Finished gown.

So, here it is being modled at a Medieval wedding I worked at on 29th Dec. I have seen a painting showing women with their gowns hitched up at the front to show off a skirt underneath so this is what I did - I used my green/gold shot silk taffeta petticoat I use for my Elizabethan gown just to be a bit more posh! I'm also wearing a medieval hood seen in many paintings. The pattern was taken from the Medieval Tailors Assistant by Sarah Thursfield and then adjusted to be more fashionable - it also has the black loop which I made a cord for.

Here is a close up of the hood:

Medieval gown.

After the kirtle, I then proceeded with the gown. This is the same pattern as the kirtle, but slightly enlarged to fit over the top. The following pictures show where the pattern was cut to allow adjustment:

For the side front, I followed the red line (please ignore the green one!) but the line was straighter.

For the front panel, I followed the green line (please ignore the red one!) but the line was straighter.

When cutting out the fabric, I made length a little longer, and the neckline a bit higher.

I then pinned the seam allowances - an inch as per usual and started to sew by hand...

As the gown was to be side laced, but to also have sleeves sewn on then some strong sewing was in order. I sewed about 1.5" under the arm nice and strong, before leaving the gap for the lacing (that goes down to waist line) and the gap to allow to put the gown on easily (to about mid-hip line).

The seams were all neatened like the ones on the kirtle, apart from the side seams which needed to have eyelets sewn in to. I neatened this as an flat seam, but turned over so there weren't any raw edges! In the 7" where there were to be eyelets, I inserted a piece of canvas to give it extra strength. The I sewed in the eyelets and made some cord for the lacing.

Then it was time for the sleeves. Again, I used the same pattern as I did for the kirtle sleeves, but made them longer, bigger around the top half so they would fit over my kirtle sleeves and I added a flared bit at the end for turned back sleeves:

I then attached them and neatened the seams. When I tried it on, it turned out I needed to take the sleeves in to make them tighter.

Once this was done, I had help in pinning the hem as, of course, I didn't want my kirtle to end up on show. Once I had hemmed it, I cut out long strips of wool to make a guard to going around the hem - for decoration and protection. I then neatened up the neckline after checking that the kirtle will not show and then attached some black wool to that, purely for decoration! And hey presto, the gown was finished and all hand-sewn! I will post a picture of it in a new blog, seeing as this one is quite long.

Extra! Extra! I took my kirtle and gown into one of my lectures (one of my modules last semester was about Medieval Suffolk) as it was on medieval clothing among other topics. Everyone was impressed, yay! :)

Finished Kirtle.

Sorry it's been a long time, but I've been busy with uni work :)

Anyway, I managed to get the kirtle finished soon after my last post. I sewed on the lacing rings, positioned for spiral lacing and made a cord for it to be laced up.


Here is the finished thing (my coif has gone missing since this photo! :/ )