Tudor Outfit at Hanford ROK
October 11, 2004

Well, this one will be a short entry, I think.

I just wanted to share the photos of my husband and our son wearing their new garb at Hanford Renaissance of Kings.

...

My husband's outfit still needs appropriate sleeves, and the "great" coat (aka surcoat) to make the full outfit, but this is what I have so far. I plan on working on my own stuff for Kearney, and if I have time, to work on his stuff. Otherwise, it will hopefully be done for next year sometime, after I have done more research on that coat, and figured out the patterning for both the coat and the sleeves.

Yeah, the sleeves.... The ones I was planning on him wearing actually are Elizabethan split sleeves. I have realized during my epiphany at faire that they really won't work for his Tudor outfit, so I will have to research, pattern and create appropriate Tudor ones. I am not sure if they will be puffy at the shoulder area, or not, so back to the books on this one as well.

But, here they are.

Front	Side	Back

I am pretty happy overall with both outfits. Now to make my basic Tudors sparkle and shine, as befitting the next character I get to play... a niece to the King.
:-)

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Photos of Tudor Doublet
October 1, 2004

Well, I did a lot of minor repairs, and had some time before my body runs down, so I did up some photos of the two big projects I just finished: The Tudor Doublet and Base, and the linen chemise.

Just click on the following thumbnail images to see larger ones. I thought I would save bandwidth for some people.

Tudor Black Velveteen Doublet & Base With A White Linen Shirt

Here are the mini-pix of the Tudor Doublet and Base, which I have already discussed in details in the following links: Part I & Part II. The shirt I am not sure if I posted on it before, but it was made from linen and done in hand blackwork on the collar and cuffs. The embroidery on the sleeves are from my sewing machine, and is more to give the impression of blackwork over a larger area.

Tudor Black Velveteen Doublet & Base With A White Linen Shirt
Almost full shot of Tudor Doublet, Base & Shirt	Upper area of Tudor Doublet, Base & Shirt	Side shot of of Tudor Doublet, Base & Shirt
Detail of trim matching almost perfectly on front of Tudor Doublet	View of organ pleats of base	Inside detail view of tapes holding the organ pleats

And now, off to bed.

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Tudor Doublet & Base, part II
September 29, 2004

The Tudor doublet and base is DONE!!

Well, almost. I am debating if I should put shoulder epaulettes to broaden the look on top, since all that black on the skirt makes the bottom look heavy. Well, c0demonkey says it kinda looks like a maternity dress, for all the pleats from the waist down. There isn't much on the upper half to balance that out, hence possible epaulettes. Normally he would be wearing a great coat, but his great coat won't be started until after Hanford Faire (in time for Kearney, maybe). Maybe I can borrow one from M, who plays the King. He and his partner have LOTS of them in their costume closet.

And I wish I had a man's dress form to take photos of the outfit. It looks nice, but it needs a round form to put it on for the organ pleats to really look good, not to mention filling the chest properly for the placket I put in. The organ pleats... I thought those would not come out too well, because when I sewed them onto the doublet, well they just didn't look good, and did NOT hang like the organ pleats seen in various paintings and drawings of the time (like in Henry VIII's portrait). But once I sewed the tapes to hold the pleats, then they started hanging properly. Not perfectly, but the pleats look fuller and more like organ pipes. I think I will have to make a new cod piece that is larger, cause the old one kinda hides behind the pleats right now.

Yeah, looking at that Henry portrait really tells me that he needs the great coat in order to look right. Without it, he will look very bottom heavy. He needs the larger shoulders to offset the full skirt.

So, here's what I have done on my list.

• the trim on the skirt to finish
• the doublet trimmed
• the pleats - mark and sew
• the skirt needs to be attached to the doublet
• skirt taped underneath to hold organ pleats
• create a decorative placket and hook/eye it in place
• hand sew hanging loops
• the sleeves (from the Eliz. Doublet) need eyelets
• two strips of eyelets for the doublet itself.

Yeah, the sleeves are still not done. The eyelets will take a lot of time, and I need to finish other things. So I will hold those off for later, after I have finished off the following:

• Cam's linen chemise (priority)
• c0demonkey's hat jewels and feathers (priority)
• minor repairs to c0demonkey's pants
• minor repairs to his shirt (it's pulling at the shoulder gusset)
• minor mods to my Tudor bodice sleeves and undersleeves
• whatever else I need to adjust and fix for Hanford, like the old hoops

So it looks like the sleeves, while done except for the eyelets, will have to wait for later. I think I will work on them at faire, to give me something to do during down times. Maybe he will have them on Sunday, that would be nice, but I won't sweat it.

But I am starting to sweat the custom tights. The owner promised they would be in by Hanford, and they should have been here by now, but still haven't shown up. I will check the mail tomorrow, and if it isn't in by tomorrow, I am going to call and see where they are.

While I may take photos tomorrow on the finished doublet that's now hanging up, I probably won't have time to post them until after this weekend. I think I also need a day to clean the room again, and reorganize things, again. I know I am not being efficient or putting things away like I want and should do. I have too many projects going on at once, and that is just driving me nuts! Eh, all of it will have to wait. Sleep calls and Friday is getting closer.

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Tudor Doublet & Base Dress Diary, Part I
September 17, 2004

I honestly don't think I have posted any info on this project. I have been taking digi-pics, but it seems they are mostly of the inside of the garment construction, and nothing, until now, of what the outside looks like. Well, I don't want to show the doublet part yet mainly cause I don't want to take the pics right now. The skirt? Well it's a full circle skirt that will be a pain to photograph right now in full, but the trim is done, and I have the pics of the trim below.

Originally, I was just going to make the base that would tie on over the Eliz doublet, but the more I looked at the images of the time, the more I realized that just wouldn't look right. As the doublet is fairly simple enough to create, why not do the whole thing.

The Doublet:

So far the doublet itself was easy to create. I based it on my husband's Elizabethan doublet, because I know that pattern fits him. It has a deep scoop neckline almost to the belly, that will have a "plastron" type filler behind it. I believe (although no docs on this) that there may have been another "doublet" underneath this outer doublet/jerkin? that would be decorative. But I couldn't find any images to say one way or the other. Considering how hot the Tudor events we go to can get (100+), I figured that if all you see is that area at the chest, that it would be faked so my husband won't have to deal with the heat issue.

The doublet itself is done, except for the trims. It is made from black cotton velveteen and is lined in medium weight white linen. I had to make the doublet first to see what the actual final waist line would be, as that affected the pattern for the base. I also won't finish the trim until the base trim is done, so it can match as best I can. I just realized that the choice I made for distance on the trim may not work too well on the doublet. Oh well.

The Base/Skirt:

The base skirt is a full circle of black velveteen, and it is lined in black cotton. I was thinking of the crimson silk I have, but what I have left will have to conspicously line his paned Elizabethan pants. The base will be organ pleated like the German waffenrock I did was pleated. This will actually be my first time doing the pleats, because my friend C. did the pleats on the 'rock. But I have her notes, and I kinda remember some of her comments on it, and I did develop the pattern for the 'rock base, so things should be good. However, on this skirt, I only want to stitch down the pleats about halfway down the skirt. There is trim I am sewing at the bottom, and I don't want that to be hidden by sewn pleats. Thankfully, this method is period as well.

I had to add extra material onto the sides, which puts a nice seam line across the front and back (kinda obvious), but that's period so it will stay. I chose to flat fell the seam, even tho it will show the stitching, because I wanted to be sure the seam would be encased, and no stretching at the seam itself. I could have french seamed it, but that would have added extra bulk across the pleat lines that I didn't want. Choices, choices.

The skirts have hung for two weeks now, and it didn't stretch too much, but matching it to the pattern, I trimmed off the extra stretched parts which of course were the heavy bias areas.

The Trim of the Base/Skirt:

Last night I started sewing down the first of the trim before I sew it all together. Silly me forgot the basic rule of trim, which is to steam shrink it before I sew it down. Thankfully, in order to get the straight trim to go around the curve of the circle, I had to steam it into place. However, I didn't realize it had affected the trim as much as it did, because it didn't show up as a problem until I was halfway sewn. I took out the rest of the pins, and moved the trim into new places, and finished the work. Thank goodness I leave additional trim at the ends just in case. This time, it used it all up on one side. And with the steam pressing of the whole thing, I decided it wasn't worth the time to remove and restitch the other section, as it didn't cause too noticible a problem. One nice thing about this trim is that it naturally wants to curve a bit.

Tonight I steamed the trim first, and it took up about an inch or so. It was neet seeing the trim pull up every time I puffed the steam. I then sewed down the second half-circle's trim. I also added to both sections a row of gold cording on each side of the trim, about 1/4" or so away, to make the trim area look bigger than it is, and to finish the look. Trim by itself... just doesn't look completely finished. At least to me it needs something more, especially on court garb. Sometime when I have time, I hope to hand sew glass beads and pearls to the trim as well, but that's going to be later. You can see in the photos above how the skirts look with the complete trimming.

What's Next:

The next few days will be spent working the organ pleats arrangement. While I still have a few weeks before Hanford faire, I also have to make my son's chemise as well (he grows so fast), so this base better go fast! Let's see, I have:

• the trim to finish
• the pleats to mark and create,
• the skirt needs to be attached to the doublet,
• the doublet needs trim,
• the sleeves (from the Eliz. Doublet) need eyelets
• two strips of eyelets for the doublet itself.

Oye, that's a bit for me. I better get some sleep tonight. Although I think my mind will be occupied with thoughts on how to mark evenly spaced lines on the circle pattern.
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