Pomander

As I found some nice ball pendants that can be used for making pomanders, I decided I needed one. Or more. The first one sold quickly at the historic market, so quickly that only a blurry picture could be found because I forgot to take a decent one. It's artificial pearls, four joined on a wire, and a dark red one with silver ornaments between the white pieces. They should be long enough to go round the waist, the scented ball being slightly below your knees. The top end finishes with a hook to close around the waist with one of the joints between the pearl segments so it can easily be adjusted.

The second pomander in blue and gold, commissioned work.

A third one is made with black and silver filigree pearls between the white segments, ending in a cross-shaped pomander pendant.

The fourth one (yes, it becomes slightly addictive...) is with red pearls again, this time with golden ornaments and a golden scent ball, a similar one in blue and gold, and no end in sight, just diversification, growing more and more elaborate with experience and better sources for pearls and ornaments! One needs a matching pomander for each renaissance gown, after all.

How to make one yourself: You'll need white pearls as basis, .8 mm wire (brass or silver-plated; don't use iron wire, it's going to put on rust eventually), a ball pendant for the lower end and a matching hook (can also be self-made from stronger wire) for the closure. String three or four white pearls for the segments and coloured individual pearls with ornaments for the decorative sections, and join them in a nice, regular pattern.

The latest one with bigger pink beads and rhinestone-bling on the pomander - the lighting was bad, the hour was late, new pic to come... I love the filigree closing hook of this one!

If you're not that much into DIY or patience: I'm selling some of these girdles on Etsy ;)

Yellow renaissance dress

A.k.a. "picknick dress", as I think the colour fits green meadows and joyful picknicking. Years ago I made a landsknecht-outfit for my former boyfriend and, as always, bought more fabric than I needed. Even made a tablecloth from the yellow jacquard. Still enough left for a dress. The fabric has a woven pattern of - guess what! - marguerites that I followed with the embroidery. I set out with eight colours and two shades of green in my mind, using up thread I had on stock and just buying the missing material. Six shops and two changes of colour ideas later I had finally made up my mind what to use. It's amazing how much the pink upset the colour palette before I exchanged it for a pale yellow!

The embroidering is perfect work for being on the train or bus, and luckily last summer took me here and there and back again often enough to finish a sleeve and a half. The rest was done watching "Penny Dreadful", figuring that the only dreadful thing in this series is the horrid wearout when it comes to hotties. All 27 episodes left me with an almost fully embroidered renaissance gown and the firm decision to copy umpteen nice dresses from Vanessa's and Angélique's wardrobe for my victorian collection. Needless to say that the picknick came with the dress being only embroidered but not sewn, so I fear I'll have to organise yet another baroque picknick. Preferably with a different picknick blanket that's not made from the same fabric as my dress...

The gown follows my usual bodice pattern, only this time with side seams to have the woven pattern follow the neckline so as to be able to embroider it. It's embroidered heavily at the front as well as along the neckline.

The sleeves are two-part each, joined with (hand-made) strings along the front and back of the arm, one embroidered top and one plain bottom part.

The skirt has a seam circumfence of close to five metres but only sports a couple of scattered marguerites and leaves. I'm not THAT mad, after all!

Cabochon jewelry

Pretty simple once you've gathered all the ingredients, like frame, glass, glue, and pictures. The glass covers come in flat and convex. If you're using convex covers, only choose landscapes, flowers or anything neutral as your motif. Portraits only go well (i.e. undistorted) with flat glass, and you don't want your fiancé at twice his breadth on your necklace ;)

The trickiest thing is to avoid bubbles of air when you glue the images to the glass. I find it easiest to put a generous dollop of glue on the flat side of the cabochon, press the picture onto the glue and wiggle it very gently until it has spread the glue all over the glass and lies down flat. Dry on a flat surface (some hours will be enough, I just leave mine overnight), cut away the excess paper and glue to the metal frame.

The simplest way of wearing them would be to attach them to a piece of satin ribbon or a slender metal chain, or you can attach them to any pearl or bead necklace, lace ruff (expecially for rococo), or whatever you fancy.
 

 For a rose quartz version I also added a matching pendant, the beads are rose quartz and crystal.

A very nice thing is a two-faced version. Take two pieces of the same foundation style and very diligently glue them back to back with some jewellery glue so they're absolutely apposite. For the front picture, proceed as above, with a rounded cabochon and a nice picture. For the reverse side that is to remain hidden when worn, use a flat cabochon so the pendant won't turn but remain nice and tidy with the flat side down and the convex side up and you can keep your secret lover's picture nicely hidden ;) If you're in a hurry and there are no flat cabochons at hand, it also works well with a piece of clear plastic cut into shape to cover the picture.

On starching fabric

I never knew it would be that practical! But after trying every theatre-trick from heavy fabric and wired seams to iron-on interfacing to get nicely shaped collars and all, I decided to use old-fashioned starch. My only experience so far has been with potato-starch, but it worked nicely and I didn't discover any disadvantages so I guess I'll stick with it. The starch-water-ratio may vary, depending on the size of your spoons and the thickness of the starch you want to produce, but all in all it has proven best to make some heavy starch basis that can be diluted to get the desired mixture.

1 litre of water
4 teaspoons (!) of starch (NOT tablespoons; you'll end up with a bowl of goo)

Mix the starch with some cold water. You'll get a whiteish puree. Pour in the cooking water and stir well to avoid the forming of lumps which you won't want to sit on your fabric. The white starch will turn into a rather clear liquid. If it's still too gooey you can add water until you've reached the desired consistency. If there are too many lumps in it you can put it through a fine sieve before putting in the clothes.

Put the damp fabric into the starch for a moment, squeeze the excess water out gently (you don't want to end up with wrinkles in your collar) and lay the piece flat, allowing excess water to drip off. Dry it quickly, either in the sun or on the heating, and when it's only damp, iron it into the desired shape.

PS: It even worked very well to get the crispness back into tulle that I had had to wash, as well as into dupion silk that had turned a little limp after washing. And if you use too much starch, you'll be able to design an origami dress... ;)

Silver-grey renaissance dress

The upcoming baroque ball's motto is winter, which leaves only a small range of colours to choose from. Luckily I have some metres of grey jacquard (actually enough for two dresses - and a justaucorps, as we discovered) on stock that I decided to use for this project, together with some very nice silvery fabric for the petticoat. And pearls for decoration.

The chemise or shift is an authentic pattern from around 1600, made of very light cotton batiste. The long sleeves are cut very wide to allow them to puff out between the gown's slit sleeves and decorated with white tulle lace. Not absolutely period because they would rather have used reticella, guipure or bobbin lace (at least to my knowledge), but hey, neither is the polyester jacquard ;) At least I'll be able to put everything into the washing mach... no wait, again I won't, because of the pearl embroidery I'm planning. Anyway... The neckline is very wide and can be adjusted with a drawstring. No frills or lace here because the standing collar will be put on separately.

The bodice consists, again, of two layers of sturdy fabric with sandwiched-in boning. Heavy boning at the front to achieve the typical flat renaissance chest, only a few bones at the sides and at the back to keep the shape. The tabs are half-ovals, pearl-rimmed, as is the neckline and the sleeves. The sleeves are long and narrow, showing the lace of the chemise. The slits at the shoulder are lined with pearls and let the chemise peep through. I hope the sleeves are long enough to provide enough fabric... The shoulders are additionally decorated with fake bows, just to add some more stuff.

The jacquard overskirt and the petticoat are sewn together and close at the front, hidden under the stomacher. The thus two-layered skirt is tied to the bodice with satin ribbon and shows the front of the petticoat. The petticoat is made of two different fabrics. One plain light-grey for the parts that won't be seen, and one shiny silvery fabric at the front that is embroidered with pearls. To keep the overskirt from slipping back and showing the plain fabric part, it's tied to the seam of the petticoat with two satin bows.

The standing ruff is a long, heavily starched piece of tulle lace, cut to match the shape of the neckline and supported by a wire supportasse. Both are carried by a piece of brocade filling in the back neckline. The whole construction thus is detachable and the dress can be worn with or without the ruff.

A venetian flag fan completes the whole ensemble. The handle is aluminium, the flag part is cardboard covered in the matching grey brocade, rimmed with pearls, topped with a pearl ornament and I had a single silver tassle left that also went onto it. One homeless piece less in my overflowing collection of might-need-it-for-something-one-day-stuff ;)

And to round the whole thing off I made matching jewelry: five rows of white crystal beads with a snowflake-pendant for the necklace, a matching bracelet (that will hardly be seen because of the long sleeves, hadn't thought about that!), and earrings with little crystal drops.

The tiara was the mad idea of one evening too many spent sewing. The thought was that a fluffy skirt like this and that huge ruff can do with something that would otherwise be too top-heavy: a tiara resembling icicles. So off to buy chandelier crystals and make myself the ice queen of the ball! :D

As always, good pics still to come... ;)

New pair of hanging pockets

If another baroque reenactment is coming up and you have nothing but non-period stuff to hand-sew, what do you do? Of course, you create another absolutely unnecessary project for yourself - like embroidering yet another pair of pockets that noone but your most intimate friends will ever see! ;) Same cut and procedure as last time, only this time not striped and in blues but white with colours. Let's see where my creativity leads me! Pics to come...

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.

Yellow baroque peasant's dress

Promised I'd post this ;) I bought the fabric accidentally (happens often, hence the crammed wardrobe, hehe!) and decided to make a simple renaissance/baroque dress that I could wear to faires or at other events instead of the medieval stuff. Medieval clothing gets boring after a few years... So, having almost finished my dress form, I took a few indoor pics, so I wouldn't have to dress, put on make up, arrange hair and whatnot. Terribly practical, having such a dummy, saves a lot of work ;)



The skirt circumfence is three metres, pleated into waistband as always, two lengths of brown ribbon at the hem. Closes behind with two eyes and a ribbon through them.

I bought the blouse, so no comment on this ;)

The bodice is based on a renaissance-dress pattern from 'Patterns for Theatrical Costumes'. Each of the four parts is cut out twice, sewn together at the seam with some allowance to join them together afterwards, then turned and the two layers fused with fusing material. The four slightly stiffened parts are then sewn together. It's important that the parts fit well already before you cut them twice and fuse them, only then you'll have a nicely fitting bodice with very clean seams. The flounce is attached, then everything decorated with ribbon. Closes with hooks and eyes.



This costume showed me that my new-and-not-even-finished-yet dummy is a little disproportionate, as the bodice fits me perfectly but is rather tight over the dummy's belly. Gotta change that...

Green-golden renaissance dress

Another historic ball upcoming, and of course I needed a new dress - actually already in June. Well, as so many things in my life, it was begun early and finished very late, namely the following year :D I've had the fabric in my wardrobe for years, waiting for inspiration, and I found it in another pattern from one of Arnold's books and in a dress I found online. The fabric is a pale green with golden threads, looks lovely even in candlelight!



The skirt is trained this time (great thing for washing...), and again it was amazing how many gentlemen liked the train so much they stepped on it :D It's the usual skirt pattern, folded neatly into a lined waistband so the stiffer lining fabric helps to hold 4 1/2 metres of brocade. The train is about one foot long, which makes it long enough to look good and short enough to handle it even when dancing. The skirt should be worn over a slightly oval hoopskirt but I had to improvise (due to lack of time again) and wore it over a round hoopskirt with bum pad and a definitely non-period tulle underskirt. Anyway, who would dare peep under a lady's skirts! ;D

The bodice is the same pattern I used for the green-black renaissance dress (drafted it when I was fifteen, sheer beginner's luck!), with two layers of boned lining and a top layer of brocade. It's laced at the back. Just the front is boned to give the bust the flat shape typical for the renaissance period, and two pieces stiffen the closing at the back.

The sleeves can be taken off, as there are two pairs of sleeves to be worn with the dress. One consists of ten strips of brocade sewn into tubes and ironed flat, joined at the wrist and at the shoulder and decorated with pearls (or gold ornaments? let's see...) in between. With these sleeves, the dress is worn over a renaissance chemise. The second pair of sleeves (still to be sewn) will be puffy at the shoulders and tight along the rest of the arm, to be made from the scraps of fabric that were left when cutting the trim pieces for sleeves #1.

Musketeer outfit

...or how to clothe a baroque gentleman properly if you have to work quickly and on a budget. I really love planning other people's costumes, but how come I never seem to have enough time to actually finish them?! Again, pattern from "Patterns for Theatrical Costumes". Let's see how this one turns out.




Unfortunately my camera refused to depict the exact colour of the fabric. The brocade for the doublet is a rich golden colour, the linen for the trousers a warm, dark brown with a tinge of gold to it.

Well, the first thing to begin with are always the boots, right? No? Anyway... As there's no time to go for real boots, I decided to make fake ones, means boot-legs that are worn over over normal shoes (in this case 18th century low shoes that fit nicely). A double layer of fake suede (the slightly stiffened version) works quite well, the top is adorned with a row of lace that's stitched invisibly to the inside layer. The instep where bootleg and actual shoe meet is covered by this butterfly-shaped leather thingy that's so typical for this kind of boots, and a stirrup in a matching colour keeps the whole thing in place. The work of one evening, and it's done very neatly.

Next step are the trousers, loose breeches in this case that end shortly below the knee, just above where the boots start (so it's actually a good thing to have the boots finished when you make the breeches). The hem is usually decorated with one or two rows of matching ribbon loops, the sides can remain plain or, as in this case, be decorated with braid.

Following the gaze upwards, naturally the next thing to sew is a shirt with a large, lace-framed collar and lace cuffs. The basic pattern of a baroque shirt is a rectangle with sleeve-rectangles attached and gathered into cuffs, the neck opening with slit lined with the collar that can be closed either with a button or, better, with two strings that end in a tassle. If you got too much time, you can embroider the shirt. I didn't have that time... :P

A doublet goes over the shirt, as a man just in his shirtsleeves was considered practically naked. The eight parts of the pattern are each lined individually and then sewn together. The long sleeves are slit, so the shirtsleeves of fine, white linen are visible. The striped pattern of the fabric I used just begged to be used for a zig-zag-pattern, which gives the costume additional decoration. Nonetheless (it's baroque, after all - they used tonnes of decoration unless they were puritans!) the parts are edged with matching braid and close at the front by means of tarnished brass buttons.

And the hat. Well, to my disappointment I discovered that what I bought is synthetic felt (I wanted real one, but try to get real felt by the metre...), which refuses to be molded in shape with a steam iron, so I had to change my plan and sew the hat - which usually is only done if it's a leather hat, I think, but anyway... The crown consists of two layers fused with an iron-on interfacing and is sewn to the brim (which also consists of two layers with still more interfacing between - just add enough to make it nice and stiff) and rimmed with wire. I zig-zagged it to the edge, but be careful, needles break easily if they hit the wire :P



The wire and zig-zag-stitch are covered by a length of ribbon in a matching colour (in this case the same as the hatband). The whole procedure makes it easier to get the brim in proper shape. I also added a sweatband on the inside and decorated the hat with a hatband and plumes. Et voilá, I've found a new hobby (again) :D



Add gloves and insert a handsome guy, and you got a perfect musketeer! ;)

Red early-baroque dress

I'm incorrigible - yet another dress started while the previous ones aren't even finished! But time is pressing again, I need it for a play this time. Musketeer-setting, and that practically forces me to enrich my wardrobe by yet another dress. Baroque was still missing in my collection anyway :)



Main ingredient is rather thin, cherry-red cotton fabric, lined with slightly stronger red cotton. Red satin ribbon for the decoration, white cotton and white lace for the collar and the shirtcuffs. The white satin ribbon I used around the edge of the bodice is missing in this picture.

The pattern is from Holkeboer's "Patterns for Theatrical Costumes", the dress consists of a high-waisted bodice with large, lace-framed collar and a simple skirt.

The six parts of the bodice are lined individually and are then sewn together. The stomacher, stiffened by whatever you consider fit (if you use cardboard, make sure to add two or three pieces of steel boning at the back for additional stability), is attached to the bodice with hooks and eyes. Here's a detail of the front, already decorated with little wax pearls.



I stiffened the stomacher with two layers of stiff fusing material, one layer of double-sided fusing material and sandwiched invisibly in between three lengths of plastic boning, one centered, one on either side. The full sleeves end at the middle of the forearm, and of course also here we find the large lace collar and cuffs. White satin ribbon is sewn along the edge, and the front is decorated with little bowties, made from broad satin ribbon with a piece of narrow ribbon sewn round the center.



The skirt is self-explanatory, skirt with slit at the back, floor-length, maybe even a little longer (baroque opulence liked overlong dresses at the beginning of 17th century). It's worn without a farthingale, just with a few petticoats (or, in case of the pic, a very moderate hoopskirt). Here's a detail of the fastening:

Hanging pockets for rococo-dress

Voilá, finally finished! And I have already used my pockets and found them very practical. From now on I'll have to remember to make pocket slits into all my new skirts.


I know, I know - at this stage, the pieces still look like pot cloths :D The three pieces to the front are the layers the two sides of the pockets consist of: striped fabric for the outside, light wadding and white fabric for the inside. And no, the wadding is not period. The back row in the picture shows (left to right) the three stages from sewn, half quilted (diamond pattern) to fully quilted, the leftmost piece also shows part of the back.

The pockets were often embroidered with floral patterns. I designed a rather simple one (and afterwards decided to change the center rose for a butterfly, which fits the style better):



The three layers are sewn together around the edges by means of simple zigzag stitch. Won't be seen in the end. I quilted them in a diamond pattern to keep the layers closely together, then used carbon tissue to apply the pattern for the embroidery. Make sure it's centered. For the embroidery, I chose multi-coloured thread in various shades of blue. After the embroidering was done, the back of the pocket was lined with another layer of light cotton to hide the ends of the blue thread.



Both pockets were then finished with matching blue bias tape.