Archive for the ‘Plans’ Category

CoCo on the Brain

Posted by Trystan on May 16th, 2012
Cocoa by AngryJulieMonday on Flickr, Creative Commons

Cocoa by AngryJulieMonday on Flickr

CoCo, meaning Costume College, of course. I’ve been going back & forth about what to make for my Gala gown. I had one idea all set, with fabric bought months ago. And then … Costume Attention Deficit Disorder struck. Alas! Now I’m scrambling to see if I can find / afford new fabric in time.

I’m also teaching a class, just one, after taking a break last year from teaching far, far too many classes the previous years. I’ve got to assemble kits for my hands-on Elizabethan wired cap class. I’m teaching a version of this class at the SCA West Kingdom’s Arts & Sciences Tourney in June as well, so really, I’m just going to create all the kits for *that* & use what’s leftover for CoCo, then add to it. Yeah, I made it easy on myself that way.

Which is good, because my Gala gown will be patently insane to make. Nope, not gonna tell what it is. Just that it’s nuts. And it kinda sorta goes with CoCo’s theme this year, if you stretch.

I also think I’ll wear costumes at CoCo, for a change. I got out of the habit because it just got to be tiresome, what with all the teaching & going to classes & other schlepping around. Not to mention the current hotel has such fabulous poolside cabanas that are better suited to modern summer attire. But I’ll have to wear something Elizabethan for my class to show how the caps look, thus I’ll be costumed on Sunday. And I usually do goth it up a bit on Friday. That’s two out of three, why not throw on a costume Saturday too? There is a small chance that I won’t be able to arrive until late Thursday & will have to leave late Sunday, due to work, meaning I’d have to fly. Smaller suitcases, which could impact costume choices. We shall see…

Well, back to fabric hunting! That new Gala dress plan may tie up funds I was thinking I might put towards the new Pompadour shoes from American Duchess — check them out here. I’d love to get the ivory silk ones & dye them purple or hot pink.

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More MQoS research

Posted by Trystan on May 21st, 2010

While the sewing is on hold, the research continues!

I just returned from the U.K. where I finally got to see both portraits in person — and, wow, they are totally different! It’s not merely a difference in image reproduction. The originals may show the same person in the same pose and gown, but the colors are distinctly different in several ways.

First is the smaller portrait, a miniature, no more than three inches long. It is displayed at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is owned by Queen Elizabeth. It can be seen and even zoomed in at this page of the Queen’s Collection. The miniature shows Mary Queen of Scots placing a ring on her right hand; the portrait ends just below her waist.

Her gown is pink with a white forepart and white lining in the high collar. She wears a rope of knotted pearls that have a slightly blue-grey tone. The gown is elaborated trimmed in gold braid, and the miniature has gilt paint denoting this trim. Looking closely, both Thomas and I could see the shine on the gold. That clinched it for me.

However, two weeks later, I got to see the version of this image at the V&A Museum. This portrait is perhaps 12 inches tall and was mounted on the wall at about eye-level, so I could clearly see the details.

In this portrait, Mary Queen of Scots is only shown from above the waist. Her hands are not visible. The gown appears the same, except for the trim color. Just as the high-resolution images available from the V&A showed, the trim in this portrait is definitely silver. I was close enough to the painting that I could see the texture of the paint and even detect a little grey-white in the layer and absolutely no gilt. Also, the pearls were a darker blue-grey in this painting.

So there it is — two distinctly different portraits! Thus, my pink and silver version is still accurate ;-)

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Postphoned

Posted by Trystan on November 8th, 2009

I’ve decided not to try to make the MQoS pink gown for 12th Night this year. Just don’t want to push it. The thing is alllllll trim and pearls, meaning allllllll hand-sewing, and we should know how I feel about that by now. Why kill myself to do it in 2 months? Even with Mom’s help, it’s crazy-making work.

I just had one of the least-pleasant months in a long while (or at least the most stressful three weeks), and my real job still isn’t letting up. Plus, holidays! Have gifts to make, and Thomas and I are trying to finish the Venetian Carnivale DVD by xmas.

I’ll try to have something pretty and new to wear at 12th Night. Just not something that drives me insane to make. Maybe the MQoS by Costume College? Or 12th Night 2011? It will happen. I have the materials and and a good sewing start. MQoS goes UFO for a while…

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MQoS trim hunt

Posted by Trystan on October 28th, 2009

It is begun! I cut the pink taffeta, spray-basted it to some white twill for body, and sewed all the side seams of the bodice. Then I started hand-sewing on the trim. Have to start with trim over the seam lines, you see, then work out in 1.5″ spacing.

I’m not actually doing the exact same pattern as on the portrait. This is because I couldn’t find narrow trim in a silver-grey or antiqued silver tone. Everything was screamingly bright silver, and my pearls are nearly hematite in color, very dark silver, almost black. Bright silver trim would look wrong next to that.

I also nixed the gold trim after much soul-searching. The combination of pink + silver-black pearls + gold looked, well, pretty gaudy. Probably period-accurate, but neither like the V&A portrait nor attractive on me! So I decided to go with silver trim and the silver pearls.

Alas, that lead to the problem of finding silver trim. I hunted far and wide, online and off. Most trims are wider than what the portrait looks like, and almost all of them are the aforementioned bright silver. Like tinfoil bright, super shiny, silver-white.

The best I found was a slightly wider trim at Jo-Ann’s, made by Wright Trims, with a mix of silver lurex and black. It’s a bit shiny and does have a tad of that plasticky touch, but the color is the perfect shade. Really looks right with the pearls and the pink. I bought all my local Jo-Ann’s had and all the online store had. Intense measurements of the bodice pattern (based on my high-collared original mockup for the late 16th-c. doublet), standard Elizabethan sleeve pattern from Hunnisett, and my farthingale estimated that I would need 32 yards of trim. Hunted around online and found a source to buy more, which will hopefully arrive soon.

And tonight, I stitched and bitched to start some trimming. The wider trim means I can’t do the two rows, up and over, next to each other as in the portrait. As I was laying out the single rows, I decided to take the vertical lines all the way up to the shoulder because of the width and also because I couldn’t get a tidy end point with this trim. The trim pattern will be a bit larger scale than in the portrait, less delicate, but hopefully the same overall effect. (Note: In the photo, I just laid a hank of pearls on the bodice for color comparison; I will sew them in groups of three.)

I plan to take the bodice-in-progress with me on an upcoming business trip and get a bit more trimming done in the hotel room.

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Planning the Mary Queen of Scots pink gown

Posted by Trystan on August 4th, 2009

I’ve loved this dress since I first saw the portrait in a book, sometime in the early 1990s. It’s the classic refutation of “pink is not period” for renaissance faire or SCA. It’s super-girly. It’s fantastic! It’s very Pretty Pretty Princess! This has been my dream gown, and dammit, I’m going to make it.

So I set the SCA’s Twelfth Night 2009 as my deadline and started gathering materials. Except I was immediately dissatisfied with what I bought. See, there are two versions of this portrait plus contemporary text descriptions, which are contradictory about the exact colors of the fabric and trims.

The best description comes from The Queen’s Image by Helen Smailes and Duncan Thomson, published by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 1987:

The earliest undoubted reference to this portrait is in Van der Doort’s reference to catalogue of Charles I’s collection: ‘…The second picture of Queen Mary of Scotland, upon a blew grounded square card, dressed in her hair, in a carnation habit laced with small gold lace and a string of pearls round her neck in a little plain falling hood, she putting on her second [sic] finger the wedding ring.’

The portrait is undated but alludes to her marriage to the French Dauphin, which occurred in 1558, so it’s probably from shortly before the wedding. The V&A Museum dates its version of the portrait as 1559. Of course, there are two versions of this painting, both by Francois Clouet.

The one in the V&A ends just above the queen’s waistline. There is another in the royal collection of Queen Elizabeth II that extends below MQoS’ waistline and shows her hands and wedding ring (shown on Wikipedia). This is the portrait described in the book quoted above; that book speculates that a smaller version of this portrait was given to Queen Elizabeth I.

The book Maria R: Mary Queen of Scots, The Crucial Years by the Duke of Hamilton has chapter on the queen’s wardrobe accounts from the 1560s — when she was back in Scotland — and notes one “carnation pink” gown, so I wonder if she still owned this one.

Anyway, the two versions and the text confuse the issue of what color that trim is: gold or silver. The text says gold, but the high-resolution image from the V&A is very clearly silver with black pearls.

So I’ve bought a big old crazy mix of materials, and I don’t know what goes with what! I have 18 yards of pink silk (8 yards of one color and quality, 10 yards of another), 20+ yards of gold trim, and nearly 4,000 silver-black pearls (real ones, natch).

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