All posts tagged: Elizabethan

May detail, Cycle of frescos of the twelve labors of the months, Trento (Italy), Castello del Buonconsiglio (Bishops Castle), Torre del'Aquila (Tower of the eagle), otherwise unknown Master Wenceslas of Bohemia, after 1397

The Historical Sew Monthly 2018: Inspiration for Challenge #5: Specific to a Time of Day or Year

The Historical Sew Monthly 2018 is well underway now, and it’s my duty and honour to write the inspiration post for our fifth challenge of the year: Specific to a Time (of Day or Year). I was slightly panicked when I realised this theme would fall to me. I’m not at all an expert at pre-1700s fashions, and this is a challenge that’s particularly tricky before the 19th century (ish), when specific garments for different times of day became common. But with help from my awesome co-moderators, I’ve found examples from a range of eras – enjoy! In chronological order: This ca. 1400 cycle of frescos of the months from the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento, Italy, provides a wonderful look at late Medieval fashions by season, with warm layers for winter snowfights: Flowing garments for spring romance (note the love-knots on the gentleman’s tunic): And sunhats and light shirts (and sandals!) for harvest labours. The sunhats do double duty for this challenge, being both daytime, and summer, specific: Elizabethan costume plates also show wonderful …

Red Velvet Elizabethan thedreamstress.com

The Red Elizabethan – oops!

Published by The Dreamstress

Back in November I did a bunch of work on my Red Velvet Elizabethan ensemble – and a bit of blogging about it. I assumed I’d written all the relevant blog posts, because I’d thought about writing them so much, but I went looking for the final project status wrap-up for the year, and realised I never wrote it! Oops! When I last blogged about it, I had an inspiration image: And the ensemble had a finished bodice, and an assembled skirt, which just needed to be put together. I have since done that: From the back, it looks spectacular: Look at those pretty pleats! (very timely): From the front? Not so much: Granted, it looks a lot better on a person than on that dressform, which is too big for it, so the bodice won’t laced closed. But even on a person, the lacing doesn’t sit totally smooth, there is a bit of wrinkling in the bodice, and the front pleats aren’t deep enough to sit nicely. Re-doing the skirt pleating is easy enough, …

Adventures in Elizabethan ruff-making

Published by The Dreamstress

I made an Elizabethan ruff! And it turned out really well (not perfect, but really well). And I am extremely pleased with myself. And it’s really, really close to perfectly historically accurate! Making a ruff turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be simply because there is so much rubbish information about ruffs on the internet. (Granted, there is rubbish information in books too – Tudor Tailor doesn’t do a good job of making it clear when they are using a historically accurate method and when they use a theatre one, for example, and even Saint Janet got things wrong on occasion. So I like to read EVERYTHING and then collate all the evidence in the hopes of arriving at something at least reasonably plausible.) So I had to weed out all the advice about 1) cutting yourself a really long strip entirely on the selvedge (this immediately read wrong to me because it’s hugely wasteful of fabric, and fabric wastage is rarely historically accurate. Plus the grain will be …