits should be. I then took the pattern piece and laid it flat. I extended the slit marks to the edges of the pattern, and then cut the pattern into four pieces. I made sure to number them as I did this, so they wouldn't get mixed up!
Next I cut out the little pieces of wool and lining material, making sure to have the right mirror image so that there would be a left and right sleeve. The easiest way I found to do this was to get a piece of wool and a piece of lining, put them together, then fold them in half. I then cut the pieces out of the four layers, in one step.
All through the sleevemaking process I found it very important to keep the pieces numbered. I made sure that the numbered pattern pieces were ALWAYS pinned to the sleeve pieces, except when I was actively working on a piece, so that they wouldn't get mixed up.
I had 8 sleeve pieces to sew together - 4 for each sleeve. I machine sewed three edges of each piece (all except the bottom edge), turned them through (snipping the corners), and hand-stitched the fourth edge closed.
When I had all 8 pieces sewn to their linings in this manner, I laid them out on the hotel bedspread (at this point, I was on a business trip with only 4 days til Coronation, when Lucia wanted to wear the gown - so I was working feverishly in my hotel room in the evenings!) in the order that would make up the sleeves. Then I sewed each piece to its neighbour with about half an inch of stitching at the top and bottom.
The final step was to attach the sleeves to the armholes of the gown. I did this by gathering them onto the armhole with pins, just pinning in place til I found something that looked right, and whipstitching the sleeve onto the gown.
The gown was finally ready for embellishment. We'd found some nice gold-coloured bead caps in a bead store, and thought they'd look good with pearls at the centre. Luckily I had half a string or so of seed pearls just lying around. I also put a red plastic bead (matching the colour of the gown) inside each bead cap, to give it a bit more sturdiness - the gold beadcaps were basically a hollow half-sphere of filigree, and not very solid. I sewed the bead things at the top and bottom of each slit in the sleeves, and at 2" intervals all the way down both sides of the front opening of the gown.
And here are some photos of the finished product:
