The skirt and sleeves are attached, now it just needs the cuffs, trim, and hooks and eyes up the front.

It feels pretty strange picking up a project that has sat to one side for so long. It is all bits and pieces, the skirt had been on my dress form for at least a month, waiting for me to hem it. The lining and the outer fabric dropped and the lining somehow got bigger than the outer fabric so I ripped open the back seam of the skirt and laid it out on the floor.

I basted the layers together and evened the lining out, then re-serged everything and sewed the skirt back up. The skirt then went back on the dressform to keep it out of trouble and cat hair.

Then I turned my attention to the bodice, I made a mock up of it and fitted it over my brown/green wool kirtle (really I still haven’t decided what color it is and most likely never will.) From the drawing the gown over laps in the front but I have no idea how it is actually held together. Pins might be one option, hooks and eyes another or even hidden lacing and pins.

These are the mysteries of the universe.

So I cut my bodice out with extra room at the center front, and a bit extra at the shoulder straps.

I realized over the course of fitting this over the kirtle, I need to tweak my bodice block when it comes to the shoulders. I have very sloping and forward shoulders and the fixes I’ve done in the past are not quite working. I’ll post more on that later with pictures to show what I mean.

The bodice cut out, I then cut out the interlining, muslin and lining, which is my least favorite part of sewing due to the number of pieces that need to be cut out, pressed and then everything bundled together so I don’t lose anything. (Dear sleeve lining, please come home soon.)

I basted the interlining to the muslin which I then basted to the fashion fabric. I could have just machined it but over the past year or so I’ve gotten to where I enjoy hand sewing.

That doesn’t mean I’m not using the machine on this project. But I don’t really have a deadline on this outfit and it isn’t a 100% reproduction. I’m using it as a test and I should try to enjoy what I’m making rather than racing toward the finish line.

On a technical level, as someone who likes to take things apart and put them back together. (I get that from my grandfather.) I like the idea that should this ever be taken to pieces by someone else they will see that some extra time was taken with it and they might learn a new trick. I might be over engineering things. (Which I am very guilty of.) But things should be interesting to look at inside and out.

My sewing philosophy aside, I then spent a day or two catch stitching the seam allowances down with silk thread. It keeps them flat, helps hold down the fraying and makes me use stitches I don’t use every day.

I’ve been sitting on this project for some time waffling back and forth on fabric use for Henry VIII’s era and if the fabric I have can be even called mockado. I mentally went back and forth until the project had stalled due to my indecision. But In the end I’ve decided I don’t have any other use for the fabric, and I need to test the dress pattern I want to use for a different project. So this is becoming something of a wearable mock-up with some research to keep my perfectionist side happy.

I’ve long admired the sketch of “A Lady Walking” by Hans Holbein the Younger.
The dress was plain but elegant and she sported a wild headdress that must have been a pain to wear on a windy day.

My thoughts and speculations

From the sketch alone: she wears a red half kirtle/underskirt/petticoat whatever you want to call it, it is most likely wool. Over that she wears a gray kirtle, most likely also wool, and over that a blue-gray wool gown trimmed with velvet.

We can’t see if the gown has a waist seam or not, we can only see that the front overlaps, possibly closing with hooks and eyes or it is pinned shut. The gown in the skirt doesn’t look like it is lined and the hem appears not to be bound. The wool is most likely felted or finished to keep it from raveling, giving it that clean edge.

The skirt is full enough that the gown might have a small train, or be floor length, hence the system of straps to keep the skirt hooked up out of the mud. If this is part of the mysterious white band is still up for debate, but a similar device is hinted at on Margaret Clement(?) in the sketch of Thomas More’s family. In the remade painting the figures are rearranged and this detail is a bit harder to see.

She also has a green, perhaps silk tasselled sash, a rosery or paternosterer at her side, small buttons on the top of her velvet cuffs, and a partlet that buttons at her throat.

The gray kirtle looks like it is the same type/weight wool as her over gown and looks to be unlined. On her feet she has the classic square-toed shoes for the era and what might be silk or fine linen stockings.