just when you thought the photography couldn't get worse...

Oh but it can. First, here's the picture of the surgery I did on the kirtle neckline to give it an arch (so I can ultimately use this as the foundation for a Tudor outfit too). Here's the old version. I've also sewn up the straps, added a pretty wide (maybe about 15 inches) band of patterned fabric around the bottom edge on the back half of the kirtle, made a set of very plain, slightly curved sleeves, and added attachment points to connect said sleeves with the kirtle. But none of that is worth getting dressed up to take a picture of, so you just get the neckline. Incidentally, how the heck did the Tudor women get their chemise necklines to line up so nicely with an arched kirtle? Did they have a special chemise for each dress? 'Cause I seem to be approaching that.

 

I also started work on the loose gown to go over this kirtle. Many thanks to Julie for a link to a full-length picture of the original, here. I started with the sleeves, since those are the tricky bit. I studied PoF, I studied TT, and then, you know, I decided to do whatever I wanted. Here's the top half of the sleeve. I decided that this would be stiffened with two widths of the ever-handy electrical ties. A half-inch cable tie runs through the long curved channel and 4 quarter-inch ties run perpendicular (more or less) to it. Oh - and can you believe I took a picture of grey fabric on a grey cutting board? Yes. Brilliant.

 

I arranged for intersecting channels so that the plastic ties could form a sort of skeleton, and tinkered with which to put on top for the smoothest effect. Here's what the basic shape of the sleeve will be, except that the top will be gathered down into the armscythe. The original actually achieved this by some cleverly curved pieces. I'm lazy.

 

Here's the inside of the proto-sleeve. It'll have a lining to hide all the ugliness. Also, you can kind of see here where I zig-zagged for the dagged edge. I decided not to cut that until I'm ready to bind it.