1/13/07

The French Hood: A combination of theories, really. For this outfit, I wanted something with a bit more structure than the method I outlined in "A Perfectly Plausible French Hood", so I opted to make the coronet from a wired buckram base. The base was covered with cotton batting and then covered with black cotton velvet. The hood from A Perfectly Plausible French Hood was then stitched to the coronet. Since the hood edge is also wired, the whole thing gripped my head nicely. Upper billaments were made from glass pearls, onyx cabochons in gold settings and small quaterfoil buttons. The lower billaments are a grouping of four 6mm glass pearls and Princess Elizabeth ouches by Steve Millingham of Peweter Replicas. Unfortunately for those of us who spend the US Dollar, it now means an exchange rate of almost $2 to the pound, so these things aren't exactly cheap. They are, however, VERY worth it.

The whole thing is secured merely by pinning the hood at the nape of the neck. No extra pinning or hiding clips inside, or chin straps.

The Suit of Ruffs:

The neck and wrist ruffs are silk taffeta. Now, I've made ruffs a variety of ways, but the method that I always have the best results with is to take 2x the neck/wrist measurement (in my case 2 yards for the neck, 1 yard each for the wrists) and gather the fabric with a running stitch (machine or by hand). The ruffles are formed, and in this case helped out a bit by a line of thin wire that is run in the hemmed edge (debatable if this is period... It does, however, save one from messing about with starch, and that's fine by me) and the resulting figure 8s are tacked together near the top and bottom of each loop. This forms a nice, sturdy ruffle.

The neck ruff is attached to a silk taffeta partlet, and the wrist ruffs were whip stitched to the inside of the sleeve opening. I do this mainly because I like to minimize the amount of fussy work in my costumes. Stitching the wrist ruffs to the sleeve saves me from having to constantly tuck my ruffs back into my sleeve openings. There's no documentation for this, but I've found that it's a solution quite a lot of my reenactor friends have resorted to as well. There is something to be said for common sense.

Jewels:

The pearled girdle is the same one I wear with my Venetian gown. It ties in the back with a pink organza ribbon. It also needs to be restrung because the plastic fishing line that I used to string it with with eventually stretched out from the weight of the glass pearls and vermeil beads.

The glass pearled necklace is one I bought for a few bucks off eBay. The fabulous jewel attached to it is one I bought for considerably more than a few bucks from Peweter Replicas when I was living in London (and the dollar was slightly better and I was able to save on shipping). After having lost the jewel once and, thanks largely to the efforts of my dear friend Kendra it was ultimately returned to me (with a note from the person who found it saying they thought it was cheap jewelry and didn't think it was worth anything... ::boggles::), I learned my lesson and stiched the sucker to my bodice.

And that covers it!