Sewing: 12-14th Century Kirtle

Dear me what a hash I made of this poor kirtle.  I actually tried to make it as period as I possibly could but was lazy with reading the pattern so many, many things went wrong.

To remind everyone when this all started (months ago) I intended on recreating the two dresses worn by Miranda in William Waterhouse's "The Tempest".  It was actually the inspiration for a story which I've now finished but have no intentions to publish (cause I can do that).  First step was to create the crimson red under dress, and I also paired this up with a chance to buy the Burda pattern,


I was really, really, really picky with the colour of fabric.  I had already decided on linen because it's period correct and because it has the best drape for garments like this.  Unfortunately the fabric of the perfect colour was actually a linen/cotton blend, so not so period correct but I could get away with it, sorry, could have gotten away with it if that had been the only thing I'd done wrong,

I wanted to line it, which I now regret because it makes the whole thing really heavy and bulky, the drape effect kind of disappears too because I chose a lovey sky blue cotton for the lining (cotton=quite stiff).  I still love the colour but unfortunately that is its only redeeming quality.  I've worked with 100% linen on the Italian Camicia, but I couldn't find the red I was looking for at my usual suppliers, and so the cotton blend won out.

Let's start at the beginning though.  I cut out the pattern...and didn't do a mock up.  I did a mock up of my 15th century Italian dress  and I personally found it a waste of time because the mock up actually fit worse than the finished product did and I didn't change the pattern from one to the other.  Unfortunately the Burda pattern was too short for me, and I didn't realise this until after I'd cut out all of the pieces and put them together. So yeah, still don't regret not doing a mock up but it would have been nice to know.  Instead I got resourceful, but more about that later.

The seams are running stitch, anchored at the ends by back stitch with all sew thread.  There are two side gores in place, and here's another mistake.

 You're supposed to cut gores on the fold of the fabric, I accidentally cut one on the other side, and so I had to sew the two pieces of gore together to get one full one.  I'm also not very good at reading instructions because when I do my thing never turns out the same way.  For fitting the gores I also had another reason to change the placing of them.  I have large hips, I'm talking about fashionable 50s small waist and large hips, but I hate them because they make me look disproportionate.  I placed the gores starting just at my waist so they fell over the bad area of myself.  I'll leave it up to you to decide if they're too high up, a part of me thinks they are but at the same time I like it...all very here-and-there.

When I tried on the dress with the two gores I just felt there wasn't enough swish to it.  So I took the remnants of my fabric, which wasn't a lot, and fashioned a special gore.  The leftover fabric wasn't big enough to the pattern gores so I had to make one.  I don't know if it adds anything but at least my dress is unique now, well because of that and what else I did to it.

As you can see from the main picture to solve the issue of it being too short I added a border of really nice soft blue cotton-linen blend.  I think the exact colour is "periwinkle" and it was more blue in real life than it was online which made me slightly nervous, but I think it looks ok, a bit of a stark contrast, I know, but look at how straight it is!  Pattern-less skill right there.  To be honest I could have ordered more red fabric but I think that would have made it look as though it was too short and I'd tried to fix it, at least this way people will think it's on purpose (it's our secret, dear reader).

There are 38 hand sewn eyelets up the back, that's right, 38; nineteen on each side.  I'm not gonna lie here, whenever I read about people doing this on their garments I was like "how can you be bothered?" and yet here I am, doing the exact same thing.  I definitely didn't sew them right and they're so small I had to use a kirby/bobby pin to get the lacing through.  I used buttonhole stitch on them because that's what I'd done on the sleeves, and I still don't know if that's the right way.  As I said I don't read instructions very well, including the ones online.  The positions of the eyelets is also a little off and the closing doesn't match up; I can't figure out why so I'm going to breeze past this bit.

I also didn't know what to use for lacing.  I ordered some corset cord (I know, I thought it would be okay) but because the eyelets were so small the cord would just not go through.  When I was in Fenwick's haberdashery department looking for some white thread for my next project, I saw this rayon-like shiny ribbon stuff.  If anyone has a garment from Armstreet then it's the same stuff they use to lace up their gowns (that's right, I have one of their dresses).  A back closure was a mistake, but it was too late by the time I really thought about it.  Getting myself laced into it is, as you can imagine, a problem.  

The one thing I was really disappointed with was the neckline.  I scrolled through hundreds of pages of trim to see the one that would go well with the red and was nice.  Since it is technically a fantasy dress it meant there was no constraints and I found one that was perfect.  Unfortunately what I forgot is that round necklines are a b**ch.  I have found a way by a kindly SCA-er but I decided just to scrap the neckline trim on this project and save it for something else in the future.

A final mention for the main body of the dress is that there is very un-period iron-on interfacing around the neckline and down the sides of the back closure.

Now we're onto the sleeves.  As you can see from the pattern the sleeves actually lace up from the wrist to the elbow, but that's too little work for me apparently and instead I did buttons (see the gore mirror-selfie pic).  This was another point of surprise for me.  Whenever I read blogs about fabric buttons I thought "that's dedication", but I ended up making 24 of them.  Unfortunately I didn't use two and now I've lost the little things somewhere in my slowly growing messier room.

Being the Statistician I pretend to be I decided to make a little template so all my buttons were all the exact same size, and I've kept it in case I want to use it in the future....a long way in the future.  I attached them to one side of the sleeve opening from a way I saw online somewhere, but I don't have the link anymore.

Now we move onto the button holes.  I'll skip over the stupidity I went through briefly before I did it properly.  Cut/slice the fabric where the buttons should pop out, and buttonhole stitch around the slit with embroidery floss.  Simple, and time consuming.  One sleeve fits perfectly, and I mean really well (the one in the selfie pic), and the other is a little baggy, which is only to be expected when you self-measure.  And even then my measuring involved holding the fabric around my arm with the other hand and pinning it in place with my mouth.  Now that I'm typing it I should have just taken the circumference of my arm and then they both would have fit well.  Duh!

The buttons were hard to do, and despite my little pattern for them they all looked different.  The effect is the same though and I'm proud, especially for a first attempt.

Finishing a project is very bittersweet I've found, but I'm proud of this one, even though I made an absolute mess of it.

My next project is an entire woman's outfit from 1900.  This includes chemise, corset (but not from the right period I've found out too late), corset cover, blouse, petticoat, and skirt.  I'm currently doing a mock up for the corset (that's right, even I see the necessity of doing a mock up for something like a corset).  I have the material for the chemise as well, but no pattern.  I kind of want to do an all-in-one instead, or bloomers attached to a top, but I'm undecided.  Hopefully it won't take me as long as the above one did.