I’ve added a small gallery of photos depicting the different types of pleating and gathering I’ve used in various costumes. I hope this will work as a quick reference guide for types of fabric, types of pleating, and the various looks each type gives.
This will be expanded on as I make and photograph more costumes.
See, I told you I have been working on them.
Photographic evidence. Which hopefully will never end up being used in any court of law.
That would be really weird if it was.
Seriously.
I’ve been working on the corset I promise.
Scout’s Honor.
It is taking me longer then usual because, in a fit of “well it isn’t that much work” I decided to sew the corset, boning channels and eyelets and so forth all by hand with silk thread.
This is not so much an exercise in insanity so much as wanting to see what I will learn from the experience, and so far I’ve learned a lot.
Like use a thimble, because your skin is not as tough as you think it is.
Take breaks so you don’t put too much stress on your wrists.
Watching David Tennant play Hamlet was kinda weird.
The cat will sit on your corset no matter what, and leave it covered with fur.
Ok, so the last two have nothing to do with sewing but I did get a lot of sewing done because of them. With the exception of the cat.
But after an hour and a half of Hamlet I did have this:
Slow going but not too bad, once you get into sewing with the back stitch there is something rather Zen about it and I managed to finish that side of the corset by the end of Hamlet.
The corset then got set aside for about a week as I worked on other projects and took care of some family concerns.
That was just long enough for my brain to wipe out all the useful hand sewing information it usually holds on to, and I found myself unable to recall how to do the back stitch.
Crazy I know.
So I decided to make myself a diagram just in case it ever happens again and I can’t find my sewing books.
Skirts! Skirts can be what makes or breaks a costume.
Too little and it looks odd, too much and you spend hours on end trying to pleat it down to size.
As skirts take up the most fabric I decided to cut them first, knowing I could squeeze the bodice and sleeves from the off cuts if I didn’t have enough fabric.
I knew the skirt of Eleanora’s funeral gown had a very similar cut to the Pisa gown.
I was going to use that as a base for mine, however a few days after I started planning a link to the poster from the Costume Colloquium in Florence that happened in 2008 was posted on livejournal.
It is a PDF file which you can find here.
In it, along with photos of the dress and some detail images, was a very small section of line art devoted to the stages of restoration the gown went through.
Save for some different piecing the skirt is the same shape as the funeral dress.
Knowing this I decided to make up a rough cutting diagram, so I’d have a general idea of how much fabric the skirts would take.
I have six yards of velvet 45″ wide.
I know Eleanora’s funeral gown was made up of 22″ panels of silk, and most of the velvets in the 16th century were also 22″. So despite having no measurements on the diagram I decided the Pisa dress was also made up of 22″ panels.
I took my waist to floor measurement + seam allowances + 1″ for the hem tuck + few inches extra as a just in case. (Accidents with scissors can happen..)
I drew out my pattern right on the fabric with chalk and a yard stick and then cut out the front panels without shaping at the top. I will do that when I attach it to the bodice so I can match the front V shape.
I cut the skirt side gores next basing the top width of them on the funeral gown, and will piece the small section of the gore in from the off cuts if I need to.
Before I could cut the back gores I had to decide on the back skirt length, I had just enough fabric for a train so I extended the measurement to a full 60″ long for a dramatic train. I also didn’t want a seam running up the back, so I used the full width of the fabric rather then cut it into two pieces.
Then it was a simple matter of cutting the side back gores, and cutting the bias side of them long enough to fit the train.
After laying out the fabric I traced my pattern on to the drill and sateen then cut it out.
I left all the seam allowances in place (Which I will cut down later then I bind it.) save for the back, which I extended by an inch as I plan to fold that over as a facing rather then bind the back edges.
Then I stacked the layer of sateen on top of one layer of the drill and hand basted all around it in the seam allowances.
In sewing terms this is known as flat lining it gives the sateen layer more strength then it would have on its own and will help prevent the bones from wearing through the fabric.
Next I pressed the seam allowances down on the side seams.
Then the side seam allowances were whip stitched down on the front and back pieces.
This method of construction calls for more hand sewing then if you used a machine, but the end result means you don’t have a thick bulky seam on the inside of the stays.
The outer layer done I set that aside and took the second layer of drill and pressed the side seam allowances down as well, but did not whip stitch them in place.
Then I stacked the two layers of drill together with the folded under/stitched down seam allowances facing each other.
All the layers were then basted through, going only up the side seams and the straps, leaving the bottom of the stays and the neckline open. I used a very sharp glovers needle for this, as regular hand sewing needles have some issues going through the heavy fabric.
Up next, sewing the boning channels.
After looking through my closet, under the bed and other places that my costume end up hiding I realized I never got around to making a late Elizabethan corset or pair of bodies.
A tragedy that must be remedied.
The Tudor Tailor book has three or four patterns for late Elizabethan corsets, but as with everything in that book the patterns scale up too big for me.
Patterns of Fashion 1560-1620 by Janet Arnold has a pattern for Pfaltzgrafin Dorothea Sabine von Neuberg stays which she was buried in.
Those are a bit closer to my measurements but I was not looking forward to doing a mock up and fitting it.
So I decided to use my usual bodice pattern, took it in two inches, and modify the front to a mild point, as I didn’t want something quiet as extreme.
Arnold speculates that Dorothea’s bodies were made form three layers total, the top being a layer of silk satin mounted on a layer of linen, and then another layer of linen behind that. The channels for the bones were then stitched through all the layers and then each piece was over handed together before being bound around the edges.
For my pair of I am using scarlet cotton sateen and two layers of cotton drill.
For boning I am using nylon cable ties.
We all have old projects lurking in the back of the closet, things we made when the scissors were still fresh and sharp and we knew just enough about sewing to be dangerous.
They are given away. They no longer fit and gather dust as we move on to new projects, better fabrics.
This was one of the first gowns I made, the bodice was too big, and over time the fabric stretched. It lingered in the back of the closet for a few years before I took it out, tried it on and decided to fix it.
The results can be found here in the Costume section.
I pad-stitched my layers of bombast (warm and natural cotton quilt batting) together, leaving the seam allowances intact. I don’t know if the stitching will cause the layers to shrink, and I can always trim them down later. I am only padding out the front of the bodice, one layer going over the bust and the other layer stopping at the underbust.
The idea is to fill in some of the space where the bust meets the torso. This is also the area where I was getting wrinkles when just using a layer of twill and buckram. Pad-stitching will keep the layers of batting from shifting over time. In the end I had a gently curving layers of batting.
It would have been faster if I zig-zagged it on the sewing machine, but the end result would have been a flat quilted layer.
The batting layers secured I sat down with a leather needle and a thimble and started pad-stitching through all the layers to secure the batting to the bodice. This took a few days as punching through twill, buckram, batting, and muslin can wear out your fingers.
The end result however was worth it.
The layers of batting and pad-stitching stiffen the bodice just enough that it remains smooth yet slightly flexible. It does not sit flat when on the table, but rather curves and holds its own shape.
