One year later...

Oh look. Here we are again. I would apologize for the absence, but frankly, it’s been a hectic year and something had to go. But hey, winter is coming again - time for another warm dress!

There are several events on my immediate radar that will be mostly if not entirely outside, and while I love the cold, I also don’t want another events of worrying about the state of my fingers. At the same time, I’ve been rummaging through my stash with an eye to selling some fabric at the upcoming Holiday Faire and also to designate and use up stuff.

I ran into a five yard piece of dull pink heathered wool, and a large bundle of indigo linen. I immediately thought of an image from the Cantigas de Santa Maria:

Cantiga 105: “How the wicked bridegroom planned to do something and committed a shameful deed.” Edicón facsímil del Códice T.I.1 de la Biblioteca de San Lorenzo el Real de El Escorial, Siglo XIII. Edilán, 1979. Made available open access by the University of Pennsylvania. https://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/DetailsPage.aspx?Feminae_ID=36178

Note: I refer to this as a midwife’s dress not because this is a birthing scene (it’s not), but because several images of births in 13th c. sources show midwives with removable hanging sleeves, often tied or pinned behind their backs to not interfere with their work.

This pink gown with shorter hanging sleeves is my specific goal. The wool I have is slightly too heavy for something like a fitted cote or first layer, but it will be perfect for a snuggly outer layer. I’ll pillage my stash for some silk scrap for the trim.

The woman in front of our pink lady is wearing a blue gown that I’ll use for the undergown. It’s loose, with a plain keyhole neckline edged in a contrasting fabric, and the sleeves are long and fitted at the wrist. This will be a good all-around undergarment to have in the wardrobe.

I also need another little hat, since the one I wore with my green gown has disappeared over the course of two moves. This time, I’m going for a plainer level brim with applied stripes. The stripes are most commonly red and black in source images, and I will cheat and apply ribbon instead of trying to weave them in or embroider them on

I don’t remember where I got this - it’s probably a very enlarged detail from the Cantigas.

Dress Diary : The Snuggledress

November in northern Atlantia can be cold and gray, so I need a nice warm something for Highland Havoc (that event I’m autocratting).

Two requirements:

1. it must be at least Spanish-adjacent to fit into my overarching wardrobe goals

2. wool may not be possible given the issues that the US is having with supply line delays

The Inspirations

For many years, 14th century fashion has been so popular in my kingdom that we refer to it as “Atlantian business casual.” While I never joined the 14th century Mafia, I can hammer out a Gothic Fitted Dress (AKA a GFD) in a couple of weekends, and I just happened to have a brand new body block available. Off to my supply of images I went, looking for something that could plausibly be adapted from a basic GFD.

1385 St Stephen Altarpiece - Noguera - Museum of Catalan Art

This image annoys me - it’s from Carmen Bernis’ La indumentaria medieval española, and no good color image seems to be available.

Both of these dresses are similar enough to a basic Continental GFD that I felt comfortable using my pattern as is. Since it’s a fast project, I’m going to deviate from my exemplars to some degree and have the gown lace down the front - my reasoning for this is largely convenience, but also I’m intending this dress to be more of a field/tourney gown that I can throw on quickly by myself and also be able to work.

To that end, I’m also making the neckline less of a wide boat neck and much more of a medium-depth scoop. Honestly, the end is more I don’t want to fiddlefart around with sleeve and neck fitting any more than I will already need to (sleeves are the devil). The gown will be short sleeved as in the blue dress on the left. Eventually, I will make pin on sleeves, but I don’t know yet if it will be that cold by November 13.

The Materials

Once I had the idea in place, it was time to buy fabric. I have had a real struggle with shipping fabric from my favorite stores on the West Coast, so I went hunting on my preferred discount site (fabric.com). Sadly, their wool selection right now tends to either heavy melton or mostly polyester, and I don’t have enough time for an order from B. Black & Sons or Royal Blue Traders to arrive.

At the same time, I noticed the site was having a sale on flannel, so I went to peek for fabrics for another project. As I was paging through, I ran across a very nice russet herringbone 100% cotton shirting flannel by Kaufman, and it jumped right out as the perfect fabric for the project. So reader, I bought it.

About the same time, I decided I needed a hood to go with. A while back I purchased the Medieval Cat Hood pattern by Daisy Viktoria, and I decided this would be perfect for an event meant to be fun and silly. I hit up my local JoAnn’s hoping to find some olive green wool, and instead found a very satisfying forest green wool, and then another brand of herringbone flannel in a harvest gold.

It didn’t hit me until I piled things together that I will be dressed as a pumpkin… Anyway, here’s the fabrics:

Gown fabric: Russet herringbone cotton flannel. I’ll scrounge some medium weight linen for the bodice lining.

Hood fabrics: golden herringbone cotton flannel lining, medium weight green wool for outer, and gold yarn for the tassels.

Dress Diary: Emergency Sewing Project

Okay, honestly there is no such thing as a costuming emergency if it doesn’t involve paychecks or hospital bills, but “I’m already overcommitted so one more thing can’t possible make anything worse” was too long for a post title.

For my SCA folks, I am autocratting my first event in mid-November. For my non-SCA readers (which by the way, who are you? Shout out.), I am project managing an outdoor event for about 150 people plus horses in just under a month. I live in the mid-Atlantic, in the Appalachian foothills, and it is likely to get chilly if not actually cold, and the event site has no “indoor.”

The emergency factor is that over the pandemic, I managed to gain most of the quarantine weight that my friends lost. That combined with a general dissatisfaction with my existing historical wardrobe led to the sudden realization that I have nothing to wear and will be attending two cold events in a row.

Enter the Emergency Dress project. At first, I thought I would take the fine new body block I made at a workshop a while ago and slam out a basic Gothic Fitted Dress. Except, as you know if you’re reading this site, I am the Spanish Seamstress, and GFDs aren’t really Spanish. My current goal is to create a mixable wardrobe of 100% Spanish, and an English gown doesn’t fit the bill.

At the same time, I’m working with a brand new apprentice who has specifically asked for help with clothing project management, planning, and documentation. So over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting here to shed some light on my process (or lack thereof) while I’m building a new outfit