Promises, promises

So, as you may have noticed, every couple of years I recommit to being a Good Blogger and getting back into the swing of things, but then I fall off the wagon and feel too guilty to get started up again, since I know history will probably repeat itself and I'll still suck at blogging.

The cycle ends here!

Not the sucking at blogging part. I will probably always suck at blogging. The guilt. I am giving myself permission to blog sporadically without the associated guilt.

So, back to why you guys are reading this. I sew things! Sometimes. You (presumably?) like to read about people sewing!

I ended up losing enough weight that I don't think I can salvage much of my old corset or bodice, and I've decided I'd like to do things a bit differently this time around, anyway. I did some research to try to tighten up my plan, and realized there simply weren't enough step-by-step Tudor dress diaries for my liking, although there are lots of inspiring finished ensembles out there. So, with that in mind, I'm going to try to record as much of my process as I can in the hopes that it will help someone else out along the way. There are sure to be mistakes and missteps along the way, but hopefully you nice people out there can learn from them and not make them when it's your turn.

I spent an ungodly amount of time looking at Tudor portraits and decided the way to do this thing is to build a kirtle and a gown. I'd originally decided against this because, first off, I felt (and still feel) that a separate corset is more practical as it can be worn with more outfits. Also, I frankly didn't think that the silhouette produced with a separate kirtle and gown was always accurate to the portraits, especially around the neckline. The issue I had with the Tudor Tailor patterns specifically is that the neckline didn't look open enough once the gown was layered on top of the kirtle. However, after looking at lots of portraits and thinking through how things could potentially be done, I don't think the look is rigid enough to call for a separate corset, and now that I am convinced a kirtle would be worn regardless of whether it was the stiffened support layer or not (although historical evidence points to the fact it probably was if any layer was in fact stiffened, since separate bodies don't really appear in clothing inventories until later), it seems as though it would be difficult to get the kirtle and gown to sit in perfect alignment if the kirtle did not have all that much structure.

To combat my concerns with the Tudor Tailor neckline problem, I think I'm going to try making the kirtle neckline wider, and not build a strap on the bodice; it looks as though the sleeve of the gown is just sewn onto the bodice under the arm and in the back. I wrote this 10-page long, stream of consciousness treatise in my personal sewing diary on why I think that is the case and how I think I'd like to put this thing together, but I'll spare you the gory details.

Here's what it boils down to: in both the Katherine Parr and Princess Elizabeth portraits from the late 1540's, you can see the gown's trim peeking out both at the split skirt edge and at the neckline below the jeweled trim. It's harder to see if the jeweled trim is applied on a contrasting fabric in Princess Elizabeth's portrait, but in Katherine Parr's, it's applied on a red background, not the gown's cloth of silver. I take this to mean that the jeweled trim must be attached to a separate garment, not merely mounted onto a contrasting fabric and applied to the gown itself, as it is above the gown's top edge as indicated by the appearance of the lining. Take a look. Both of these should get big if you click on them; on Princess Elizabeth's gown, you're looking at that thin solid red line, and on Katherine Parr's, you're looking at the tufts of fur.

The original can be found here: https://d9y2r2msyxru0.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/collection-online/1/8/329955-1350464449.jpg, this version cropped by me. Also, I just noticed that the brooch pinned onto the gown is off-center... Count the gold pieces on the billament at the neckline...

The original portrait can be viewed here:https://www.sudeleycastle.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/from_server/Postcards/postcard17parrportrait.jpg I cropped this version. 

See what I mean? If you look closely, you'll also see that the same lining is visible on the sleeve near the neckline, and the sleeve is clearly not set into a strap, as indicated by the unbroken pattern of the fabric on the sleeve (Tudor's weren't big into pattern matching). In fact, it's just barely hanging off the shoulder, and the visible "strap" is the neckline of the kirtle. So, this is what I'm going to attempt to emulate; a very wide kirtle neckline and a sleeve that is held up by the back of the gown and the sheer force of my will alone. We'll see if this works or not. If it does, I think it will get a neckline that is very close to the Tudor silhouette of the late 1540's; if it doesn't, then I'll add a strap or try something else.