Very Much Overdue Photos

Here are some photos from Buckden Towers in December, taken by the gracious Rob Ross, of my pink cotehardie, c. 1409. I have, of course, posted photos of the gown several times before, but never with the embroidery actually "finished." Please note the heavy quotations on "finished," since I will undoubtedly pick it back up at some point and add more. But at least it's symmetrical now. I have been wearing this dress for more than three years with the three rows of parallel lines, but with roundels only around the waist. I finally tackled the lengthy process of adding the circles around the hips and the huge hem. I didn't count. I don't want to know.

It is done in silk floss, couched over a silk-wool core on the shetland wool gown. The pattern is based on illuminations dating between about 1350 and 1409; it shows up all over both men and women's garments. However, it is hard to say to what extent this pattern is merely artistic shorthand for "...and there was embroidery on it," or whether the circles and lines pattern was actually that common. Stripes and roundels are a common motif in medieval woven fabrics and in other extant scraps of embroidery, but there are often other elements around or within them. That said, as this is a wool gown rather than silk, it is entirely plausible that less complex motifs would have been stitched onto it. Couched embroidery has been found from this period and slightly earlier, so it's a plausible stitch. The dress itself is entirely hand-sewn (the whole outfit is) and is constructed geometrically.

See, this was before the embroidery was done...

The thing on my belt (well, the blue and gold thing) is my new belt purse! Another thing I'd been procrastinating on. Had to make a good impression on the locals - couldn't show up in half-finished garb, could I? =P It's made of a wool and silk pavy cloth that I wove on my floor loom last year (wish I still had access to a floor loom! Alas...), finished with fingerlooped silk cords and wool tassels with woven silk decoration.

The cloth, close-up

And one more photo of the dress, standing on Buckden's entrance causeway:

2014 in Review, and a new blog!

Welcome to my new blogspot! This is mostly cross-posted from my LiveJournal entry, but with more photos. I thought it might be a good way to begin this blog.

I have added in extra photos of my Louisbourg project, including stays, francaise, and stomacher. The full dress diary for those can be found here.


Completed in January: 

- Louisbourg stays of wool twill, lined in linen and bound in leather, with metal boning - entirely hand-stitched. (1740s stays from Norah Waugh.) Since these photos, they have been re-laced front and back with linen tapes, and 1/4" linen tape has also been passed through the eyelets to strengthen them.

(And here's an awful photo of all of the undergarments together! Chemise, stays, and hoop, all hand-stitched. Stockings from American Duchess. Shoes made over from 1940s thrift store shoes.)

























Completed in February:

- Smokey purple wool petticoat for under the silk petticoat of the Louisbourg gown (you can see it worn with the 1770s caraco down in September).

- 1530s English kirtle of red wool and silk velvet with silk velvet sleeves, entirely hand-stitched, worn with a black wool partlet lined in white linen, also hand stitched. All of this was made in one week before an event, because I decided I needed accurate Tudor clothing for the Renaissance theme.




Completed in March:

Nothing actually finished. I was plugging away at the Louisbourg gown and stomacher.


Completed in April:

- Louisbourg gown, petticoat, and stomacher! There's far too much info on these to put here; a link to the LiveJournal dress diary is above. Suffice to say the gown is entirely hand-stitched of pomegranate-dyed silk and the stomacher is hand-embroidered by me using naturally-dyed silks hand-reeled by my friend Greta from silk worms she raised. Based on the 1725 Robe a la Francaise in the LACMA.

Photo taken at Government House in Halifax. The book I'm holding is from 1720, so I couldn't resist bringing it along.

This stomacher was my first piece of embroidery. I began between Christmas and New Years last year, and finished in early April.













- 1840s tucked petticoat (entirely hand-stitched of cotton twill and cotton eyelet; cartridge-pleated onto waistband with hook and eye closure) - I need better photos of this! Remind me never to hand-stitch this many tucks on a 150" hem again.




Completed in May:

- Nothing completed, but everything was sewn on the 1770s caraco except the hem and I'd begun to paint it (see September).


Completed in June:

- 1850s/1860s pin-tucked chemise (entirely hand-stitched of very fine cotton batiste with two types of cotton lace) - please excuse the HORRIBLE bathroom selfie photo of this (I'm so embarrassed to post this!) - I need new photos of all my recent things.




Completed in July:

Nothing. Working too much.


Completed in August:

- 1840s corded petticoat (entirely hand-stitched of cotton organdy and cotton cording; cartridge-pleated onto waistband with tie closure; based on museum examples from the 1830s and 1840s). The 90" hem on this is based on extant petticoats, and I think it's the outer limit in terms of hem length - even at 90" it flutes in on itself a bit when other petticoats go over it.




- Another 1840s petticoat, much plainer (no tucks; just a large hem), of white cotton broadcloth, cartridge-pleated onto waistband with hook and eye closure


Completed in September:

- 1770s Dutch ensemble (hand-stitched caraco jacket of cotton I hand-painted, with hand-stitched petticoats; the hat in the Citadel photos was not made by me. Fichu is a store-bought printed handkerchief with green dye painted in by me to make it match my colour scheme better, and a green border dyed by me and hand-stitched on so that it ties in the back).



   So much yardage needed painting!

  At the Halifax Citadel Encampment



Also: pockets! Hand-stitched, linen-cotton with linen lining and cotton binding.




Completed in October:

- 1770s silk-cotton brocade jacket to wear with the Louisbourg stomacher. Somehow, I still haven't taken any photos of the finished product. I'll be wearing it to an even later this month, so I'll post some then. I swear it has sleeves now...




Completed in November:

- Green velvet 15th century German "house book" gown with grand assiette sleeves and linen wulsthaube headdress, entirely hand-stitched, with cut brass details up the front, and red leather shoes with cutouts, hand-stitched in period turn-shoe technique. The shoes were finished last year, but I'm including them here because I haven't posted photos before.



Here you can see the grand assiette sleeves:



And a close up of the back pleats:



The demiceinte belt is leather covered in black silk, with brass belt ends purchased from a brass-smith in the Ukraine:



As I said, the shoes were finished over a year ago, but I've never posted photos before. This photo is from when the shoes were half-finished; there is cutwork done on both now and there is an extra leather sole on the inside to cover the seam allowances.




- Viking Norse garb for a commission, based on archaeological finds (skjoldehamn hood made of wool and hand-stitched with the same seam finishes and decorative stitching as the original, linen thorsbjerg trousers cut based on the original find but machine-stitched, linen tunic cut geometrically the historical way but machine-stitched):




Completed in December:

ALL THE YARN

- medieval pavy weave wool and silk:

  Blue wool warp / gold silk weft.


- Mittens! These aren't historical, really, although they'd work for turn of the 20th century (there were lots of mittens like this from the 1840s on, but with much smaller-repeat patterns on the front), but they were my first crack at colour stranding and I'm really proud of them, so they're going in!






- 7 yards of 35" wide red wool for an under-petticoat and a blanket for reenacting (was originally going to be an 18th century cloak, but it's really too coarse a weave and I can't get it to felt properly - but it will be enough to make a really warm winter under-petticoat and a lovely blanket!)




Completed just after New Years:

These were mostly made over the Christmas break, so I'm including them. =P

- 1820s wrap stays front and back (entirely hand-stitched of various cotton layers, based on examples in the Met and the Kyoto Institute) - more about these can be found on my facebook page because I was too lazy to post it to my journal. Once I finish the full set of foundation garments for this outfit - which are my January: Foundations entry to the HSF (well, the Historical Sew-Monthly now) 2015 - I will post a full write-up.






Hope you enjoyed this! I find I much prefer this platform to LiveJournal, and since a lot of the bloggers I like to follow are on blogspot, it makes it a lot easier to see what they've been doing.

You can also find me on facebook at Isabel Northwode Costumes - all my little updates, daily costume musings, and funny costuming things from around the web get posted there.

Thanks for reading!