Embarking on Elizabethan
Remember last year when I made a late Elizabethan pair of bodies? And a farthingale? Now I’m finally tackling a dress to go over them! The dress is more of my ‘dabbling’ in Elizabethan, so it’s testing concepts rather than being 100% period accurate, and it’s also meant to be all from stash. Thanks to the fabulous Lynne, I had two huge curtains in red velvet, so that decided the dress fabric. With red velvet in mind, I went looking for inspiration. The obvious place to start for construction is Janet Arnold, and for inspiration, (since it is Elizabethan), portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. I quite like van der Meulens’ 1560s portrait: I particularly like the more restrained ruff, and the open effect of the neckline. And the fact that it’s in red velvet is an added perk! This portrait by an unknown artist has many of the same general design elements: I like the idea of separate rather than matching sleeves, a look that is also repeated in the Pelican Portrait: I am madly …