Toward a Medieval Outfit
Well, I don't have a solid place to live yet (yay graduation) but I've decided I'm going to get into the SCA when I get settled. To that end, I've been doing research and looking through illuminations to get ideas for when and where I'd like my clothes to be from, and I've settled on 12th century French/Crusader States. So I need a chemise (which would ideally be made of linen, but taupe linen/cotton was the closest I could find) and a gown with drapey sleeves and laced up sides. And a veil. The veil should be pretty easy, at least.
So I have my chemise all pinned together…four gores, all pinned along two sides (that’s eight lines of pins, for those keeping up at home); pins along the (thankfully short) side seams between the gores and sleeves (two more lines of pins) and the whole thing is kinda folded and plopped in my lap. If I sneeze, I may die of exsanguination, but by god I will not have a crooked seam.
The moderately more finished chemise: first of all—
No more structural pins! It's a miracle!
—and secondly, it's laid out so you can see how much more volume the gores give the skirt. On the left: the original width (that rectangular panel visible is 10 inches wide). On the right: with added center and side gores, each 36 inches long from base to peak and 41 inches wide at the base.
Now, of course, I have to go back and French all those long seams. and then even out the hem, actually hem the thing, hem cuffs, and do something about the neckline. Which will involve (you guessed it) hemming.
If you have very sharp eyes, you may note that the seams on the sleeves themselves are not on the outside, like all the others; this is because I French seamed the sleeves before attaching them to the body (and man, did that take some mental gymnastics. I'm usually pretty good with spatial reasoning, but for some reason I could not get my head around which sides needed to be facing for all the seams to end up on the same surface of the finished chemise. For the record, if you pin the finished sleeves so that initially they're laying between the front and back of the chemise, they should be wrong side out. That way, you'll flip them for the next step, and all your nice, finished seaming will match.)
Unusual sheen on the fabric in this photo; it's definitely not that
shiny in person. Anyway, that's the length of one of the gore seams all
pinned and ready to be French seamed. I've done three of the ten total
gore seams (counting side/shoulder seams among those, since the side
gores are pieced together), so this is what I'll be doing for the
foreseeable future. And then: the dreaded hemming.
So I have my chemise all pinned together…four gores, all pinned along two sides (that’s eight lines of pins, for those keeping up at home); pins along the (thankfully short) side seams between the gores and sleeves (two more lines of pins) and the whole thing is kinda folded and plopped in my lap. If I sneeze, I may die of exsanguination, but by god I will not have a crooked seam.
 |
| All major construction seams finished. Yay! |
No more structural pins! It's a miracle!
—and secondly, it's laid out so you can see how much more volume the gores give the skirt. On the left: the original width (that rectangular panel visible is 10 inches wide). On the right: with added center and side gores, each 36 inches long from base to peak and 41 inches wide at the base.
Now, of course, I have to go back and French all those long seams. and then even out the hem, actually hem the thing, hem cuffs, and do something about the neckline. Which will involve (you guessed it) hemming.
If you have very sharp eyes, you may note that the seams on the sleeves themselves are not on the outside, like all the others; this is because I French seamed the sleeves before attaching them to the body (and man, did that take some mental gymnastics. I'm usually pretty good with spatial reasoning, but for some reason I could not get my head around which sides needed to be facing for all the seams to end up on the same surface of the finished chemise. For the record, if you pin the finished sleeves so that initially they're laying between the front and back of the chemise, they should be wrong side out. That way, you'll flip them for the next step, and all your nice, finished seaming will match.)
 |
| Pins everywhere! Pins forever. |
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