Dress diary
Making a cotehardie is nothing new or spectacular, but I'm working on one and could use a place to keep notes about it.
My sister is helping me make the dress -- pushing me to get started, in fact. I'm pretty sure that's because she was there to save my butt in the eleventh hour for my last sewing project, and doesn't want that to happen again :) lady_cassia helped me work through my options to decide on a plan, and we're going to go fabric shopping on Thursday. I have some red and white linen, but there's nothing wrong with going to look for something fancier, right? Barring that, I have a crazy plan to machine-embroider white lozenges on the red side. Crazy!
We think the best way to cut it out is to tesselate the front and back down the length of the fabric (60" of course), and hopefully I can get normal sleeves out of the remaining strip down the side. With a train I'll need 5 yards, without I could probably get away with 4. Yay for being short! The next tricky bit is to figure out the neckline. Mid-14th century cotehardies tend to have wide, shallow boat necklines, sometimes with squarish corners, instead of the low scooped necklines. Anyone out there surprised that I'm opting for a high neckline? Also, buttons. Lots and lots and lots of buttons. And gores, for the proper giant-skirt-of-doom look. Hey, if I'm going to bother to wear a skirt at all, it's going to be a Skirt (my sister disagrees, but it's my dress).
Next after this: figuring out a proper sideless surcoat pattern that really fits. Got some good ideas, now I just need the time to work on them...
But for now, bed. Perchance to dream (about sleeves, if I know my brain at all).
My sister is helping me make the dress -- pushing me to get started, in fact. I'm pretty sure that's because she was there to save my butt in the eleventh hour for my last sewing project, and doesn't want that to happen again :) lady_cassia helped me work through my options to decide on a plan, and we're going to go fabric shopping on Thursday. I have some red and white linen, but there's nothing wrong with going to look for something fancier, right? Barring that, I have a crazy plan to machine-embroider white lozenges on the red side. Crazy!
We think the best way to cut it out is to tesselate the front and back down the length of the fabric (60" of course), and hopefully I can get normal sleeves out of the remaining strip down the side. With a train I'll need 5 yards, without I could probably get away with 4. Yay for being short! The next tricky bit is to figure out the neckline. Mid-14th century cotehardies tend to have wide, shallow boat necklines, sometimes with squarish corners, instead of the low scooped necklines. Anyone out there surprised that I'm opting for a high neckline? Also, buttons. Lots and lots and lots of buttons. And gores, for the proper giant-skirt-of-doom look. Hey, if I'm going to bother to wear a skirt at all, it's going to be a Skirt (my sister disagrees, but it's my dress).
Next after this: figuring out a proper sideless surcoat pattern that really fits. Got some good ideas, now I just need the time to work on them...
But for now, bed. Perchance to dream (about sleeves, if I know my brain at all).