Dress Diary: Kragelund Kirtle - Playing with the Protractor
The other pair of sark-layer under-dresses I wanted to try this summer are based on the Kragelund kirtle, so I'm in the planning stages for that.
The online sources all seem ultimately to be based on Poul Norlund's extremely simplified drawing, once you trace back that Carlson got it from Nockert who got it from Hald who got it from Norlund, and Forest got it from Hald... &c. This methodology, where nobody has gone to check the original source, bothers me intensely because I was trained to avoid trusting other scholars blindly, myself, and my strong suspicion is that Norlund isn't actually right. Having consulted with the photos of the garment in both Hald and Østergård, there are definitely more pieces to the sleeves and to the gores than Norlund shows--this is obvious even in Hald's grainy photos.
::shakes fist::
Østergård gives what looks to be a much more accurate piecing diagram in Woven into the Earth. I'll be damned if I'm recreating that piecing exactly, though, as she shows heavy piecing, and some of those shapes in the sleeve are, putting it kindly, very irregular polygons featuring some very not-straight lines. My current opinion of the garment is that it was re-cut from something else or that the tailor was using every available scrap of fabric to do the job. This latter is admirable--and I try to use very sensible cuts that don't waste fabric--but a limit does exist for how crazy I'm willing to let myself get over a project, especially when an exact recreation is going to waste more fabric than doing it sensibly. So, I'm setting out, protractor in hand, to attempt to figure out what "sensible" is.
Mrs. Curtis and Mrs. Zamperini should be proud. I'm using my protractor skills and adding up complementary angles to see how things fit.
So far, I've made a determination about the angles on the right sleeve as worn, as 68º and 112º make 180º, and I can assume that because these two pieces are the same width, they were cut from the same rectangle to create the trapezoid of the upper part of the sleeve. The numbers don't quite match up on the left sleeve (185º, and none of the tiny slivers matches the extra 5º), but I think this is the methodology I'll use.
Østergård also seems to indicate that the small triangle attached to the underside of the lower part of the arm isn't exactly a right triangle (I have no idea how this guy decided it wasn't a right triangle, if all he used was Carlson), and I've measured the angle at 86º. This doesn't really lend itself to cutting from a rectangle, but I think I may have to keep it in mind once I get to sewing. I can't remember which of you emailed me asking about this angle, but I did send you a second return email once I saw this non-right triangle in Østergård.
The neckline also isn't exactly a slit, but seems to have some oblong shaping taken from the center, creating a quasi-double-keyhole neckline.
Assessment so far: WTF with a side of Kermit flailing.
The online sources all seem ultimately to be based on Poul Norlund's extremely simplified drawing, once you trace back that Carlson got it from Nockert who got it from Hald who got it from Norlund, and Forest got it from Hald... &c. This methodology, where nobody has gone to check the original source, bothers me intensely because I was trained to avoid trusting other scholars blindly, myself, and my strong suspicion is that Norlund isn't actually right. Having consulted with the photos of the garment in both Hald and Østergård, there are definitely more pieces to the sleeves and to the gores than Norlund shows--this is obvious even in Hald's grainy photos.
::shakes fist::
Østergård gives what looks to be a much more accurate piecing diagram in Woven into the Earth. I'll be damned if I'm recreating that piecing exactly, though, as she shows heavy piecing, and some of those shapes in the sleeve are, putting it kindly, very irregular polygons featuring some very not-straight lines. My current opinion of the garment is that it was re-cut from something else or that the tailor was using every available scrap of fabric to do the job. This latter is admirable--and I try to use very sensible cuts that don't waste fabric--but a limit does exist for how crazy I'm willing to let myself get over a project, especially when an exact recreation is going to waste more fabric than doing it sensibly. So, I'm setting out, protractor in hand, to attempt to figure out what "sensible" is.
Mrs. Curtis and Mrs. Zamperini should be proud. I'm using my protractor skills and adding up complementary angles to see how things fit.
So far, I've made a determination about the angles on the right sleeve as worn, as 68º and 112º make 180º, and I can assume that because these two pieces are the same width, they were cut from the same rectangle to create the trapezoid of the upper part of the sleeve. The numbers don't quite match up on the left sleeve (185º, and none of the tiny slivers matches the extra 5º), but I think this is the methodology I'll use.
Østergård also seems to indicate that the small triangle attached to the underside of the lower part of the arm isn't exactly a right triangle (I have no idea how this guy decided it wasn't a right triangle, if all he used was Carlson), and I've measured the angle at 86º. This doesn't really lend itself to cutting from a rectangle, but I think I may have to keep it in mind once I get to sewing. I can't remember which of you emailed me asking about this angle, but I did send you a second return email once I saw this non-right triangle in Østergård.
The neckline also isn't exactly a slit, but seems to have some oblong shaping taken from the center, creating a quasi-double-keyhole neckline.
Assessment so far: WTF with a side of Kermit flailing.