What I've Learned About Making Renaissance Period Clothing

" Whatever the approach, we must not overlook the fact that for many people in sophisticated societies, dressing in fashion has been and still is a delightful, if not frivolous, occupation pursued with great enthusiasm in spite of satirical comment on all sides." - Janet Arnold, A Handbook of Costume

As I stated before, I wasn't historically accurate. Cost and time were big factors in that, as was, well, desire. I did not desire to handsew anything. That's just me. I did though, try to be as accurate as possible despite hemming everything on my machine. I didn't use any patterns per se, but I did use a bunch of tutorials on different websites. So here's the low-down in case you ever get an incredible urge to make Renaissance period costumes like I did. And I don't necessarily not recommend it. I had a lot of fun, actually.
First of all, kids during the Renaissance dressed exactly like the adults. Pretty much a chemise and then an overdress or gown. What you see Ana wearing here. The main thing I did differently in my dresses, is that I didn't use boning. The fact that I would have to do something called "make casings" for the boning just scared me completely. Now that I'm a little more seasoned, I would definitely go for the boning next time. I found a site that showed how to do it perfectly, but I didn't bookmark it since I wasn't doing that. Silly me. No boning is why Ana's bodice is so wrinkly. And like I said, I didn't have a pattern, so I basically cut it out by pinning it on her. She was actually pretty patient. I found out the cheapest and easiest way to do boning is using electrical cables bought from a hardware store. Random Fact: the term "blue-collar" came into usage because back then, blue was an easy and cheap dye to make so most of the servants and apprentices used it for their clothing. Ana's been indentured to be a milk maid, as you can tell by her choice in colors. Leo and I are of course, pocketing the income.
This is the dress I copied to make Ana's and Elena's dresses from the Featured Attyre website. Elena's was the second dress I made and it turned out much better. It doesn't suffer as much from the lack of boning. Also I used one of her Sunday dresses to kind of trace out a pattern. That helped a lot as she was not patient at all with pinning. (I used chocolate for bribery). I also added interfacing to all our bodices, by the way. Random Fact: Girls over the age of 13 were required by law to wear a hat. Elena's okay that she took her hat off since she's only one.
On to my dress or as it's actually called, a kirtle. I used this dress diary to make my dress. It turned out fairly decent I think. The material was off the dollar a yard bin at Walmart, and I think it's twill, but I'm not sure as it was listed as "assorted material". I am also very wrinkly from lack of boning and the lacings here are all askew because, well, it's difficult to lace yourself up after breastfeeding in a public place. These are the dresses I was inspired (read copied) from.
I almost hate to post them, because then you can see how much nicer looking theirs are. But oh well, it was my first time sewing anything more difficult than an apron, so a lot comes with experience I imagine. Besides adding boning, I wish I would have made my muffin cap a little fuller. The tutorial I used for making mine and the girls caps are from this excellent website. Oh, and I used this one too. I used that first site to make our chemises and Leo's shirt as well. Wonderful, wonderful site!!! And completely historically accurate.

It was rather difficult to make my dress. Remember how I didn't use any patterns? Well, for my bodice I traced a fitted shirt to get a round about size and then imagine me pinning the bodice on myself and trying to check if it looks right in front of the bathroom mirror. I would have taken a picture, I looked so silly, but I wasn't quite modest. Also the skirt, which according to many sites I read, is the easiest part took me forever. Mostly because of something called cartridge pleating.



This is how cartridge pleating is supposed to look. It makes the dress fuller, so if you don't have many petticoats you still get the in vogue silhouette. I tried to cartridge pleat my skirt. I should have not bothered. Why? It has to be completely hand sewn. I really wanted that silhouette. Hmm... Also this is the number one thing I learned about sewing these last two weeks, nothing turns out right once it's past 1:30 AM. I did the first part of hand sewing three running stitches through my skirt late, late at night. Or early morning if that suites you better. Next morning I discovered I had turned the edge the wrong way so the fabric which had a definite right side and wrong side was wrong side out. Oops. So I pulled that out. I sewed the three running threads again. And then discovered that no matter how I gathered the skirt, the thread was going to show. This mattered extremely because I used white thread and my skirt is green. I chose white thread because it was my most heavy duty thread, which they said was needed also. So after all that hand sewing I ended up machine sewing my skirt on. This is the tutorial for that though, in case you're insane like me and want to try cartridge pleating. Random Fact: Wool doesn't burn, but blends using wool and other material does burn quite magnificently. So if I was wearing a wool dress while tending the stew boiling over the fire and a spark flew on me, it wouldn't matter much.And now on to Leo's costume. First of all, I never made his breeches because I ran out of time. But I think I still will just because I'd like to practice making pants of some sort. Not with a codpiece however. (You can look that one up yourselves.) I absolutely love his hat. I think it turned out the best of everything I made. I used this tutorial. I'll probably use that site for the breeches too. It's hard to find sites with men's clothing, by the way.

I sewed one of Leo's cuffs on his sleeve on inside out (it just looked nicer on one side than the other) and when I told my mom that, she was horrified that I didn't unpick it and redo it. My mom is definitely a perfectionist. I am not.

The jerkin I made from this site. Fairly easy you would think.

Wrong!! This is what happens when you sew the lining on, including the sleeves and then turn it right side out. On the right you see how the sleeve should look (that's after I unpicked it) and on the left you see how it is before I unpicked it. Notice the sleeve goes inward. Umm, I'm still not sure why this happens this way. I guess I'm not very good at spatial orientation. After that it was pretty easy going though. The jerkin is completely reversible by the way, it can be worn grey side out or black side out. The black cloth is cotton duck cloth to give it some stiffness and the grey is twill. Leo used the heaviness as one of his excuses not to wear it, claiming he was hot. (Like I wasn't in three yards of heavy fabric?!?!) Random Fact: Black was a color only the wealthy could afford because a true black would require many dyeings. Hence the handsome peasant you see pictured here is wearing his jerkin grey side out.

Anyway, here's another link that has a whole list of links about Elizabethean costume making. It was very useful. And I wish I would have found this link earlier in my costume making as well.
So I'm certainly not ready to make this yet. But at the Renaissance fair the innkeeper and his wife at the Dead Duck Inn did give me their email address and wrote down mine because they were very impressed with how historically accurate I did manage to be and they wanted to know if I would be interested in joining their history club of some sorts. I'm not by the way, but I was still faltered they asked. They talked completely in character with the prithee and grammercy etc, it was a bit disconcerting to talk to them actually (was I supposed to talk back like that as well???) so now I'm mad that I didn't ask to see a bit more of their costumes and how they made them. I've read enough now that I could tell they were exact in their accuracy (all made of real linen and wool, wife had blackwork embroidered on her collar, etc), and a few things I just couldn't pick up from the websites I found. Well, anyway, off to bed for me. Aren't you excited for my next episode of "What I've Learned About..."?