And not just because I’ve had a head cold for the past week (yeah, Flemish, not phlem-ish, har har).
I started a little sewing this weekend. Kendra gave me an old project of hers, when I bought a bunch of wool from her last year. It was originally her 1560s nuremburg dress from ages ago, the bodice & skirt in pieces. I tried on the bodice & found that if I took up the shoulders a few inches, it would fit pretty well. Worn over my Elizabethan stays, it had an inch or two gap at the center front (the bodice is entirely unboned).
So I unpicked the shoulder seam, which was a bit fussy since the edges were piped. I took the seam in, re-stitched, & hand-sewed the piping down, which turned out reasonably neat, if a smidge bumpy. At least it’s all in the back. Pity it’s not like house plumbing where the pipes can be joined with smooth fittings.
Then I thought about how I’d wear this. With the velvet guarding in along the front of the bodice & at the center-front of the skirt, it might look odd to have a front-laced gap. But opening the side seams & adding a strip there for width just so the fronts meet edge-to-edge would be a huge PITA, plus I’d have to match the piping again, causing weird bumps inside the armscye. Ew.
So I started looking around for images. And conveniently I had the nice, fat Lucas de Heere illustration book in PDF on my iPad that Kendra posted about recently. Wherein I found several images, mostly Flemish, with that typical front-laced bodice. Duh! That reminded me of Drea Leed’s Flemish dress article & Jen Thompson’s further research into the topic. Lots of lovely images there…
Well then. The wool gown from Kendra could work as the Flemish laced overgown. I’ll add lacing rings along the center front of the bodice, then shorten the skirt & attach it to the bodice. I just need a kirtle underneath this gown. And I already have a black velveteen over-partlet I made to wear as Mistress Fockett, along with one of my various ruffed smocks. Add some pinned-on sleeves made from the extra wool that matches the overgown, & then I can make some crazy-fun Flemish cap in linen (yay, moar caps!). Ta-da, easy Flemish working outfit.
Which is also plausible as an English working woman, or, in my case, a Scottish gentlewoman working on her own estates in the absence of her husband. Then I can fit it into my SCA persona & it’s not some random deviation like this Italian stuff has been 🙂
Yay! Glad it’s workable and you’ve found something useful to do with it. If you need any more of the velvet I have some of that too.
Thank *you*! A little bit of that velvet might be nice to trim the sleeves @ the cuffs, or if I want to go nuts, add guarding at the hem. But really, the pieces are going to work well, & it’s awesome to start with something that’s so far along 🙂
This is pretty interesting info you have here. I used http://www.elizabethancostume.net/lowerclass/makeflem.html
for making a flemish dress this past year and it turned out decent. Wish I saw this site a year ago when making it though. Still hunting for a decent quick pattern to make the caul headgear, not sure about the duck head look, lol I’ll pass on that one. ^_^
But yes, Thank you for info I’ve been looking for on this site too.