Green and black renaissance dress

Fair warning, this dress is not period. But it's the first historic costume I ever made, more than ten years ago, so I'm not ashamed to wear it still. I virtually sketched the draft for the bodice off my body and just went on sewing using a scrap of fabric I had found in my mum's sewing box. I daresay, considering the lack of my experience, the result turned out pretty nice.

The bodice is double-layered and stiffened only with a cardboard-triangle (as I said, lack of experience; and lack of material) that was afterwards enhanced by sewing three pieces of steel boning to the lining. In any case, the thing fits its purpose and makes a formidable bust without having to wear a corset underneath! Back fastening with two rows of eyes and black cord lacing, decoration consists of black frill around the extremely wide leckline and (added afterwards) black satin ribbons sewn to the front in the shape of a stomacher. The flounce to visually join bodice and skirt together was added afterwards.



The sleeves are very thight at the forearm and elbow, just wide enough to slip in - the strip of black, ruffled fabric I set into the seam was pure improvisation when I noticed I wouldn't fit in otherwise. Looks nice, though. The upper sleeves have four slits, each backed with a sewn-on patch of black taffetta.





The skirt was actually plain black cotton, as there was nothing left of the green I had used for the bodice, but it looked weird, a green bodice and a black skirt, so I decided to improvise an overskirt. As soon as I found some fabric that halfway fitted the original green, I made the overskirt that is fastened to the waistband of the underskirt by means of hooks and eyes, decorated with black satin ribbon all around. Both, skirt and overskirt, are made of a normal length of fabric pleated into the waistband, instead of cutting the material and making a smooth, bell-shaped skirt as actually was done in renaissanc times.