chargirlgenius

I worked on patterning Jeff's sleeves last night. It went much slower than it ought to have. He has existing gowns, but the armholes on this one are smaller, and I need it to be pleated more in the sleeve head. Same pattern could work, eh? Well, perhaps, but I can't find it (short of ripping a current sleeve off), and I figured it's usually better to start from scratch than to modify something old.

I got through a first draft last night, but it needed slightly less pouffing, and it needed rotating so the seam landed at the elbow. However, even with the problems, and the fact that I was executing the test in a lovely aubergine poly cotton (I bought it to costume with, but luckily found a clue before I used it...) it looked fantastic. Adding the sleeve gives the gown the width and stature that it needed. It hides the problems at the shoulder with the stiffness, and I have hope that it will really make it look like something special. Whew.

Unfortunately, I only got one draft of the sleeve made last night. I tweaked the pattern, and redrew it, but I haven't had the chance to attach it or test it. Poor Jeff is going to have to take kid duty a lot this week while I crank.

Posty McPostalot today…

As it happens, we’d already been tossing around the idea of a party the weekend of Jeff’s vigil and laurel elevation. We’re going to stick with that plan, and combine the Blackberry Festival with an after party. Not sure how many blackberries we’ll actually have, since the weather has been so odd, but in any case, we’ll go pick, and cook with what we’ve got. You don’t have to go to the event to come to the party. :-D

We’ll start early, so we can pick before it gets too hot. We don’t have crashers confirmed yet, but people can show up in the morning, even as early as 9 or 10. I’m not sure if we’re having feast on Saturday or not, but we may have a campfire Saturday or Sunday evening, depending on when folks are still around.

Let me know if you’d like to come, and if you need directions!

I started messing with the pleats again last night. On Tuesday evening, I was playing with some cotton and managed to get something that looked good. I was working to put a rolled pleat in at the waist, diminishing into a knife pleat at the shoulder. It looked decent in the cotton broadcloth incarnation, until I started trying to adjust it last night.

Meh.

There must be some sort of math that makes such a configuration possible, but even once I got them to lay fairly straight, they were still a little twisty and weird. It seemed overly complex, and overly complex rarely seems like the right answer to me. I also decided to start playing with denim instead of cotton broadcloth, considering I want to use hemp to stiffen the swishy silk. Yes. That made a BIG difference in the way things were sitting. I’m really new to using pleats.

I’m probably going to end up with a big denim test gown out of this. Jeff likes the colors. It’s currently sitting on the dummy with the light side on the left, with the somewhat twisty pleats, and the dark side on the right. There’s got to be some sort of goofy garb contest that he can wear it at… The right looks much better, since I sucked it up and tried putting the rolled pleat in all the way to the shoulder seam. Yes, MUCH better. I’d wanted to avoid having to sew that many layers together at a time (five layers per pleat), but it really does look the best. If I do that part by machine – industrial, here I come!

I have the option of putting in just a few pleats at the shoulder, and running them down to the waist in kind of a V shape. In the King René images, and a few others, the pleats go all the way across the front. Jeff seems to like that better, and though I might regret it later, so do I. It’s just a style choice; neither is more or less accurate, it seems to me.

Men’s 15th century gowns all seem pretty standard, until you start looking closer. Like I said yesterday, I don’t believe that there is only one right way.

Under the cut I have two paintings, both by Van Der Weyden, and both portraits. They’re 10 years different, and you can find many other portraits by other artists of this time period. You can find almost any many different pleating variations as portraits.

In the first, I’d say this is very obviously a plain pleated gown, probably with some sort of fur lining holding the pleats out. Always keep in mind these are not photographs.

The second is more along the lines of what I’m going for. The pleats are very strong and smooth, and all the way up to the shoulder. The cut of this gown would be different from the first. The pleating method may be different. Poor Jeff. I have yet another idea, and I’m going to have to make him yet another gown.

( Paintings under the cut. )

I love this second image. The fellow looks young, slender, skinny, even. And he’s wearing this ginormous gown that completely beefs him up.

One reason that I had to mess with the pleats that seemed to be working on Tuesday is that I think I got them backwards. Look at the third image, specifically where the pleats meet the flat part on the skirt. Between that and others, it looks like the pleat rolls in towards the center, not out towards the side. Once fixed, it looks much better.

I also found an image of a fellow whose pleats are still held in place, though his belt is coming off or is off. He has only a few pleats running from the shoulder to the waist, but that is a little bit of argument for the pleat being stitched in permanently.

I’ve got to get pictures of how these different pleats look. The denim-dressed dummy is a stitch. With the pleats, you can’t even see how Jeff’s doublet fits over boobs!