Dress Diary: Building a German Working Class Dress 1580-1600

  

   

The Bodice:

The bodice was drafted using the shapes of my current pair of bodies because it fits well and is from the correct time frame.  I made a few changes to make it more appropriate: removed the tabs, raised the neckline and changed the angles of the straps.

Once that was done, I cut out one layer of linen canvas for the interlining, one layer of linen canvas for the lining, one layer of the orange medium weight linen for the fashion fabric, green linen for the guards and yellow linen for the guard piping.

I have been wanting to try out padstitching the layers of the bodice to see what effect they have in regards to stiffening the bodice.

Bodice Back: Padstitching on half only, see how it changes the drape of the fabric.

Bodice Front Half: The padstitching is smaller and tighter as it rounds closer to the front area in order to give more stiffness.

The bodice pieces are basted together and sewn on to see how the padstitching is working out.  In the following pictures, the left side is padded and the right side is not.  It seems that it is helping to smooth out the wrinkles at least a bit.  The waist is still a bit long in these pictures as well, so shortening it to my natural waist will help remove more wrinkles.

Once the bodice was finished being padstiched, I sewed the lacing rings to the interlining layer and finished the edge by catch stitching the edge back to the layer.

I added a small strip of the canvas to the inside of the outer fabric to add additional stiffening and to alleviate some of the pulling that happens with the tension of the lacing rings.  The strip was first basted to the  edge of the fabric, then folded back and sewn into place.

The interlining/lining layer was then placed within the lines of the fashion fabric and the edges of the outer layer were double folded over the inner layer and stitched down with a fell stitch.  I attached the side and shoulder seams by placing the right sides together and using a flat fell seam finish.  Finally I attached the guards.

    

The Skirt:

The skirt was drafted using a gored method based on the Alcega Tailoring book drafts.  I used a two to one ratio for the waist as I have found that it allows enough to do knife pleats without adding too much fullness. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures…but I do plan on doing a post all about patterning skirts in the near future.  I did not line it because I wanted to keep this lightweight and cool.  It was stitched together by placing the right sides together, and sewn using a smallish running stitch.  The seam allowances were finished by folding over and secured with a whip stitch.  The hem was then done using my padded hem method detailed Here.

The guards were cut out as bias strips.  The green was cut as a four inch strip and the yellow was a 1.5 inch strip.  The yellow was folded in half, pressed and then sewn to each edge of the green.  Then I pressed it into a curve before applying it to the skirt.  I stitched it down in the seam line using a small fell stitch. Finally, the skirt top edge was finished by double folding and then attached to the bodice with a whip stitch.