As mentioned in the write up for the basic pleated chemise I made, one of the many things I wanted to make for the SCA was a full outfit based on the portraits by Lucas Cranach. My favorite of his paintings is 16th century one of Emilie of Saxony to the right. I think that outfit is gorgeous, and wanted it for my own. I looked through numerous paintings, and decided I would largely recreate this specific dress. This outfit, like most from the time period, does not have an extant example. Since the bottom of the dress is not pictured, I figured I would just make a pleated floor length skirt with a band or two of gold at the bottom. So, *how* to make a dress that has a plunging neckline down to the waist with open lacing up the front being the only visible support is the question!

I thought I would make a white supportive underdress. This made sense to be white since then I could have it show through the lacings at the front, and it looks like the woman in the photo above does have white around her middle. Since I made the fancy bloused, pleated chemise to wear under all of this already, I decided to make the supportive gown sleeveless (it is hard to tell if the sleeves in the above photo are part of her dress, or another layer).

I used a basic pattern I had drafted for myself previously, but instead of lacing in the front per usual, I moved the lacing to the side, and left the front all in one piece. I didn't have quite enough medium weight white linen to make a floor length supportive dress on hand, so I decided to add a red strip/kick panel to the bottom. This seems completely reasonable, since now I have something other than white down by my feet. And, just to balance it out, I added a little red to the top neckline too. The dress admittedly has some machine sewing on it... the two long seams, one down each side, are done by machine, as well as attaching the red stripe to the bottom of the dress. That being said, all seams are hand finished/felled, and there is no visible machine stitching anywhere. The eyelets were also done by hand.

The dress is laced closed with a red lucet cord that I made.

All that was left now was to make the skirt. I kind of lucked out here. The fabric width of my velvet was the exact length I needed to go from my waist to the floor. As such, I just took the remaining 5 yards of fabric in one long strip, and that was my skirt. I first hemed the bottom (by hand) so that you couldn't see the selvege. At this point I was really daunted by the amount of sewing ahead of me to add 2 brocade stripes to the skirt, so, I cheated. Both stripes were added by sewing one side by machine with the correct side facing the velvet, then folding the stripe over, tucking the raw edge under, and hand whipstitching the other end. So, the dress was almost fully made by hand... it just has those few seams you can't see unless I lift my skirt up. I then sewed the sides together, leaving the top few inches open. Once the 5 yards of skirt was finished, I divided the skirt into 30 even sections (I have a 29" waist), and rolled each section into a rolled pleat that was 1 inch wide. I do this by eye and go back and adjust as needed. Who needs math. While I know that there is no proof for rolled pleats in period, they give the correct look, and there isn't proof that they weren't there either. I really do think it is the best option for the job. I then hand attached the skirt to the bodice (the selvage on this edge came in handy. I mostly sewed that to the bodice, with the flocked area of the fabric butted up to the bottom of the bodice. The vetical seam in the skirt lines up with the front edge of the left side of the bodice, since this is wear the opening to get in and out would be easiest to hide. For the front section where the bodice is open, I bound the pleats in a waistband. There are a few example in his paintings that show a waistband after all. This waistband attaches on the open side with the slit using two hooks and eyes (those are totally period and I love it). For proof, please see the pictures to the left of closeups from a lovely embroidered jacket (Arnold, Patterns of Fashion 3, p 51)

The bustflek was a rather simple creation. It is a rectangle of beaded gold fabric, backed with a piece of red linen. It is pinned to the inside of the overdress with straight pins to hold it in place over the bust. It is roughly 5"x14". For the design, I looked at a lot of the busflek patterns. They seemed to have a common element, so I simplified it in my mind, and then made a somewhat freehand drawing with pearls (the silk was in an embroidery hoop when I did this). I had 3 sizes of pearls, and decided to use all of them to add some dimension to the design. I am actually rather pleased with how it came out.

So... headware. The goldhaube has its own entire paper in the documents section. If you want more information, go there. It is fully hand sewn and beaded with an insane amount of pearls in a latticework pattern, with gold work in the front. It is an odd design, but works well.

The hat I made was beyond simple, and based on a hat a friend owns. I should have perhaps made it more "hat" like, and less plate like, but it is what it is. I will likely make a split brimmed hat in the future to replace it. For the hat, it is made of the same red velvet and silk brocade as the dress. I purchased a 14" metal hoop to be the base of the hat. From here I cut a ~8" strip of velvet that was slightly larger than the circumference of the hoop. I sewed the 2 short ends together so that it fit snugly around the circumference. From here, I ran a long basting stitch along both long ends of the fabric, so that I could gather the edges towards the middle of the hoop. I tied these threads in the gathered position, and left them where they were. From here, I cut out 2 circles in the red velvet that were slightly larger than the hole in the middle of the gathering, and a third circle out of brocade. One of the velvet circles was hand stitched onto the gathered fabric on the "bottom" side of the hat, while rolling the raw edges under, to cover the hole. With the other piece of velvet, I cut some holes into the top and did a reverse applique using the brocade circle beneath it. Once finished, this circle pair was hand sewn onto the "top" side of the hat. I added ostrich feathers by literally just shoving them into the hat under this seam, since the pleats made nice little channels to do so. Finally, I made a gold 5 strand fingerloop braid and sewed it to the bottom of the hat so it could be tied onto my head.