The Gold Brocade Gown

6-02-01

And so it begins again... Today I draped the toile for my newest gown, on my own body, in a corset, by myself. Those of you who drape your patterns will know that this is no easy feat. What prompted me to do this was I decided to cut down on labor by making a pattern to my corseted measurements, rather than draft a body block from the usual set of measurements (I know them by heart now) and then adjust the block to my corseted measurements. I took one look at the odd numbers I got from my corseted measurements (my normal bust point-bust point measurement is 8 inches. In my corset it's 5 inches. This makes for a very weird pattern to draft, trust me) and decided to forego that route altogether. As my boyfriend had just left for work, and my mother is in England for the next week (yes, I had the chance to go too) I was alone in the house, in my corset and no, it couldn't wait until someone was around to help me drape. I grabbed my box of pins, two rectangles of cotton muslin and set to work. The front was fairly easy to do, but the back was quite a bit harder. Somehow I managed to prevail and the end result is a really good pattern. I would have loved to take pictures of the process, but it was hard enough to drape on myself... I wasn't about to try and rig the camera to snap photos me in weird contorted positions.

Here is the really crappy image of my rough sketch of the gown (my scanner is out of commission at the moment and this was taken with my cheap digital camera). This was just the basic shape I was aiming for as far as the bodice and skirt is concerned. The sleeves, which are hard to see, are split into strips with puffs of silk showing through, but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep them like that. I'm aiming for 1565-1569 England for the gown and the sleeves make it look a little too Italian for my taste. It's going to be made of gold brocade and cream silk de chine jacquard with small flowers alternating with metallic gold centers.

6-03-01

Today I took some pictures of the toile being fitted to my old tailor's dummy. I decided to use my old dummy because she's actually closer to my measurement than my Uniquely You dummy, which is too wide and too rounded in the shoulders and neck. Sometimes spending more money doesn't necessarily mean something is better... I've also had disastrous results with corseting my Uniquely You dummy and I didn't want to repeat the tragedy with my new effigy corset. Even though my old dummy has no hips and had to be seriously padded out in the bust and stomach (she's actually a child-sized dummy) she wasn't going to destroy my corset.

These photos show the front, back and side view of the toile, respectively. I was also experimenting with shoulder treatment, which explains the thing on the left shoulder of the dummy. It's hard to tell, but it's actually just a simple treatment of five tabs with a "poof" of fabric pulled through them and puffed out. It's probably what I'm going to do with the shoulders on the finished gown.

This set of pictures show the linen interlining of the actual bodice with black bias tape for boning channels. These pictures show the first stage of fitting of the final pattern. I decided to use the interlining as my mock-up because it would be boned and then could be used as an accurate guide for cutting the brocade. In these pictures, you can see that the bodice needs to be about an inch tighter.

These are pictures of the adjusted bodice. I took the side seams in about 1/2" on both sides and adjusted the back shoulders to lie flatter. The boning is just to allow the bodice to lie flat against my body without bunching and not to act as a built-in corset. Whether or not this is a period practice can be argued (I think it is, personally) but ultimately, I don't want to deal with a poor-fitting garment. The linen interlining will be hidden between two layers of the gold brocade, so the boning channels won't be showing, nor will my blue ink marks. ;)

This is as true to the actual color of the fabric as I could get with my digital camera and Adobe PhotoDelux. It's true color is slightly more mustardy than this, but it's close enough. It's arguably not terribly authentic for the 16th century, but I don't care. I think the fabric is pretty.

Here are three photos showing the linen lining laid out on the fabric right before cutting. I decided to cut each piece individually so I would have more control over where the fabric pattern was, relative to the garment. It's slightly more wasteful of the fabric than I would have liked, but I am saving the left over piece to create the sleeves and the shoulder treatments. This still leaves me with about 3- 4 yards of fabric for the skirt, which will have to be pieced as well, since the pattern runs vertically down the length of the fabric. Had there been no particular direction of the fabric pattern, I would have simply used the width of the fabric to create the skirt, cutting off about 10- 15" along the hem. It's 8:30 PM right now, so we'll see how much more of this I get done tonight.

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