SCA: 1520s Venetian - Brown Dress

So, I'm a Viking pretty much full-time, but we have an Italian-themed event coming up in October, so I thought I'd drag out my old Florentine wardrobe and see if it still fit.  

Reader, it did not.  I'm a bit larger than I was when I made these outfits - ten years ago!  The corset, first of all, rides up over my belly into my armpits, so it's not workable at all. Thankfully, the two dresses fit well enough if I lace them wide open (they used to close in the front), and can be laced tightly enough that they're supportive, so I don't need the corset. All of my old sleeves are also too tight.  I wanted to replace them with bag sleeves, but between that idea and the fronts being laced wide, I was getting pretty far away from the 1490s Florentine style that these dresses were originally supposed to be. 

Enter Palma Vecchio and his contemporaries.  I found the following paintings online, from 1510s-1520s Venice: 

Cariani, 1520

Unknown, 1520s

These Venetian dresses are laced wide (tied, actually), and shown with baggy oversleeves.  That's exactly what I wanted!  Now I know it's actually a thing.  (Mind you, I have no actual research to back this up, just a few paintings to go off of). 

The first thing I did was to dye my old brown dress.  It was badly faded after all this time, and needed the color refreshed.  Rather than overdye it with brown (I hate Rit's browns), I combined a wine color with an eggplant color, just like I did with the cotehardie I dyed two years ago, and it came out beautifully: 

Then I created some bag sleeves for it out of a blue linen, dyed to match (eh, they mostly match. They’re a little lighter, but then the original color was very pale).  I had to improvise the pattern:  all I had to go on was a pin from Pinterest with a broken link; I couldn't find any 1520s Venetian sleeve patterns anywhere else.  I copied the shape as best I could, and the sleeves came out just fine. 

 

my version

 

The only problem I had with dyeing this dress is that for some reason I originally attached the skirt with dark gray thread. It didn’t show much against the brown linen, but now that it’s red, it stuck out like a sore thumb.  So, I took the skirt off and put it back on with thread that matches.  Not a huge deal, but kind of a pain in the butt. 

So now I have a new dress to wear to the event. I have a black one to re-work as well, and a court gown to fix up. I’ll show you those soon. 

SCA: Venetian Fan Makeover

Approximately 2 billion years ago, I made myself a little paper hand fan/face screen to go with my Italian outfits. I loved it…but it got loved to pieces. 

The paper is bent, tearing, fuzzy around the edges. The design, drawn in sharpie marker, is faded and crappy looking. The stick - a dowel with hot glue wrapped around it to simulate a turned piece of wood - was chipping off paint. Time to redo this thing. 

I spray painted the stick black, and then dry brushed on a couple of coats of brown and tan, to recreate the wood look. I sprayed it with Polycrylic after that, to protect the finish. 

For the flag, I cut a couple of pieces of damask-print scrapbook paper and glued them together back to back. Then I painted the edges and over some of the detail in the print with gold leaf paint, and attached the fan to the stick with embroidery floss coated in Mod Podge, like I did the first time. 

Brand new fan!  It matches exactly nothing I’m going to be wearing at Baronial, but I don’t care. All my other stuff is blue, this can be blue, too. 

Inspiration pics: 

Italian fans, 1500s

French face screen, 1600s

Woman In White, Titian, 1561

S'mo Italian Stuff

Just in time for the 14-15thC Italian-themed Queen's Champion event this weekend:

1.  Green damask giornea top layer for the brown linen gamurra I fixed up last month:

$7 thrift store holiday tablecloth FTW

2.  Blue silk cioppa (over-layer dress, sometimes worn over a gamurra, which is closed in the front, sometimes worn alone) with pieced sleeves:

Event pics, with sleeves, next week!

4.  A new necklace for no reason at all, with graduated, faceted carnelian beads given to me by a client, alternated with 4mm amber-colored glass seed beads:

5.  A blue linen sleeveless underdress, made for a friend to wear while working in the event kitchen and/or bumming around camp:

This was based (loosely) on the following excerpt.  I lowered the top yoke considerably, and left off the trim and shoulder ties.  This is meant to be sort of a sundress that she can wear for SCA work days - casual, plain, and cool in the Ansteorra heat.

from Triumph of Death, Lorenzo Costa
 (right panel)

Also finished since  my last post:  two Roman dresses, and two Viking apron dresses, for another client, as well as two pairs of Phrygian caps for two other people, all to be delivered this weekend at Queen's Champion.  Hopefully I'll have pics of everything for you next week!

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Teal Gown, Navy Bliaut, and Coronation

Remember the bad pictures of the bliaut?

And the original plan, which called for a teal gown for underneath it?

Yes, that is the WRONG belt for this outfit.
It's all I have right now.  :( 

The under-layer, which itself is also a stand-alone gown:

These were all taken at Coronation over the past weekend, by the way.  

Bonus pic of me sitting around waiting for court to start.  

Coronation was pretty dang cool.   The hall could have been a bit more adequately air-conditioned, but it was decorated very nicely, the coronation ceremony was outstandingly done, and the King's Champion tournament was really cool and fun to watch.

Now I just need to finish the red half-sleeves I've been working on, and make myself some white tippets...

WANT. 

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Halfway There!

...did that go to a Bon Jovi place for anyone else? Just me?  Okay.

Well, the aubergine linen gown is finished!

yes, it's the same picture. I forgot to get a new one.

This is actually the undergown to the outfit I'm putting together for Candlemas - which I've hinted at, but never fully discussed, mostly because I've been angry with this outfit, confused by it, disappointed with it, and I've gone back to the drawing board *3* times in the past two months.  And I still haven't decided entirely which design to go with:

L-R:  short sleeve, wide open front;  bell sleeve, front laced;  bell sleeve with semi-detached shoulder and side laced

At this particular moment, I'm leaning heavily towards the first one.  More of the undergown's sleeves show, open-front lacing looks awesome on me, and it will need a little contrast panel under the lacing on the outer layer (so as to cut down on the visually-confusing effect of two layers of lacing, while still allowing the lacing on the aubergine gown underneath to show at the top)...and I love those. :)  

In any case, the overgown is a forest green linen.  I think it'll look smashing with the aubergine underneath.  I suppose I'd better at least start cutting it out, since Candlemas is in *checks calendar* like 42 days.  o_o

Fabric-store.com's softened emerald

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They See Me Scrollin'...

ey, guess what I did last night?  I painted a scroll!  I'd never done it before.  A friend of mine recently obtained a stack of pre-inked scrolls from a workshop, that just needed to be colored in with paints, so we sat down together this week and painted a couple. 


The scroll I painted was an Iris of Merit - so, no pressure or anything!  It's an Italian white-vine illumination design, which I'd never even heard of before (not being an actual scribe), but which I find absolutely gorgeous.  It was so fun, I took a second scroll home with me to paint over the weekend (a Rising Star, for up-and-coming minors of the kingdom).

design by Mistress Zenaida;
calligraphy by Thorbjorn Nordstrom of Bryn Gwlad

I'd always been sort of interested in doing scrolls, in a "Yeah, sure, sounds neat...if I ever get the time to learn a new hobby" kind of way.  I HAD SO MUCH FUN DOING THIS!  I'm very, very new at anything remotely scribal, but reading the "about" information on the bottom of the scroll sheets was fascinating.  This one says gives information about classic white vine coloration and suggested variation, and also says that the Gothic-style calligraphy, while contemporary to this style of illumination, was not normally used on actual white-vine scrolls.

The gold paint. I heart it so much. 

There was actually a scroll idea I had a couple of months ago that I'd put on the back burner while I tended to more immediate projects that is now floating around in my head again.  Rather violently.  (Yes, violent floating. Just go with it).  

And I just found out that there's an original scroll competition at Steppes' Twelfth Night in January!  I am SO entering that!

To the art supplies store!  *WHOOSH* 

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The Green Experiment

I write this post late afternoon at work, on the last uber-busy Monday in a set of three.  I'm stuck waiting for things to print so that I can continue...and I find myself in need of a brain break.  SO.

In preparation for the fabulosity I have planned for Candlemas, outfit-wise, I whomped up a little sumpn-sumpn yesterday afternoon, in a mad frenzy of boredom and extra fabric.  There was a pattern alteration I'd been avoiding for two weeks, just sure it would take me at least that long to get it right.  I started yesterday on a whim...and finished the pattern in about fifteen minutes!  Yay!

All I did was take my stock côtehardie pattern and adapt the shoulder seams and shaping to a new line.  One more like the seams and neckline on this:

I love the eyelet arrangement, too! 

And here's how I did it:

(click for bigger)

The next step was to try the pattern with something wearable, to make sure it would function, so I grabbed a green sheet I had laying around that I bought a while back to use for linings or cheap, casual garb, and banged out a plain, casual dress.

front fit + shoulder seam

It's alright, serviceable even; though I think I'll play with the exact shape of the neckline some more.

So that's something else out of the way, as far as Candlemas planning goes:  the pattern is figured out, and I have nearly all the fabric I'll need.  I'm still not entirely sure where to go with the over-sleeves, since the fabric I ordered turned out to be the wrong color, but I'm working on that one.

We shall see.


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Nothin', Just Lutin' Around.

"Concert of Women", 1530-40, unknown

So, I'm a singer and a musician.  Within the SCA, I sing in my local choral guild (for which I run a blog), I play in the local musicians' guild - soprano and alto recorder, classical guitar (when applicable), and, just recently, lute!  When I put out feelers to the guilds, looking to check one out to rent or possibly to buy, a friend of mine who had one offered to lend hers to me to learn to play.  I can't tell you how excited I am about it.  I've had it for a couple of weeks now, and I can't put the thing down.  It's wonderful.

And it's beautiful:

And then there's the case, which is cardboard (not period, lol), and just a bit unwieldy for the carrying-around:

Fortunately, I just happen to have a metric crap-ton of fabric sitting around, so I made a case for it, with a shoulder strap on the side which also forms a drawstring around the neck to make sure it stays IN the bag while I'm carrying it:

Yay!

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Dilemma

While out shopping for fabric for a new pair of fighting pants and over-tunic for my awesome b/f Vasilii (don't worry, posts about his Russian costumes forthcoming), I happened across this jewel:

$3 a yard on clearance.  SCORE!

And the picture sucks, because it was taken with my phone, but it's a gorgeous deep red-velvet-cake red with navy blue and forest green  and gold.  Love!

"SLEEVES!" I thought, as I bought an entire yard.  Extravagant, yeah?  LOL.  No wait - two yards.  Now I'm regretting not getting the whole piece - I think I left like 3/4y at the store, and I wish I hadn't.

But it's enough for a pair of cool sleeves...

Rogier Van der Weyden, Braque family triptych 1450

Or for an entire bodice, if I wanted to do a kirtle/côte with a waist seam, with a contrast skirt and maybe an awesome kirtle underneath in a contrast fabric...

from the Moreel family triptych, Hans Memling, 1484

Or maybe the top (or bottom) half of rockstar sideless surcote?

 
 Or five tote bags?  LOL.  I have no idea. I'll figure it out.  :)


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