A 14th century kirtle a.k.a A Tale of 2 Kirtles

I started this project in January 2022 (it was my first of the year), and it took me to almost the end of April to finish what turned out to become 2 kirtles instead of 1. It came at a time when sewing was the last on my list of things to do on a weekend, but it did eventually help get me back into the sewing room and getting through my to do list for this year (which has already changed about 10 times since I made it).

I originally started this project wanting a medieval fantasy pretty-princess dress, but ended up with something far more practical. Yet, I still managed to hold onto that medieval fantasy aspect (in a way) with one of my acessories. I began by making a long-sleeved kirtle with all the bells and whistles, until I realised I had enough wool left over to make a slight narrower and short-sleeved kirtle as well. Here we are, a tale of 2 kirtles.

I really like both of these kirtles, the short-sleeved one is by far the most practical, but the long-sleeved wide-skirted one is still easy to get around in. I got a better day for the short-sleeved kirtle when taking photos, even though the location for the long-sleeved one was more atmospheric.

The Process....

I could not decide on this project. It had so many iterations I was tired of it before I even ordered fabric. On my original list of things to make in 2022 was a fantasy medieval gown, inspired by but not based on The Witcher. I had an idea, I was eager to start, and then I came to the problem of fabric. What should I use? Linen, cotton, God forbid...wool? A poly blend, completely poly? Some cotton monstrosity? I wanted a nice drape, and I wanted a specific shade of burgundy/wine (although even this kept jumping about). I haven't ordered this many samples for one project since my first chemise a la reine when I couldn't decide on a colour of cotton voile. I got wool, linen, cotton, blends, even silk. None of them were quite right.

I tend to bulk buy samples. I have a list of fabric shops in the UK where I get most, if not all, of my fabric. I also have lists of saved fabrics from these shops, ones I like but can't justify buying for the stash. There is a wool doeskin I've had saved for ages at one of these fabric shops, and when I was looking I saw they had another even more awesome colour. The original was a beautiful light blue, but the new one was a jewel like amber colour. I thought, why not get a sample? Predictably I really loved it, and wool doeskin is commonly used to make upper-class medieval re-enactment gear. I've never used it myself as it can be eye-wateringly expensive.

Of my haul, which consisted of cotton gabardine, too many linens, silk, scuba, and wool twill, this doeskin was the only one I liked. But it wasn't the colour I had imagined for this medieval gown, and I also thought with the amount of fabric I'd need (I estimated about 9-10m) it'd be as much of a burden to wear as it was on my bank account balance. Now, I've had a normal 14th century relatively HA kirtle on my to do list for a while. I even scaled up the pattern in The Medieval Tailor's Assistant and did a few mock-ups until it was pretty much ready to go. But fabric proved a stumbling block at the time so I shelved the project.

Rather than fretting and fussing over drape and colour of a medieval fantasy gown I was never going to wear, why not just buy the awesome wool doeskin and make the actual historical kirtle that I may actually get some use out of in the future? Granted, it wouldn't have flowy, drapey, princess-dream sleeves, but there was always time in the future to have another go at them.

And that's the long-winded way I ended up making a circa 14th century kirtle.

The small problem (although turned out to be a blessing) was that I'd lost quite a bit of weight since I'd drafted the pattern. I went through more mock-ups than most of the other projects I've done, mostly because of the price of the wool doeskin. I took no pictures of the process because I'm a terrible costumer now...

Then it was onto the scariest task of cutting. I did something potentially stupid but slightly more HA (not intentionally). Rather than the rectangle method of earlier centuries, 14th century kirtles were cut shaped for the torso and bust. The pattern in the medieval tailor's assistant also has the front and back with skirts already attached (as opposed to having to insert gores/godets, as is normal of the time period). As fabric is generally a lot wider these days, you can cut these pieces no problem.

Except I did have one. I hadn't added the skirts to the paper pattern. Morgan Donner made a very good point when she said that full length & width kirtle patterns were cumbersome. I hadn't really needed the skirts whilst fitting the mock-ups so I never bothered. This also means I hadn't bothered measuring the length from the end of the mock-up to the hem. Thankfully I'd marked the waist on the pattern (just to make sure it was hitting the right place), so just measured from there to where I wanted the hem.

Then I did cut it out, somewhat stupidly. I thought there'd be an awful lot more fabric waste if I cut the panels as one (with skirt). I thought adding gores to straight front panels was a lot more economical. So that's what I did, even though I still don't quite grasp the full concepts of how to insert them (does the bias side get attached to the straight grain, or straight to straight?). I could've just done some maths (it's not like I have 3 degrees in a mathematical science....) but that would've been too much effort.

I also forgot that gores/godets aren't attached at the waist, but a bit further down, so my waist-hem measurement was actually too long. But I'd rather have them too long (unlike in the past).

I cut everything out, barring the sleeves, and then set to work constructing the back panel. I ended up hand sewing a lot of this gown, mostly because I felt like it (highly unusual). One of the blogs I did read actually recommended doing the eyelets in the front panel before everything is constructed, so I set work to the eyelets, which were a lot neater than I'd been anticipating. (Yes, I bought at least 8 skeins of embroidery thread from my go-to online fabric shop in the hopes one of them would match, and I'm proud to say I nailed it).

I don't know why this looks so red...

Then I constructed the rest of the kirtle and had a try on.

At this point I could've taken it in a smidge, but it really wasn't worth the time hand-sewing. It fit nicely, comfortably. As you can probably tell, I'm not very well endowed, so I don't need this to really be a "supportive" kirtle, as there's not much to support. It does fit well enough to be comfortable in that area, I don't feel squished.

Worry not, I've also noticed my mistake, or possible mistake. The blog I used to figure out how to construct this, suggesting to do the eyelets before the kirtle was constructed, also mentioned that adding the front gores before the eyelets was sensible, since they'd also need eyelets. Now that I look at it, I don't remember kirtles on other people looking like this. It's up for a second opinion as I'm not that familiar with this time period. Should I have started the front gore further down than the rest, so it started below the last eyelet? Should the eyelets not go as far down as that, even though most people tend to agree front fastenings went quite far down? It wasn't getting changed now, so I'll keep that in mind for the next time.

I was relatively happy. The other minor detail I noticed is that I used far too much fabric in the gores. Turns out trying not to waste fabric was a bad idea. This thing is really heavy now, but oh well.

Then the sleeves. I ordered replica pewter buttons from a company in the UK and adored them. I looked at how they should be added to the sleeves, how far apart in general, where, buttonholes, etc. I faced the edges (as well as the front opening) with remnants of blue silk taffeta I kept from an 18th century project many years ago (as I understand, the surviving exampled we have from the period silk was commonly used as a facing). The buttons didn't take that long, but the buttonholes took ages.

But finally I had one sleeve done and ready to insert. Now I skipped over the mock-up adventure I had with this sleeve pattern. Let's just say I did quite a few mock-ups to get a good fitting sleeve. I always have to fiddle with the depth of the sleeve head in patterns, and this was no different, but I managed to get a sleeve that, during the mock-up at least, I was happy with.

So you can imagine my chagrin when I pinned this sleeve into place and tried on the kirtle only to find the sleeve pulling the shoulder. This is such a common problem for me I'm honestly not sure I understand sleeves anymore.

The sleeve head is a bit big, but this was partially intentional on my part. I can ease the excess in, but man do I wish that was the only problem. It does appear that the sleeve is too long in general, a la bunching around the wrist and elbow. I tried all sorts to fix it, and eventually just ended up fudging it into the armhole and very much not looking forward to the other sleeve.

I dragged my heels on the other sleeve, mainly with the buttonholes. Eventually, after a month or so of not touching it, I finally finished and set it in.

At least both straps are getting pulled equally. The sleeves don't look that bad, but I can't raise my arms up above my shoulders, and any other movement in that area is prohibited. There is a possibility the armscye is too small, but it's a problem to troubleshoot with the next one.

Oh, that's right, there's a next one.

I bought about 6m of this wool (you can see the bolt it came on in the background of the above photo). Despite the offensively voluminous skirts of the one above, I still had 3.5m left (it's 60" wool but even I don't know how I managed that given the amount of fabric that went into the first kirtle). I decided the one above was too impractical, and that I wanted a more manageable one with short sleeves.

I was going to put a waist seam in this one, making it more of a 15th century kirtle, but decided against it. I already had a pattern I knew would fit, and finite amount of fabric.

I made the gores a lot smaller on this one, but cut it out in a similar way, with the gores separate to the body pieces. This way makes better use of the fabric. I also machine stitched this one as my desire for that amount of hand sewing had been firmly satiated by the long-sleeved one (my Lord, there's nothing like doing the same project subsequentially comparing hand stitching to machine stitching to realise how much quicker that modest invention made garment making).

I ended up not using all of the gores I cut out, but I liked this skirt a lot better, it was more manageable. I used a different silk to face the opening, hand-sewed the eyelets pretty quickly (it's not as though I hadn't done enough on the 1st one).

Then it was onto sorting out what had gone wrong with the sleeves. I have a pretty crude way of troubleshooting sleeves. I get a tube of fabric, pin it into the sleeve head, then draw around the edge. When you take it out and lay it flat you have the shape of the armscye.

The long sleeve had been too wide so I'd had to take it in a bit. I kid you not, I spent an entire day doing mock-up after mock-up of these sleeves, making the sleeve cap longer, wider, more angled, and I could not, for the life of me, get these sleeves to stop pulling.

So I did what any fed-up person would do. I took my scissors and slashed where the sleeves were the tightest, which was at the top of my shoulder. I slashed, and inserted some fabric in the gap until the sleeve felt comfortable. After taking it out of the shoulder, the sleeve wouldn't lie flat.

Turns out my shoulders are a lot like boobs. My shoulders are very angular (not to say that my boobs are the same, but wait, I'm getting there), so no matter how large or extended I made the sleeve head it still pulled across a certain part of my shoulder. Maybe it was the armscye (too late to fix that), maybe it was the sleeve, but I'd added so much length onto the sleeve head to try and make up for the pulling, but it never worked. Adding width also didn't help as I'd end up with excess fabric that I didn't know what to do with.

Why not a dart? Why not just have a dart at the top of my shoulder, essentially creating a curved portion where my surprisingly angular shoulder could have lots of room (like boobs in a bodice)? Well, f**k it, I was sick of nothing working, at least this had, even if it's not conventionally how you do things.

That's what I ended up doing. When I'd hemmed and finished the "working class" kirtle I started to do some research online and realised:

1.) Medieval sleeves apparently do have a reputation for being a bit of a b**ch

2.) I had some excess length on one side of the sleeve seam. In other words I was essentially losing some width at the largest part of my shoulder. It was obviously too late to go and test if this was indeed the cause of the problem, but something to keep in mind should I ever want a 3rd kirtle (I was eying some blue wool fabric...)

The "upper class" kirtle (the long sleeved one) took longer to finish, what with the hem being about 4m wide, but finish it I did, and found myself with 2 similar looking kirtles, but two very different methods of construction and style.

I enjoyed my brief foray into the 14th century, a first for me in the almost 7 years I've been sewing. Now I'm looking at the next one so I can solve the mystery of the sleevils...

June 2022 edit: I bought the updated version of the The Medieval Tailor's Assistant and inside is full instructions on how to draft a medieval fitted sleeve from scratch. I'm 95% sure it was the excess between the sleeve head on the back seam that was the issue because the one I drafted from the instructions fitted near perfectly straight off the bat. The armscye on my kirtle is also a bit too big. At least I know now.