Revenge of the Stitch IX (04/2024)

There's something very funny about my having my eyes closed in the nice photo of the group

We won! I lead a six-person team (me, Magister Ishmael Steadfast Reed, Lord Erasmus Taylor, Gentle Helena of the Farlands, Gentle Eleonora of Roxbury Mill, and Gentle Anthe of Roxbury Mill) in creating a 16th century Venetian gown with all the trimmings, every stitch of which was hand-sewn on site! I'm wildly proud of my team, who were all rockstars of the first order who rose to the challenge gleefully and with a thimble at the ready! 

Ok, to back up a second: this is a 24-hour sewing competition held by the Shire of Spiagga Levantina - I was part of the Shire of Roxbury Mill's team for ROTS VII, for which we hand-sewed a 16th century Venetian sailor's ensemble for Niccolo, and I had enjoyed it enough that I had batted around the idea of running a team. I had too much going on to make it happen for ROTS VIII, but a lot of bits and pieces came together to make it possible for ROTS IX!

Our ensemble consisted of:

• Red leather turn shoes (Erasmus from a pattern by Lord Mattheus DuPuy and with sole leather donated by Lord William of Glencoe)

• Wool twill hose (lead and pattern by Ishmael, execution by Ishmael, Helena otF, and Eleonora)

• Knit garters (Erasmus)

• Drawers (team effort)

• Camicia (team effort, embroidery by Eleonora)

• Sottana/Gown (team effort, pad stitching by Ishmael, sleeves and assembly by me)

• Partlet (me, Erasmus)

• Pearl necklace (me)

• Beaded Belt/Girdle (me)

My goals, in order, were: 

1. Everyone enjoys the experience (ROTS can be A Lot, and I really wanted to make sure that everyone walked away having enjoyed themselves, rather than exhausted and regretting their life choices. This meant making sure everyone knew they should get as much sleep as they needed and wanted, making sure everyone remembered to eat and drink and walk around, and that if someone got even a little frustrated they took a break and, when they were ready, swapped activities)

2. We make a complete and completed and fully documented outfit (we had a decently complicated outfit and goal, but it was one that I was fully confident that we would be able to achieve; in order to make that happen, I was clear - and occasionally firm - on what things we were definitely aiming for doing, and which things were stretch goals)

3. Winning (always nice, but external validation is an impossible goal, so I tried to make sure we were focusing on doing our best and making an extremely excellent outfit, and the rest of the competition will do whatever they're going to do and the judges will do whatever they do and there's nothing we can do about either of those).

Inspiration

I wanted to lead a ROTS team, but I hadn't particularly planned to have it be 16th century Venetian - I'd done that for ROTS VII (for which I'd done a decent bit of the documentation, in addition to a bunch of the sewing), and doing it wasn't my first thought. But that was what Anthe wanted, and I absolutely wanted to make sure that our model was getting something they actually wanted to wear! Once the 16th c Venetian bit was decided, though, and Anthe and I figured out what they wanted and what they didn't care about, I spent a lot of time staring at portraits, trying to choose between various options. Did we want to have a narrow lacing opening, or a wide one? A pointed waist, or round? What additional bits would bring the ensemble to life? I knew I would have a six-person team, and that I wanted us to hand-sew everything, but hadn't decided much after that. 

I eventually settled on this self-portrait by Marietta Robusti (with Anthe's ok!) - her ensemble is less embellished than many others, which gave us some guidance on where we should focus our embellishment efforts. Honestly, I think we stuck pretty close to the portrait! The fabric is obviously pretty different, but otherwise the main changes are that we added a girdle (though we can plausibly say that Marietta's arm may be blocking one!), that the barragoni on the sleeves are a little fancier than hers, and that our partlet is plain rather than netted. 

Documentation

For the curious, our documentation is here! I particularly recommend checking the last few pages - we have links to all our extant examples and supporting artworks!

From the Ground up

• Red leather turn shoes (Erasmus from a pattern by Lord Mattheus DuPuy and with sole leather donated by Lord William of Glencoe)

  • I had very little to do with this - Mattheus patterned them at practice ahead of time, and then it was all Erasmus, all the way down. I had been conflicted on what kind of bits and pieces to have, in addition to the sottana and camicia, but once Erasmus mentioned shoes, the option of shoes + hose + garters opened up, and at ROTS VII we had done hose and garters, so I knew they were doable for the event and plausible for the time and place. We had a few different ideas during the planning phase - at one point they were maybe going to be covered in velvet, and they were nearly green leather, but someone (Anthe?) had red leather of the right weight. That turned out to be the linchpin for the color palette - the fabric for the sottana is green with bits of blue and orange, so the red wasn't quite there but it did fit in nicely. We then picked up the red in the embroidery and the belt, and that really pulled the outfit together in a way I was delighted with!

• Wool twill hose (lead: Ishmael, execution: Helena, Eleonora)

  • Another one I had very little to do with! Ishmael lead these - they were patterned ahead of time during practice, and then we had Ishmael and two sewers working on them for the first few hours of the event. 

• Knit garters (Erasmus)

  • I was originally going to do this, but ended up passing it to Erasmus so I could focus on the dress bodice and getting it connected to the skirt. I had provided burgundy wool and knitting needles (5mm, I think?) but he'd brought Tudor knitting needles (maybe 2.5mm?) and got through them in about three hours.

• Drawers (team effort)

  • The drawers! I loved these drawers! They were by request from Anthe, and we tracked down period Venetian depictions of drawers being worn under gowns, in addition to the extant pair of drawers at the Met. The extant ones are heavily embellished, and while degree of embellishment wasn't feasible in 24 hours, I wanted us to have *something*! At ROTS VII we had been told that our ensemble had needed more embellishment, and I took that to heart for ROTS IX. I had some commercial lace that was a decent imitation of period bobbin lace, and we tied it with fingerloop braid (originally going to be by Erasmus, but passed to Ishmael... I don't remember why, but we had a lot of passing around of tasks) and it had colored eyelets, and during the event Erasmus suggested we could add Anthe's initials ("ARM" for "Anthe of Roxbury Mill"!), which was executed by Eleonora; the drawers were assembled primarily by Anthe.

  • I do love period undergarments - they're really essential for making a lot of the outfits fit properly, but they can also really add to the experience of wearing the outfit! 

• Camicia (team effort, embroidery by Eleonora)

  • Oof, this camicia was nearly the end of us! There are so many long linen seams, and every single one of them had to be sewn shut and then felled. I kinda wonder if we would have been better off with French seams, which would have been faster, but on the other hand a half-completed felled seam is still a seam, while a half-completed French seam does not a garment make.  I think Helena of the Farlands was the major contributor on this, but a lot of people took turns on it. 

  • Special shout-out to Eleonora, who did some lovely scarletwork (on site!) for the cuffs, which was another spot of red that really tied things together! We worked together to pick out a pattern (from The Second Carolingian Modelbook!)

• Sottana/gown (team effort, pad stitching by Ishmael, assembly by me)

  • Oh man, the sottana! This was obviously the pièce de résistance, and there's a correspondingly large amount to say about it!

  • I did the documentation for this one! There are a lot of different options for this (waist shape, lacing gap, shoulder decoration, etc) and I was determined that we were going to stick as close as possible to a portrait, because that was going to assure everyone (mostly me) that we had picked a historically accurate combination of features. This self-portrait by Marrietta Robusti was our inspiration, and honestly I think we stuck to it pretty well!

  • We used a commercial pattern (Margo Anderson's Italian Lady's Wardrobe) but graded aggressively to fit Anthe, and I (somehow) found time to do a mock-up of the bodice and a sleeve before hand. Once the updates to the pattern were done, it was quite a good bodice fit, which I'm genuinely delighted with! I've had issues with fitted garments before, and was nervous about taking responsibility for such a crucial part of the ensemble, but I also was decently sure I'd done it right - score one for self-confidence!

  • I used the one-part sleeve option, rather than two-part - two-parts seemed like added fuss (an extra seam, pieces that could easily get confused), and while I think that was the right choice for ROTS, were I to make this dress again (which I might, it's a lovely pattern) I'd do the two-part version - it creates a really nice bend in the arm and would have been more fabric-efficient. 

  • We went back and forth on how to lace it, but ended up using the method Margo Anderson suggests - a pair of ribbons are sewn about 1/2" from the lacing opening on either side, with a series of evenly spaced channels  perpendicular to the lacing opening, then a ribbon is ladder-laced up the opening using the channels. In retrospect, we should have spaced the channels closer together - the lacing isn't actually entirely parallel, as you can see in the photos from the event - but it did give the right look, entirely without eyelets! 

  • We also went back and forth on whether to bone the bodice; I think for ROTS-purposes it's fine that we didn't, but the more I look at the portraits, even the ones with wrinkling (like Bernardino Licino’s Portrait of a Lady) aren't wrinkling in the same way. This could be partially posture, but at this point I think I would want to do one with a little boning (as well as pad stitching) because that might be the better way to get those really clean lines.

  • Speaking of pad-stitching! Much appreciation to Ishmael, who was perfectly agreeable when I stuck him with that! I knew he had more experience with it, and also that it would take a good bit of time, and as team leader I wanted to have a little more flexibility to check in on my team (half of whom were decently new to the SCA, and definitely hadn't participated in ROTS before!)

  • One of the things we did - entirely justifiably! - get marked down for was a fit issue with the skirt - I had connected the skirt directly to the edge of the bodice, but using a V-shaped bodice meant that there was extra fabric immediately below the bodice on both sides. Before the event, I had wondered about this, but had imagined it would work itself out - I should have trusted my instincts, because the first try-on had an impressively Edwardian bustle at the back, and a similar issue at the front. During the event, I reset those sections of the skirt, and that helped a lot, but at the first opportunity I'm taking the sottana back and redoing it, keeping the upper edge of the skirt level and then sewing down the bodice Vs over it, which I have a decent amount of confidence should deal with it once and for all.

  • Speaking of things I'm going to fix once I get the dress back - I *really* wanted us to have all the seams finished, and we did, but boy oh boy some of the felled seams on that skirt are ugly. One of them had four of us working on it during the last two minutes of the event, and I tied off my knot on it as they were calling "time". They're all finished! But it's really ugly. It's partly the fabric's fault - it's got a lot of floats in the back, and some team members (very reasonably!) struggled with felling it. When I take it back I'm going to French seam it (by machine).

• Partlet (me, Erasmus)

  • I somehow hadn't fully thought through how incredibly long it would take to hem all that linen! It's a small item, so it didn't feel like a big deal, but it's all hem!

  • I wish we'd had the time to make this a netted partlet. I didn't really think we would, and I documented it as a plain partlet, but if I'd had an extra hour I would have knocked that out and it would have been *chef's kiss*

• Pearl necklace (me)

  • I had originally felt a little silly when I added this to our project plan, but I'm glad I did - so many of the portraits have women wearing these very short pearl necklaces, and it really helped give Anthe the "I just stepped out of a painting" look!

  • They're glass pearls, which I have extensive citations for, but because they're not drilled, they can't be knotted in the same way that pearl necklaces should be. So they're just strung (well and carefully! I did it right!) and finished with a toggle clasp (because I couldn't find a single source on period necklace clasps, much to my annoyance)

• beaded belt/girdle (me)

  • This is a bit that I hadn't planned on adding, but Erasmus suggested it, and I'm so glad he did! Most portraits have a metal belt/girdle of some variety, which is both not in my skillset and not really a good fit for ROTS, but I did find two with beaded belts, so I felt I could run with that. Both of them have a single bead-type (or a single-type and a spacer), but I couldn't find any beads that were sufficiently eye-catching (at least not in the quantity I needed, at a price point I was happy with!). The compromise was large red glass beads, interspersed with more pearls. The belt itself is just a long length of beaded "silk" (polyester imitation) with a hook (which I made, but not on site) on one end, which then comes around to grab onto itself at the front. The beading "silk" I used was a plausible period option, but I'm absolutely going to redo it in beading wire before I give it back to Anthe - the "silk" is cute, and flows right, but isn't up to the rigors of modern life! I was decently worried it would pop apart before the judging was over!