I'm back!

Hi kids!

I'm back from my wonderful Tassie adventure. It was the best time I've had in forever and I can't WAIT to finally move there. Luckily, my job offer comes with a pile of incentive to start at the beginning of October and my Honours supervisor has agreed to help/let me finish up sooner! Things just have a way of working themselves out, I think.

Anyway, back to the whole tailoring thing!

As you might have noticed, my vintage wardrobe malarky was biting off a little more than I could chew, but it served its purpose in making the time leading up to my Christmas trip pass a lot more quickly.

While I was in Hobart the eternally lovely and talented Teghan fitted me with a bodice toile for a late-15th century short-sleeved kirtle. It is based on a couple of images from La Roman de la Rose in the Heurs a Louise de Savoy, c.1490:

These are essentially the two images I've based my first outfit on. There is not a great deal in the first image to identify the woman's station, except perhaps her belt. If the bed is meant to be hers, I'd consider her station moderately high. By my reckoning the outfit should contain the following list of garments:

• White linen chemise with square neckline and straight sleeves,
• White linen partlet,
• White linen cap, tying at the crown,
• Hose (silk, lined with linen is my choice),
• Linen kirtle with square neck and 1/4-length sleeves,
• Woolen hood with liripipe,
• Woolen gown with square neckline, straight sleeves and contrasting taffeta turnbacks,
• Linen apron,
• Appropriate shoes.

Because I'm a cautious type of person I decided to make a full version of the kirtle out of burgundy linen to see if the pattern needs to be tweaked before I make anything else. This idea is thorough. I like thorough. Thorough is good. As a bonus, if everything goes well I'll have a comfy basic kirtle as a good starting point. Hooray!

So here is my toile. We patterned the sleeve after the photos were taken, sorry, but you'll get the gist.

I'm not sure the photos do it justice, but Teghan was just as thorough and careful as I like to be when I pattern others. It was such a pleasure and I'm SO HAPPY with the very very comfy result.

This is the fabric I've chosen. The top fabric and lining are both fairly lightweight linen, so I decided to interline the front and back panels with some lightweight cotton canvas I had in my stash.

Here's the first sleeve, on its way to being done:

And here are a pair of sleeves, ready to be attached once the bodice is complete:

I finished off a square-necked chemise while I was in Tassie, it's very light and should be comfortable and I'm happy with it as my first attempt at the style (even though I had to unpick and reattach the right sleeve because I sewed it on inside-out the first time, guh!).

I've cut the bodice to be back-lacing, like the one in the image above, but I'm kind of regretting it now because it's going to be that bit more challenging to chuck on. Oh well, live and learn.

Next time: the finished bodice (at least!).

xxxE