SCA: Green 1490s Florentine Outfit - for Candlemas 2024

1490s Florentine Italian
for Candlemas 2024

In the beginning, I honestly had no thoughts about what to wear to Candlemas in February - I figured I would just go Viking, like I always do.  But then I went to the event webpage and saw this: 

"The year is 1494 and the wealthiest bride in Europe is about to become the queen of Germany and future Empress of Rome.  Come re-live the wedding of Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan and King Maximilian I of Austria and Germany." 

1490s Italian? I'm in.  The Sforza wedding was said to be one of the most amazing spectacles in years, by several people who wrote about it later: a pageant of high fashion and pomp the likes of which the writers had never seen.  Candlemas this year is intended to be a huge costume extravaganza, and everyone will be wearing their finest Italian and German garb - there's even a costume contest!   Time for a new fancy outfit, I thought.

My first thought was to make some minor alterations to the red velvet Florentine-ish outfit I wore to Baronial in 2022 (the trim is wrong, the sleeves are too big, and the whole thing needs small adjustments here and there), but I wanted something new.  And so of course, I started with something  old.  

Gamurra

I started with my black silk noil gamurra, which I made in 2014 and which has undergone many transformations in the past nearly ten years, mostly in the form of various decorative stitching and trims being applied and removed to change the look.  

I did the same this time, applying a gold and black braided trim to the neckline and front edges, and attaching some gold (brass) lacing rings to the front opening (yes, on top of the hand-sewn eyelets that were already there. The eyelets are very small, and they don't show under the rings when the dress is laced at all).  

Giornea

before - Burgundian dress

For the giornea,  I made over an old Burgundian dress that I had made in 2013 and had never worn - I just never got around to making an underdress or headgear to wear with it, so it just sat ignored  in my closet all these years. The outline was already nearly perfect, though. The dress is voluminous (much fuller than it looks in this picture), but the sleeves were too tight at the top, which made the shoulders fit weird.  Fortunately, I didn't need the sleeves.  

I removed the sleeves and all of the faux fur trim, cut the armscyes a bit deeper, removed the collar and opened up the center front seam all the way to the hemline.  

I also stitched a length of gold braided trim along the neck opening/center front.   I didn't want to dress this giornea up TOO much, because the sleeves and the trim on the gamurra were more than enough decoration for this outfit, but it did need something so that the edges weren't just plain. 

closeup of the front

Giorneae were usually open either at the front or sides or both, to allow the gamurra underneath to show through - mine is only open up the front, and is belted all the way around with a long, black, double-faced satin ribbon sash.  My giornea was inspired by several Renaissance paintings, like these two (both fragments of frescos by Domenico Ghirlandaio): 

fragment from the "Birth of St.
John the Baptist" fresco

fragment from the "Visitation" fresco

Sleeves 

While 90% of this dress was basically free - I made over old costume pieces and used materials from my stash for almost all of it - I did actually splurge on fabric for the sleeves. This is a silk damask in aqua and gold (sort of a shiny tan, really) from Rennaisance Fabrics - it’s so soft and pretty, I just love it!   

Since the fabric was fairly dressy, I opted for a plainer sleeve design, closed at the upper arm and open on the lower arm, and laced open to allow my linen camicia to poof out through the lacings.  

I stitched eyelets along the open forearm edges and on the sleeve heads where the sleeves attach to the gamurra in a tan/brown thread which matches the "gold" parts of the fabric's design. 

I took my inspiration from images like these: 

another fragment from the
"Visitation" fresco by Ghirlandaio

I'll talk about the accessories, and my hair, tomorrow. For now, although I won't be the fanciest nor the richest-looking person at the Candlemas event in my made-over dress, I'm proud of this outfit and I can't wait to wear it.  I just hope it's not too hot, and that it holds up to dancing.  

Bonus:  my Project Cat, Rabi, asleep on an Ikea pillow underneath my work table: 

SCA: A 15th-Century Velvet Houppelande

At my very first Gulf Wars, someone lent me a giant flannel houppelande on a cold night, which I threw on over my cotehardie, and I have wanted one ever since.  So comfy!  So voluminous!  It's like wearing blankets!  This year I finally made one for myself, since War of the Rams (BAM) in November is likely to be pretty cold in the evenings.  

This houpelande is made of the same cotton velveteen Ikea curtain panels that I used for my Regency pelisse, back in June.  Last year I acquired a huge box of these curtain panels from my local neighborhood swap group for free, and I still had 4 of them left (about 10 yards of fabric) - they were perfect for this project.  

I didn't have enough of the velveteen to make a full circle houppelande, so I used a simple A-line cut for the body of the dress, (adapted from a vintage 80s dress pattern) with side gores for as much fullness as I could pack into this thing.  The sleeves are D-shaped, and come to a short cuff at the wrist.  

The houppelande is unlined - I didn't have any fabric to use as lining, and I figured this velveteen would likely be heavy enough to keep me warm when worn over my other clothes. After it was put together I dyed the entire piece with teal and charcoal Rit dye, which gave the aqua-blue fabric a lovely medium blue-ish-gray color: 

After dyeing the whole thing, I added a collar and cuffs of white faux fur from my stash: 

 

The belt is one I made for a Burgundian gown that I made several years ago and never got around to wearing (oops). I had to move the hooks out several inches from where they were to get it to fit, but thankfully, the belt was long enough that I had plenty of space to work with.  The hooks themselves are gold-colored plastic highlighted with green nail polish to mimic an enamel look; I forget where I bought them originally, I've had them for aeons. 

The padded roll hat in the first picture is one I made many years ago.  It's nothing fancy, just a stuffed roll of damask upholstery fabric with pearl beads sewn on, worn with a netted/beaded snood and a couple of lightweight veils pinned onto it.  

So there's a big, new, warm outfit for BAM that I can wear on cold nights.  I also have my linen coat to wear over my Viking outfits, which won't be terribly warm on its own, but which I can wear with layers of hoods and caps, and my wool shoulder cloak.  

Edit:  It turns out the weather at BAM wasn't cold at all - mid-70s during the day, and only into the 60s at night, so I didn't get a chance to wear this at the event at all.  Maybe next year.  

SCA: Return of the Cotehardie : A Dress Makeover

 I’m in love with my new 14thC bycocket, but I had nothing to wear with it to the next event. It’s been years since I busted out ye olde cotehardie - and while I am no longer young and thin, I’ve seen plenty of larger women rock a cote and look fabulous doing it, and so I shall be among them. 

So. 

I took a ride through all of my old costumes, and I found one that actually *almost* fit. Luckily, it had HUGE like 2” seam allowances from old alterations taken to make it smaller in previous years, and I was able to take almost all of it out and re-shape the dress so that it fit me again. Success!! 

The next problem was that it was pea green. It was a neat color, but totally the wrong tone for my skin - it makes me look really pink, and not in a good way. More like in a carbon monoxide poisoning way. So I overdyed it with Rit’s dark green, and voila - it came out a dark, warm, sort of hunter green: 

I order to spiff this dress up, and because the old polyester thread didn’t take the dye, I: 

• removed all the visible hand and machine stitching and replaced it with hand stitching in the correct color 
• removed the machined buttonholes and replaced them with hand stitched buttonholes 
• removed the buttons and re-sewed them with dark green thread, since for some strange reason I had  originally attached them with orange jeans thread (see pic above)
• removed the neckline binding and re-stitched it by hand, repairing a rip in the binding in the process

With the stitching and dyeing out of the way, it was time to make some new sleeves for this dress - it has half sleeves on it with long pendants, but I had no dress to wear underneath it. So I made a pair of half sleeves out of a blue cotton drapery fabric I had on hand, which I basted into the insides of the green short sleeves: 

 I also made a “medieval sports bra” sort of under-bodice thing out of the same fabric to wear underneath.  I had no modern or period contraption to make my bust look the appropriate shape and placement for this dress, and the dress itself, being unlined linen, would stretch out of shape as soon as it warmed up and not hold me correctly without supporting undergarments. So I made basically the sleeveless top half of a cotehardie out of the same fabric as the sleeves, which will support me, bring my waist in a little,  smooth out my back, and - along with the half sleeves - make it look like I’m wearing two layered dresses: 

All put together, it goes a little something like this: 

Bonus:  along with this dress and the blue bycocket I trimmed up last week, I made some new jewelry to go with it.  I had a purple and silver costume piece (plastic and pewter) which was badly tarnished and the plastic setting was chipped in a couple of places, so I took the whole thing apart and put the beads on new gold metal, and painted the plastic centerpiece setting with gold leafing paint to make it gold:  

Tada!  Now I just need somewhere to wear this.  I'm posting this in the hopes that nobody I know is reading it, because I want this to be kind of a surprise - I've been a Viking ever since I came back to the SCA in 2018, and whenever I wear this ensemble will be the first time I've worn anything but Viking since then.  I can't wait to wear my new hat and dress!  :) 

SCA: 1490s Florentine

 After refitting my two Florentine-cum-Venetian dresses, I still had my old red velvet court dress to figure out. Here it is in 2013 when I first made it: 

It still fits! I still had the original pomegranate-print linen sleeves, too, thankfully.  They were too tight, however, and originally I thought I'd just add a gusset under the arm to widen them, but then I thought, hey, I'm a bona fide Crazy Person, right?  Let's do something crazy! 

So, I cut them apart and re-shaped them as pieced sleeves a la 1490s Florence, to make them a little more accurate for the style of the dress (see below).  See the embroidered pouch on the far left?  It's the same fabric, but in 2013 I embroidered over the printed design to spice it up a bit, and I decided to do the same thing to these sleeves.  

Here they are finished: 

And here's the whole dress, updated and complete (click to make bigger): 

The dress isn't period accurate, I'm afraid.  A big thing with the laurels around here is to be able to explain THAT you know something is wrong, and WHY you chose to let it remain wrong.  Technically, the red velvet gown should be a giornea, open at the sides or the front to reveal a gamurra dress underneath.   However, I simply don't have the funds right now to make a whole new gamurra to wear under this dress, so I left it closed and used the matching sleeves and front panel to simulate the look of a separate under-dress.  I'm not a huge believer in the "10 foot rule", but it passes the 10' rule, and it looks cool, even if someone who really knows their Italian stuff would know right off the bat that this isn't right.  It bugs me, but it's what I've got.  I guess for making something old wearable again, I didn't do a half bad job.    

So now I'm all set for Baronial in October! At least, as far as things to wear goes.  I've been designated site decorator for the event, so I have a lot of work ahead of me making loads of flags and pennants and signs and ribbons and who knows what all.  I'll be busy with that for the next month and a half.  Meanwhile, I might even figure out what to do with my hair for the event.  And before Baronial, the annual fall Bjornsborg event is coming up early in October, so there's that to prepare for, too!  October is going to be busy.  

 

SCA: 1520s Venetian - Black Dress

 After completing the wine-colored linen Venetian dress, I set about making the same changes to my black silk Florentine dress: 

 

Once again, the silk fabric was badly faded, and needed a refresh.  I over-dyed the whole thing with Rit's black dye. 

 

 

I created some new bag sleeves for it, just like I did with the wine dress, cut from the skirt of an old sideless surcote that had seen better days, and dyed them at the same time as the dress so the black tones would match.  This fabric is linen, with a woven stripe pattern, which I find just neat as hell. 

 

There's two old 1490s Florentine dresses turned into 1520s Venetians for the price of a couple of bottles of fabric dye. Yay! 

 

The only thing I'm not sure of at this point is what to do with my head.  My hair is very short these days (I cut off like two feet of hair in May and am growing out my gray), and I prefer to keep it covered in the SCA.  With Viking all I have to do is throw on a kerchief or a Jorvik hood and I'm good to go.  But what will I do with these Venetian dresses?  I suppose I could just pop on a snood, but I want to do more than that.  Hmm.  Maybe some more research is in order.  

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. 

The Sari Quilt

So I had this huge silk quilt.  The front was made from dozens of pieces cut from the edge banding on silk saris from India.  The border around the front was made from a deep purple dupioni silk.  The backing was made from a royal purple rayon challis.   It was GORGEOUS.  It had been given to me by someone who'd received it as a gift many years before and didn't want it anymore. It was also something I was never, ever going to use - my cats would destroy it, and it was really hot. 

After having kept it in storage for years, I looked more critically at the quilt: on closer inspection, the quilt was badly worn around the edges, some of the sari pieces were fraying, it was discolored in several places, there were bleach stains on the back, and the inside was lined with an open-cell polyurethane sheet which was crusty and starting to melt with age.  

So I choked back my revulsion to destroying a beautiful piece of art, and cut all the sari silk and the dupioni free of the quilt so that it could be salvaged for other applications.  Since we know that Viking apron dresses were often finished with trim made of strips of imported silk and other fine fabrics (Hilde Thunem's paper on apron dresses, see Inga Hagg references/biblio and Birka finds), I opted to use a few of the pieces from this quilt on my naked apron dresses and smocks:  

Here's a bit of navy blue sari silk with pink and blue on the top edge of my brown linen/cotton dress.  And yes, I picked out all that embroidery on the brown dress.  It killed me - I'd just done it in September and I did a really good job, but it was incorrect for the dress and the time period and I just couldn't look at it anymore.  

Here's a lovely gold and teal on the "bayou" blue smock sleeves. (Bonus cat).  

.  

Here's a bit of the same navy and gold with blue and pink that's on my brown dress, on the "bayou" blue apron dress.   

And two extras: 

A bit of gold and silver on the sleeves of my white smock. This fabric actually came from an old lightweight curtain panel I had in my stash, and I was really pleased with the way it looked on my white smock,  It was this look that convinced me to try out some of the sari fabric on my clothes.  (I'm NOT pleased with the zigzag stitch I used to put the trim on - I'll be picking that out and using a less obvious stitch as soon as I get back from BAM).  

 This isn't from the quilt either, but I did find a bit of trim in my stash that works with the color on my "bluebonnet" blue apron dress (the one I just made over in October).  I really love the way it looks with the teal rayon ribbon at the top.  

And finally, lest you think the orange cat (Rory Williams) is my only sewing friend, meet Rabi and Gypsy:  two brothers who also like helping me with my sewing, usually by sleeping in my chair or sitting on my lap to keep me warm while I work.

What's Next?

Technically I'm out of stuff to do before BAM, but I do have a couple of small projects I'm playing with that might be done before I leave - I'll show you if I get them done, if not, I'll see you after the war!

Caerleon Over-sleeves

By request, the Caerleon over-sleeves I showed you the other day, with the Swiss kirtle:

Black linen shell, with a gold linen lining.  No interlining.  

Gold linen buttons. 

The Caerleon company motto is painted on the inside of the sleeve cuff, so that when I have the cuffs turned up, they face away from me (see top picture).  The motto is Ut simus invicti:  "together we are undefeated." 

There's an Ansteorran star painted inside the top of the sleeve, so that I can turn the top down over where I have the sleeves pinned onto my dress to show the star, if I want.  

The motto, star, and the three white lion heads (which are the device of the company, though properly they're shown vertically on a black field), were all painted in plain old craft store acrylic craft paints, mixed with a little fabric glue and water, to help the paint soak into the fabric and resist cracking.  

I mix the paint with a tiny bit of water, and some fabric glue or Tacky glue (at a ratio of about 3:1 paint:glue, with just a few drops of water).  The water helps the paint-blue mixture flow on a brush; the glue basically turns acrylic paint into fabric paint, allowing it to soak into the material rather than forming a crust on top which could flake off, and it also makes the dried paint flexible to help prevent cracking.  (Eventually, yes, the paint will crack and flake; but this mixture lasts a long, long time.  I have a banner I made many years ago for another group I belonged to, which hung in a tree by my campsite for about four years in a row, and it never showed any damage from the elements).  

Previously...

The sleeves above are my first set of sleeves.  There's an introductory period to membership in my company, and certain conditions that you have to meet to be fully inducted and to earn the right to wear the lions.  Before that, you can wear the motto and colors only.  So my firs set of Caerleon sleeves were simpler: 

Gold linen with black borders at the top and bottom of the sleeves, and the motto painted in the same way, with the paint-glue-water mixture. 

.

As Promised (For Once)

The first of three of my Florentine outfits from BAM weekend.  This one's my new Caerleon livery, a refit of what was originally going to be black and silver:

photo by Simona della Luna

Long hair wrap inspired by this.  After a bunch of ridiculous trial and error with the sewing machine and various scrap fabric, I finally realized I could just do this with my plain, long, silk gauze veil that I use for everything. HA. I just laid it over my head, tied it around my hair in back (which was in a ponytail with a plain elastic band), and then looped the ribbon ties around it until I reached the end.  It never once fell out, but was really easy to just pull off without having to untie anything at the end of the day.  Win.

Big bag sleeves, with company motto embroidered (machine) around the edges of the sleeve openings.

photo by Simona della Luna

A better shot of the back, with satin ribbon couched along the edges of the dress; sash made from wide upholstery scraps; corset and dress straps that won't stay up (a result of the cut of the back of both garments, I now know); the hair; and my new raven tattoo, lol.

photo by Simona della Luna

Another shot of the ribbon couching, sleeve embroidery, and sleeve attachment.

Man, that is some unfortunate Pause Face.  Blech.

photo by Simona della Luna

Evidently I forgot to remove  my bobby pins on this day, hehe.  I used them to keep my veil in place while I was wrapping it up, and while I was tying on this skinny velvet ribbon;  but once the pins were removed the whole shebang stayed in place like a champ.


















Things to work on for future Florentine outfits: 

• a higher back on the corset, to keep the straps in place.  
• a shorter corset, because this one kept trying to sit above my hips, which pushed the whole thing upwards into my armpits, and made the straps fall off
• wider-set straps in the back of the dress pattern, to help the back fit better and to keep the straps from trying to fall off. Sigh.  The off-shoulder look was popular during this time period, but it was achieved by cutting the outfits to BE that way, not because they just wouldn't stay up.  I love this dress, but I look like a pile of laundry.  :/ 

That said, my absolute favorite thing about this outfit was the sleeves.  They came out perfectly, and looked fantastic.  They were also, in combination with the boofy silk chemise sleeves underneath, very warm in the chilly, rainy air, without being too hot, or too bulky.  Yay! 

More tomorrow!   :)



.

A Wild Unemployment Appears! It Is Very Effective!*

Mmmmyeah, remember the hiatus?  Not so much!  It would seem that I have won the "free time" lottery - and boy am I already rocking out the backed up projects! (I still have a lot of house stuff to do, but now I don't have to prioritize so severely, and I'm working on the run-up to Bordermarch Autumn Melees/War of the Rams, which is in four days!)

Friday afternoon I went straight from the [ex]-office to my friend Star's house to work on stuff and help her do the same.  I spent the entire weekend just steamrolling through the pile, and, well, I haven't stopped since.  (And yeah, since I was halfway into moving my craft room, it's been a huge pain in the butt working across three rooms!)

While thinking about the weather this coming weekend for the event, and what clothing I already had that would keep me warm and reasonably dry, I decided to go full Italian for the entire event.  You never go full Italian!  Yes.  Yes, you do.  I find it exciting - this is the first time I've ever stayed in one "mode" for an entire event. Usually I'm all over the place (last event I had a Viking day, a 14th century day, a bliaut day, and then pretty much just wore all my clothes at once for an unexpected cold snap, lol).

And so, although I won't have many pics for you until after the event itself, here's a list of what I've gotten done since Friday so far: 

• Removed the silver ribbon trim from my black gamurra and replaced it with couched gold satin ribbon, and 
• Created a pair of simple early 1500s-era bag sleeves in gold linen with black ribbon ties, and a machine-embroidered motto along the edges (these two things because (a) I didn't have an Italian Caerleon livery, and because my 14th century CL livery is all too small for me!  D:  ) 
• created another pair of bag sleeves in a lovely deep blue swirly damask, to be worn with my brown gamurra
• finished one and created a second long, fabric sash to be worn over my belt
• cut and finished two new, very simple pouches to carry my things in, one of a lovely embroidered silk that I can't wait to show you
• made an exrta-long flannel chemise with extra-long sleeves, to be worn as a nightgown n the frigid eastern Ansteorra winter nights...which was a godawful beige color, so I also bleached it...and instead of simply whitening, it turned bright bubble-gum pink!!!  Dafuq??  Whatever . It's warm, that's all I care about. It's not like anyone is going to see it. 
• Assembled eight simple, canvas "pilgrim bags"/flat satchels, and that'll get its own blog entry next week after I've given them to their intended recipients 
• Figured out how to achieve a hair covering like this one out of veils and ribbons that I already possess

And finally, because I just cannot wait to show these off: 

!!!

Inspired by this photo, I drafted my own version, did a loooot of cutting out pieces ( I got to use a friend's rotary cutter, and I'd never used one before, and that is DEFINITELY going on my christmas list!), a loooot of edge-serging, and at one point in the assembly process made a really pretty squid.  And I finally got to use my gold (plastic) knot buttons that I bought at Gulf Wars three years ago!

I really wanted to get a photo of these over my silk chemise sleeves...but I can't find my silk chemise!  NOOOOOO!   I must locate it before the weekend. While this picture is just over a t-shirt, I did try it on over a cotton chemise, and the sleeve boofs (technical term??) blouse up nicely like they're supposed to over the proper undergarments.












So what's next this week?  A great-coat-thing like this one, of heavy embroidered cotton and fuzzy blanket lining, for warmth.  A whole bunch of small flags, already cut out, that need to be painted and them assembled.  A woodworking project (a simple and quick one, thankfully), for the event.

Once I'm finished there'll be a LOT of sorting and packing and loading of SUVs.

And in between is my BFF's birthday, and a celebratory movie and dinner.  Yay! :D







* For the record, I was laid off from my job, which is not doing so well in the present economy.  This is a GREAT thing for me, though - I've been stagnating there and have often thought of moving on.  Now I get to!


.