Tailor’s Book of Enns Gown
March, 2003
*** Warning, image intensive***
Back in November, after following along with the construction diaries on Festive Attyre and other sites on the net, I decided to make a dress of my own. So I started looking for inspiration, not really sure what period or style I wanted to do, I really wanted to do something fresh and new, that hadn't been done several times before. One day, during my usual lunchtime perusing of Drea’s site, I ran across her new scans of the manuscript, The Tailor’s Book of Enns. There on Plate 37, I found inspiration. The manuscript is dated, according to Drea, as being from 1590. It is possible that the articles described in the book are from an earlier fashionable period. In other words, it could be out of fashion for 1590’s, the fashions depicted may be from the 1580’s or earlier.
The text, translation kindly provided by Drea Leed and Katherine Barich, reads as the following
Original text
Item zu einem Rock das von der Axel 7/4 lang ist und 7 eln Breit (dar zu nim crossed out) die prust 3/4 lang herum 1 eln Breit dar Zu Nim 4 eln Purpranish thuch af
Translation
Item for a Rock (dress) that from the shoulder 7/4 long is and 7 eln wide (for it take crossed out) the bodice 3/4 long here around 1 eln wide for it take 4 ells Purpranish cloth for.
The words on the bottom on the layout are
das fund tseit (the back side) das boden tseit (the bowed side)
Further info on the text and layout from Katherine Barich using an ell measurement of 30"
Item, for a gown that is 1 3/4 (ell from the shoulder to the ground - 52.5") and 7 ell wide (210 inches) (take for this crossed out) the bodice is 3/4 (of an ell 22.5")long and here around 1 ell (30") for this take 4 ells of purpranish cloth on.
Using 4 ells of cloth, 2 ells wide, we have 2 pieces of 60" X 60" cloth, which if I use the proportions drawn on the layout, I come up with about a 6 - 7 ell measurement. It would be an interesting exercise to try to draft this up and see if I'm even in the ballpark.
This layout would be for a small woman, about 5" or so, the bust measurement of 30" is also fairly small, but I not so bad if we consider corseting.
Hmm, I am definitely over 5 feet tall and I could compress to 30", but it wouldn't be pretty! Guess this means I need more fabric.
But first, I went looking for images from the period to see what the dress might have looked liked made up. What I quickly discovered is that round necklines, like the one on this dress, were not in fashion for the people who got portraits painted or drawings made, towards the later part of the century, or if they were, were covered up with jackets or gollars. Round necklines were quite fashionable in the beginning part of the 1500’s, but by the last quarter of the 1500’s, the necklines had risen, or were now covered up to the neckline, making it very difficult to see the exact shape. Click on the images to take you to a large picture and the source.
Towards the later part of the century, the styles looked like this, These are just a sample of the images from My Gracious Silence -- On-Line Exhibit
High society ladies
Middle class burgher’s wife Maidservant
Key points (as I see them) across classes
- Front closing bodices
- Ruffs on every class, and ruffs at the wrists for everybody except the maid
- Head coverings and maybe a hat too
- For everybody except the maid, the skirts are too the ground and seem to have a support underneath them to push them out into a bell.
I am going to start from the foundations first, as I believe you can't build a proper period silhouette without the proper foundations. At bare minimum I would need a Hemd (chemise), korset/mieder (corset) and an underskirt of some kind, maybe even a Reifrocke (petticoat). Since my persona is somewhat of a fashionable person, I plan to make a Stützrocke (support skirt or farthingale).
Here are the diaries for the korset/mieder and Hemd, which are both almost finished. Haven't started the Stützrocke yet, that comes next. After that will be the dress and then the gollar or a jacket, depending on how warm I want to be at faire this summer.
After the under things are completed, then its time for the dress. We'll see if I can wait that long. ;)
March 25, 2003
I have continued to look around for images which look like what I think the dress will turn out to look like. After analyzing the pattern outline, I believe that I am looking for dresses that have a scooped rounded neck, front has pleats center front and then smooth sides, with more pleats in the back. Because the dress has a seam that shapes it down the front, I believe that this is a front closing dress, and would probably had have guards around the neckline and down the front.
In looking through the Augsburger Monatsbilder, which shows everyday life scenes for every month from the town of Augsburg around the year 1525, I came across this picture from Der Herbst, from the month of October
Here we have a round necked gown, with the shoulder straps almost slipping off the shoulders, front closing and with darker colored guards. The main fullness does seem to be in the back section, although there does seem to be some in the front because her bent knee is not pulling out the pleated folds from the back, perhaps there are small pleats in the center front hidden under the apron?
The Augsburger Monatsbilder is a treasure trove of everyday clothing, the colors are especially interesting, lots of bright yellows and reds, pinks, greens, blues, black, the occasional light purple (mauve) thrown in to keep things interesting
April 7, 2003
I have started the diary for the Stützrocke, you can find it here. I also have decided to try and bleach some stripped linen I have to see if I can remove the stripes and have white linen to dye whatever color I want. It’s a 7.1 oz heavy white linen with small dark blue/black stripes from fabric-store.com, its currently $2.24 a yard.
This is what it looks like right now
There are several methods of bleaching that I plan to try, each of the following methods on a Ľ yard piece of fabric
- Regular chlorine bleach
- Hydrogen peroxide bleaching method
- Oxygen bleaching using sodium peroborate
- Fabric dye remover from Dharma trading. (On order)
Once (If ?) I get un-striped fabric from the bleaching process I plan to dye it dark red or bright green with fiber reactive procion dyes from Dharma Trading. If for some reason the dying experiments fail, I have plenty of backup fabric, that can be put to good use.
April 10, 2003
Hmmm.... The black stripes don't seem to be budging. I have so far tried the hydrogen peroxide (8 parts water and 1 part HP), and a strong bleach solution. The HP actually seemed to make the fabric look dirtier. The Bleach at least made the white parts White, but the black didn't move, smear or otherwise want to vacate.
I am going to try the fabric dye remover tonight and see if that works, if it doesn't, I guess I will just dye it dark colors so the stripes don't show.
April 15, 2003
GAAAHH! One big stinky chemical mess during which I was wondering how many brain cells I was killing and if my lungs would ever be the same again..... The black stripes still didn't budge, even with the heavy duty professional stuff from Dharma.. Guess I will just do what my ever so smart husband suggested and just buy the fabric already in the color I want it in. I am going to try dyeing the stripped nuisance black and seeing if I can at least do that. Time to go with Plan B and use fabric that is already the color that I want it to be.
April 21, 2003
We have progress ladies and gentlemen! An actual toile and fitting! Check it out. I had somewhat of a brain wave last week, I realized that I *did* not have to have the farthingale done before I started doing this dress because... Its a work dress, and a farthingale would not have been worn. I actually had a dream to this effect. Which just left me pounding my head with thoughts of "What was I thinking?!!?" Oh well, we all make mistakes and I will need the farthingale for my next outfit.
I had Friday off from work, so I decided to work on the dress and just get past the road block that I felt like I was up against. At that point I had decided to use this blue-green linen for the dress and didn't have any lining material for it, 3 fabric stores and 2 hours later I just decided to go home and try and self line it with the blue-green. I now remember WHY I hate the local fabric stores, no selection and horrendously high prices.
I drafted the pattern using a standard pattern block and my measurements taken over my Hemd and corset, but instead of adding in the extra for the bust on the side, I added it to the center front and center back and drafted the front and back sharing the same side line. Here's a pic to describe what I am talking about. It sure made things easier to match up the bust points and the shoulder straps, plus I was able to draft on one piece of paper, then draw in the side back seam and cut out.
Then I copied it over to another sheet of paper to draw in the seam allowances and 12 inches of skirt to test out how the skirts worked and if they would be wide enough. I took my hip measurement over my Hemd and a medium weight skirt that I was wearing and added 5 inches, then I divided this by 2 since I was drafting half the pattern. I took this and distributed the inches around the waistline. If you look at the pattern, the waistline makes a L shape as the skirt is attached to the bodice, a small amount is added to the center front, small amount to the center back, and the remainder on the side front and side back. I haven't posted the extensive drafting details like I usually do because I am planning on writing an article on how to draft this dress with diagrams and all.
So, I added 3.5 inches to the front center, and 1.5 inches to the back center, the remaining amount I distributed evenly between the front and back sides. Then I drew in the angled line for the side skirts. The finished pattern looked something like this. These were re-drawn from the original pattern for a lady who had a large difference between her bust and her waist, which I do not have.
Back and Front
I then added in seam allowances and cut out the pattern in fabric and basted it together. I typically sew in my Hemd and corset to make fitting easier, minimizes the re-lacing, I do wear a skirt and shirt over the top so nothing shows and I am not shocking the neighbors :)
I tried it on, and somehow I fit the waist right but had made the bust too big, better than too small. So I ended up pinning it up about 1 inch at the top and 1/4 of an inch at the bottom. I really wanted to see what it looked like laced up, so I improvised some lacing rings with safety pins, look here. The pictures above were taken with the toile laced up using the safety pins. Here's a close up pic of the front with the improvised lacing.
One thing I was thinking about when I was wearing this mockup around the house was that if I was cooking over a fire pit or a fireplace like they used to this would be a really good dress since there is very little skirt in front, therefore very little to get too close to the flame and have it catch on fire.
Drea has a hypothesis that this would be a good pregnancy dress, so the following pic is for her. In order to test out I took a towel and bunched it up and held it in place where if I was pregnant, I would be rounding out. As you can see there is a bit of a gap in the front were the fronts don't meet even though the skirts do. I think if you were going to make this dress to accommodate pregnancy you would want to increase the amount of fabric in the center front.
After chatting with Jen Thompson about fabric, I have decided to change my fabric choice yet again. I am now going to go with a lightweight navy blue wool, lined with the blue-green linen, interlined with the stripped linen down to the mid thigh,, the guards will probably just be around the neckline like the Augsburger Monatsbilder pic above and will be in a gold colored fabric. This is a relatively rare color combo in German art, blue dresses are in general, but there is precedence, I just have to find the artwork again. I have washed the wool twice in the machine on warm/cool and dried it in the dryer once, it has shed a lot of fuzz and is now a little bit tighter and fuzzier than when I started. It still has a lovely drape though.
May 19, 2003
I am having the hardest time keeping the momentum going on this project, but I have been making progress in the last week.
Last week I got the dress cut out using the patterns that I made earlier. I had to piece the skirt because it was too wide for my fabric. Here is a picture of how I got the piecing pattern. I was thinking of doing some tricky geometry but then I got some sense and just stuck a piece of brown package paper under the edge of the fabric and continued drawing out the angle and length of the skirt. Here's a picture to explain. I had to piece both the front and back side skirts, but it doesn't really show because its all lost in the pleats in the back.
This last Sunday was very productive, I was able to cut out the lining fabrics and get the dress sewn together. Sorry for the dark pictures, its such a dark navy that it doesn't photograph well. What you can barely see is that the hem is about 6 inches too long in the front, and about 7 in the back, plus there is a bit of a train effect going on since I didn't curve the hem of the skirt enough when I was cutting it out. Here's the front , the back , and aclose-up of the pinned front. As you can see in the close-up, I have extra fabric in the top of the front, but the waist has just the seam allowance. I plan on just turning under the extra at the top so that it is alterable in the future. The hope is that I will get smaller and not larger, but its always good to plan for worst case scenarios. The back pleats are done in double box pleats, one on each side of the seams, just like the back pleats in the mockup above.
I was going to trim the hem tonight, but my Mom asked me how much length the petticoat was going to take up, and then I realized, "Ooops, I forgot about that!" So my project tonight is to whip one up. Its going to be box pleated and out of the stripped linen fabric, mainly because I have so much of it and it was cheap. I also need to dig up a suitable sleeve pattern. I think I am going to make them removable, they probably weren't originally, but I would like the flexibility in case we get a scorcher day for the Faire in Eastern Washington.
What you can see in the close up is wrinkles starting from the front side and going towards the back. Its caused by the weight of the fabric in the skirt back. I hope that when I trim the length and get a petticoat underneath it, that this will disappear. Other than the minor wrinkles, it fits really well.
May 26, 2003
The petticoat/underskirt is done and is very comfortable. Its just made out of a straight piece of linen, sewn into a tube and open at the top on the seam side for a waist opening. The center front is unpleated for 8" I really don't need any extra poufy-ness there, I have enough naturally due to genetics. The sides have single box pleats and the back has double box pleats. This puts a lot of fabric in the back, combined with my natural curves, along with the amount in the dress back gives me quite a rear, no pads or bum rolls needed.
Sunday I got a lot accomplished, not as much as I had hoped due to mistakes, but here's the run down.
- Sewed the pleats into stacks and firmly tacked to interlining of dress.
- Sewed the pleats of the lining into stacks and tacked them. I tried to see if I could pleat the lining together with the dress and it just was not working out due to the design of the pleats being part of the bodice. The 45 degree angle just did not make them play nice together.
- Turned the lining and dress right sides together and sewed along the neckline edge and on the flat part below the waist. I left the center front unsewn as I hadn't marked the earlier fitting and I wanted to get a updated sew line. After I got a new sew line marked, I turned the excess into the dress and topstitched along entire neck and front edges.
- I pinned the hem up as best as I could. Do you have any idea how hard it is to tell if the hem is even on a freaking big skirt?
- Since I am going to make the sleeves removable I needed to finish the armholes, so I just turned the seam allowance under and top stitched it on the lining side to make sure that I caught it. Wouldn't you know it., I caught the lining but just barely caught the dress fabric. So I ran another line of stitches on the inside of the previous one, and then ripped and ripped out the earlier line of stitches. Since I had made the same mistake on both armholes, that took an hour and a half. Well that took the momentum right out of the sewing, so I stopped for lunch.
Recharged by lunch I decided to tackle the front fastenings. I ran two more rows of topstitching down the fronts to quilt the fabric and naturally stiffen it to provide a firmer edge for the lacing rings. Then I marked out the placement and machine sewed the rings on like you do buttons. They came out looking nice, so of course I had to try it on. I laced up the bottom set, went up the next set and pulled to tighten. The rings opened and separated under the stress. Bugger! OK, so its going to be hooks and eyes.
So I hunted around for the hooks and eyes that I KNEW that I had. Apparently I don't have them, either that or they are lost permanently. I distinctly remember wandering around the fabric store with them in hand, but I can't remember buying them, so I may have decided to go with the accursed rings instead of the hooks and eyes. Since I needed more dark blue thread anyway, I decided it was time to take a break and head off to the fabric store.
I got the hooks and eyes basted in this evening, they are an inch apart, I hope that's close enough to take the strain and not gap. I hate gapping blouses and bodices.
After the lack of dress momentum yesterday I decided it was time to start thinking about accessories, I have already started on a partlet for this dress, but this needs a head covering similar to the ones above, although the one I really like I don't have scanned in. So I played around with some wool felt that I had bought to make an under cap that would give the right shape. Of course don't have any pictures of my prototype, it wasn't that put together to show in public, but it was really cool to look in the mirror and hold up the picture I was using as a model and have it look identical, except for the dark blue kerchief covering my hair etc....
Basically its a roll of felt that is then steamed into a semi circle and then a second flat piece of felt is folded origami like around the semi circle and pinned with safety pins in the back. Safety pins are my favorite prototyping tool, they don't poke like straight pins. This forms a sort of cap that is then tied on top of a kerchief that is covering my hair. Over this is draped a piece of linen, then a gauzy veil is draped over that. I need to work on the under cap that the felt sits on, the kerchief doesn't cover my hair all the way and it should be invisible.
Later Edit
I put up a diary about how I made my steuchlein and wulsthaube, you can find it here
June 8, 2003
The dress is DONE!!!!
Sorry for the lack of interim updates, I got a lot done in a short time frame and it was hard to keep up.
My mother pinned up the hem for me when I went home for a visit this last week, and I hand hemmed all 5 + yards. The guards are made out a silk twill that I got on sale from Fashion Fabrics Club, and they only go down to just below the waist. I stitched them on by hand using a slip stitch so that no stitches would show.
The apron is made out of linen, and was based on an image of a burger's wife from Augsburg out of Frauen-Trachtenbuch
The hauben has two pieces, an underhaube, which is a linen cap that has a wool felt structure sewn on it, the cap has ties that tie at the back of the neck. The structure is a piece of felt with a folded up piece of linen in the middle third. This is then tightly rolled, steamed into an arc and stitched into place. Another piece of wool felt is then folded origami style over it and that is stitched in place. The outer covering is a D- shaped veil that ties on over the top. Everyone, including the Baroness, wanted to know how I made it. So I volunteered to teach a workshop/class on it. I don't know what I have gotten myself into but it should be fun.
The partlet is not finished actually, it needs a ruffle at the collar, but I ran out of time and decided that it would just go as is since I needed some protection for the back of my neck from the sun.
I wore this to my first ever SCA event this weekend and everyone was very impressed by my clothing. It was in the upper 80's to around 90 on Saturday, I was warm, but not uncomfortably warm. When I got home my Hemd was damp, my corset was damp, but the dress and linings weren't. I am very happy with this dress.
August 10, 2004 - Later Update
I put the sleeves on this dress last fall and it has so far turn out to be a very serviceable dress. The only issues I have with it are these, waistline has stretched towards the back because of the weight of the skirts in the back, which tends to pull the whole thing backwards. I have also made a gollar for this dress and it really makes the dress quite comfortable to be out all day on a 60 degree F day.