Kentwell

After the disappointment of the Victorian festival I am glad to report that Kentwell lived up to and even exceded my expectations. I did not hear anybody break character once (though one spectator persisted in asking questions that couldn’t be answered by the character, she seemed to think that if she re-phrased the question enough times a different answer than ‘I don’t know’ would be produced) there was music, dancing, a feast. cooking, farm chores, a blacksmith and for some reason visiting a visiting Landsknecht plus a lot more. I spent more at Kentwell than I have anywhere else,  I spent just under £13 to get in for the day and then I spent a little over £30 in the gift shop.

the blacksmith’s bellows

entertainment at dinner

the dowager mistress of the house arriving to visit her son & daughter in law.

A Landsknecht in the Suffolk countryside in 1535, I’m not sure why (I probably should have asked but we talked about the imp in my camera instead)

Princess Mary outfit summary

Well I found that perhaps a blog isn’t any better at documenting my progress with a project than a regular website as I was so busy trying to get my outfit finished in time for College war that I didn’t get much internet time to update this as I went

The gown was finished enough to wear to the assassins feast on Friday night and it was entered into the A&S competition on Saturday morning. It is essentially finished except for seam finishing and hemming. I’m going to follow the book’s recommendation of binding the hem with velvet ribbon, it seems like a sensible solution and a period plausible one, (although I haven’t yet seen evidence one way or the other for it) as a binding can be removed and replaced when it wears out without any damage to the gown fabric and you can brush dirt off.

I like the way it fits the only issue I have with this construction is the way the kirtle shoulder straps are cut in one piece with the back bodice and come all the way over the shoulder to join the front of the bodice. I’ve only ever seen this in corsets (e.g. the effigy corset) and in those cases the shoulder strap ties on to the bodice. It didn’t occur to me before but one of the judges of the A&S comp (whose name I missed unfortunately) pointed out to me that this method puts a seam at the front in a relatively obvious place. I can’t really believe that an artist like Holbein would not show this seam when he shows other details of similar scale (e.g. you can’t see a seam there on this portrait of Elizabeth Widmerpole).

I would rather follow the Alcega pattern that Mistress Oonagh sent me last time I was making a Tudor Kirtle which shows the shoulder strap at the front cut on the bias, this would achieve a similar effect to a single strap cut on the bias but with a seam on top of the shoulder instead of at the front.

Photos will be forthcoming eventually but probably not for a while yet.

The 1544 Princess Mary gown, part 1

My current costuming project is a gown based on this 1544 portrait of Princess Mary, in blue and gold, the colours of my college (The College of St Aldhelm). Construction is mainly based on The Tudor Tailor but as I have less than a month to complete this outfit (My deadline is the second week in July) I am taking a couple of machine shortcuts instead of following the instructions exactly.

So far the kirtle bodice is about halfway finished. The main structure is essentially finished but the armholes need binding and I need to sew eyelets, (I know from experience that eyelets will be the most time consuming part of the process) after that will come the kirtle skirt before I can move on to the gown.

I decided to base my gown on this portrait because it shows sleeves lined with velvet rather than fur, using velvet means I can continue the gown’s blue and gold theme throughout the whole gown, which would have been broken up if I used the more typical Tudor option of fur (as I don’t know of any animal whose fur is naturally either blue or yellow).

The photos to the right show the kirtle bodice, the main fabric is a delustred satin and it is lined with a red canvas for added support. I will sew the eyelets before I start on the skirt as its much easier to sew eyelets when you don’t have an extra 3 or 4 metres of fabric to fight every time you turn the bodice.