Loose Gown Project of Serendipity

Since I have oodles of time to decide on which gown to create for 12th Night (read**procrastinate till November), I have begun a side project. For ages now I have been wanting a Toss-it-on-and-dash-to-Court-looking-reasonably-dressed Loose Gown. Specificaly, the Woman's Loose Gown from the V&A Museum (c.1610ish, but I can excuse that) that is detailed in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion.


















My fabric is one that I've had in the stash for a couple of years now, languishing away at the bottom of the stack (because it was a whopping $2 per yard, and who can pass that up?), with nothing on earth that matched the colors correctly. At least I thought nothing matched it, 'till I found scrap bits of burgundy silk I had bought from the remnants pile waaaaaaaay back when I was working my very first job at House of Fabrices. Perfect flipping match. Who knew?

For a while there it seemed like everyone in the West Kingdom had this fabric in the black and gold scheme, so I was a bit leery of making it up. I can now rest assured that I will only have one poor soul to wear matching garb with in the burgundy/gold combination, and since his brocade is made into a doublet and co-ordinating pluderhosen (a fabulous outfit that my Laurel made for his Pelican ceremony), I don't think it will be too obvious.

See?
Complete match. And they were purchased more than fifteen years apart...


I used a combination of drafting, draping, and just plain eye-balling for patterning the yoke. Heh. This is the easy part.




My first sewing step after creating the yoke pattern was to cut it out of three different fabrics. The inner base---which will never be seen unless you attempt some astounding fabric origami to take a peek at it---is of wool (dyed to nearly the perfect shade by complete accident five years ago). I cut this layer without any seam allowance, since it is not for support but rather a means to keep the silk in it's correct dimensions and add a bit of warmth to the back of the shoulders without adding too much bulk. Here are the yoke pieces for the bottom-most wool layer. Front and back.



The garment Janet Arnold inspected had a foundation yoke of ivory fustian (linen warp, cotton weft) pad-stitched to a layer of coarse saffron-yellow linen. My next two layers are in the process of being pad-stitched together. I am using the burgundy silk as my top (which will be seen when the garment is laid open), with a black cotton/linen base for strength, and stitching it all together with a lovely silk floss in a shade called Rosewood.


Another strangely perfect match.

Each piece will be stitched to itself (wool/linen/silk) before being whipstitched together to form the yoke. Here are some BLURY close-up pictures of the pad-stitching, inside and out.



The little stitches will be visible from the inside of the garment (as they were in the original), but since the silks match in such a lovely way, it won't be too obvious.

My next step after the pad-stitching and yoke construction, will be to figure out my pleating configuration. My fabric is a good twenty inches wider than the pieced back of the original garment, so I can use a solid piece for my back if I wish. It will most certainly cut down on the ammount of sewing involved, and since I have decided to sew this by hand that will be a blessing. (Why not? I'll be sewing the pleats by hand, and I've already put so much time into the pad-stitches... What's another couple of long, straight seams?)

I suppose my main concern with the pleats is that I would prefer to have the motif duplicated a closely as possible after sewing. If this proves to be too much of a headache, then it will have to be a series of even (but visually random in the brocade) pleats. We'll see what evolves. I also need to decide if I will be slashing the fabric at all (such as in the original) and if so, what pattern I would like to do. I do know that this will be embellished with beading and perhaps pearling. I have a choice of gold glass seed beads, small garnets, and two types of pearls... Tiny cream ones or some rather interesting larger olive green ones. The olive pearls are in the top left corner, the garnets are the bottom left, and the gold glass beads are in the top right corner.


This is my other choice for pearls. Maybe I'll use them in combination. Who can resist more pearls???


At the strong urgings of Miss Kiffiny, I do believe I will be wearing this garment for the first portion of the day at 12th Night. After all, the hotel will be our home for the weekend, and there is nothing improper in lounging around the Palazzo in half-dress. I'll have a bit more on than these ladies (camicia, petticoat, and bodies), but the idea is the same. Decadent loungewear to greet houseguests in. And I can have my hair preping for the evening's up-do without looking silly!







June 7th, 2008

Update: I've finished pad-stitching the back of the yoke (yipes, that took forever!), and I now have the front pieces to handle before putting things into a more cohesive whole. Luckily, the front sections are quite small in comparison to the back, so I might just have enough of my silk left to finish them. If not, then I can risk the dyelot change and go pick up another skein at the needlework shop.

Next is sewing the silk/linen-cotton layer onto the wool and whipping the shoulder seams together. Once this stage is complete, I can start fully obsessing over the back pleats and shoulder tabs. Oh! And trimming this monster. Will I stick with just beads? Or add in some decorative braid? And I'm still up in the air about slashing this. We'll see...

Of course, I now have grand plans for two more loose gowns. *le sigh* One can never have too many lounging ensembles!