All posts tagged: 14th century

Fittings, lacings, and gores: progress on the medieval gown

There has been a bit of blog silence on it for the last few months, but I have been plugging away on the 1370ish dress, but there has been an awful lot of effort on it that doesn’t look like anything, because it was just unpicking and re-doing. I got it all sewn together, did an initial fit, and it just didn’t feel quite right, which prompted a LOT more research. Based on the research, I decided that lining 14th century gowns with linen is almost certainly not accurate, and gives a fit that doesn’t match the fits shown on effigies of the period. This is what the dress looked like with a linen lining: It looks really good, but it’s very constricting. It just didn’t feel right. So I sucked it up and unpicked the lining. And all my gores. And then I re-sewed the entire gown without a lining, and with the gores placed almost at my waist. As soon as I tried on gown 2.0 I knew two things. First, the fit …

14th century dress construction: fitting thoughts

Published by The Dreamstress

In addition to having finished the buttons for it, I’ve got my 1370ish medieval gown all sewn together: Actually, it’s been sewn together for almost two weeks now, but I’ve been busy working and making class samples (one seen in the photo with me) and having events and generally living life, and haven’t been able to do much work on it. To sew it, I cut a linen lining for the bodice (using a great piece of vintage linen with very little give), flat lined the bodice sections, and sewed the dress together. I’m doing all the main seaming with machine sewing, because between winter chillblains and arm stress extensive hand-sewing will just be too painful this time of year. I know it won’t be totally historically accurate this way, but I also know even if I did hand sew it probably wouldn’t be totally historically accurate anyway. I’m thinking of this as a learning garment — a working toile if you will. I know I won’t get it all right, but I also know …

Making Medieval cloth buttons

Published by The Dreamstress

When I starting doing research on a medieval gown one of the things I really knew I wanted was buttoned sleeves. But the buttons? Those terrified me. Obviously they were little circles with the raw edges tucked inside, but I was sure making them would be a bit of a nightmare: very fiddly, and impossible to get even and solid. But when I mentioned that I was worried about buttons, Sarah directed me to her tutorial on Som Når Det Begav Sig. It’s in Swedish, but there are photos which make it self explanatory (and Google translate when it isn’t), and links to sources and other tutorials at the bottom. I ended up using a mix of Sarah’s tutorial and The Medieval Tailors tutorial. My buttons don’t look as exquisitely tidy as Sarah’s as I make them, but my fabric is much thicker than the fabric the Medieval tailor is using, and I found that using a strict interpretation of his tutorial only worked if I was making much bigger buttons. And I want really little …