Juan de Alcega Farthingale

Farthingale made from dark blue linen after Juan de Alcega's pattern.

Here is the product of three days of work. Normally, I can whip out a farthingale in about 2 hours, but this one was a bit different. I had been eyeing the Alecga pattern for a while and finally decided to make my newest farthingale from it. My previous farthingales had been simple gored skirts with bias tape sewn down for boning casings, which required minimal effort and not a lot of brain power to pull off. The Alcega pattern was another story. On the surface, the pattern is deceptively easy: it's basically two large rectangles that form the front and back, with two triangles attached to either side. Six geometrically simple pieces that a little kid could understand... Of course I had to make it difficult for myself.

Those who have made this farthingale tend to opt for the path of least resistance and use strips of bias cut fabric to form the boning channels, but the original pattern as Alcega specified accounts for extra length being added so that the boning channels can be created by making a series of tucks in the fabric. This is what you decide to do if you want to make things hard on yourself... This is exactly what I did. This means that there will be constant fussing with excess material on the bottom of the seam and minimal material on the top. Of course, there is no dainty way to get around the bunching that will occur where the seam curves... You just have to swallow your good sewing habbits and let the bunching happen when it wants to. You also have to make your tuck measurements very precise...

My first attempt at this style of farthingale didn't work as planned. In an effort to make things easier on myself, I left one of the side seams unfinished so I could lay the skirt out flat while sewing down the tucks. Unfortunately, I had miscalculated the curve of the hem which threw off the rest of measurements for the tucks. Thus, the rows of tucks did not match up when I went to sew the final seams together. I scrapped the project and went back to the drawing board.

After reading through every bit of information I had on this pattern, I went back and rechecked Tammie Dupuis' excellent site, The Renaissance Tailor and I discovered a possible solution. In the actual Alcega pattern, the cutting diagram shows a curved hem on the front and back pannels, with the side gores cut straight across the bottom. Tammie showed a simplified diagram on her site that had the hem left square, right up until the boning channels would be added. This definately helped.

For the next attempt, I chose dark blue 100% linen, primarily for the fabric content. The color was a nice change of pace, though... I went back and remeasured everything, following the Alcega pattern's suggestion of 22" wide fabric, whic meant I wound up removing about 10" of my linen. I took my waist to floor measurement and added ten inches, then doubled that for the total amount of fabric I'd need. The 10 inches I added to my waist-floor measurement were to account for the tucks I'd be making to form the boning channels. If I were to have opted for the bais tape channels, I would have simply taken the wasit-floor measurement and left it at that. For the hoops, I used 3/8 inch polyeurithene tubing from Home Depot with brass connectors, inspired by Tammie Dupuis' solution for flimsy hoop steel.

The 3/8 plastic tubing from Home Depot, shown with a silver hair clip for size. The tubing came in a 25 foot roll for under $3.00 US, but had to be stretched in order to loosen up it's "memory" so it could be used in the hoop skirt.

The original Alcega pattern is supposedly intended for a woman of about 5 feet tall. I am exactly 5 feet tall, and the resulting farthingale from this pattern was much too wide (NOTE: It was actually a pretty close fit at the waist, but the hem of the skirt was really generous. Anyone with a waist size larger than 30" should definately opt to use a wider fabric. Drea Leed mentions 30" wide fabric, for instance). Rather than take it appart and cut it down (a chore I would not envy anyone) I toyed with my boning material, first inserting boning that would fit the circumfrence perfectly and then cutting it down to the size I wanted. I started off with a bottom hoop of 124" and ended with a bottom hoop of 96" (the topmost hoop has a circumfrence of 56"). This caused the fabric to bunch, as you see in the picture at the top of the page. Theoretically, this bunching would allow me to wear the farthingale without an underskirt, a happy accident that will definately benefit me during these hot summer months ahead. The extra matterial in the skirt will also allow me to add extensions to the farthingale, should I ever need/want to make it wider. Pretty cool!

In Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd, Janet Arnold shows two pictures of the same farthingale, one with the boning channels on the outside and the other with the channels on the inside of the garment. It is unclear which way it was intended to be worn, but I liked the way the farthingale looked when the boning channels were on the inside, so I opted to do the same. It is also unclear whether the farthingale would have had a drawstring top or if it was pleated into a waistband. I decided to do a waistband simply to ensure I had less bulk around my waist.

Arnold, Janet. Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd. Leeds, United Kingdom: W.S. Maney & Sons, Ltd., 1988

Arnold, Janet. Patterns Of Fashion: The Cut and Construction of Clothes...1560-1620. London: Macmillan London, Ltd., 1994

Dupuis, Tammie L. "Clothing In The Period Style: Farthingales" http://www.vertetsable.com/farthingale2.htm

Leed, Drea. "Making A Period Farthingale" http://costume.dm.net/farthingale/