Table of Contents

• Early Days - Fall 2018
• Side Quests Begin - Spring 2019
• Hemd - Spring 2019
• Wool Gown - Winter 2019/2020
• Linen Apron - Summer 2020
• Materials and Tools
• Pleating Machine - Fall 2020
• Silk - Fall 2021
• Partlet / Goller - Spring 2024
• Start to Step Down - June 2024
• Step Down - February 2025

Early Days - Fall 2018

Coming out of a period of poor health, I was looking for a new social group. I found a medieval group through my university, and Athelina was one of the first people I met. She welcomed me, and shared her enthusiasm on many things - most applicably to this dress diary, her fascination with 12th century material culture.

I was joining a project long in motion, but coming to it eager. Athelina shared visions for a future gown based on copying statuary at Chartres. This specific carving is the one that we wound up referencing the most in what will become later sections: (Book photos are all credit to Early Gothic Column-Figure Sculpture in France: Appearance, Materials, and Significance by Janet Snyder)

Also, an example of the side lacing as carved:

She also shared some ponders about how the side of a specific alb was made.

And then I got really sick. The kind of sick where you fall off the face of the earth and basically don't leave a recliner for two months. But you know what you can do while stuck in a recliner? Read. Look at pictures on the internet. Handsew. So I did that.

I explored the medium of turning flat material into two-dimensional textures, aided by The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff. When I was with it enough I spent a lot of time drawing dots and gathering up scrap fabric (old sheets or torn pillowcases) in different ways. I have a particular fascination with taking a woven fabric and then making it look like another layer of woven.

But most pertinent to this story was the sample recreation I put together of the side of the alb soon after.

Side Quests Begin - Spring 2019

But what about wearable gathering, pleating, and smocking? Torn bedsheets are great for seeing what a patch looks like but you can't really put it on you.

Hemd - Spring 2019

The first wearable prototype of these I think I did was actually for my own persona's time period (late 16th c/ early 17th c germanic... distinctly not Athelina's 12th c). Still bedsheets, but this time a nice sturdily woven cotton. I tried using a sewing machine to gather the neckline (long basting stitches, then pull). That's a menace.

I designed a digitized copy of the embroidery from Nicholas Neufchatel's 1567 portrait of Archduchess Anna of Austria (image here courtesy of Wikipedia), and stuck that on top of the neckline.

Then I made dots and pulled together the cuffs by hand. It does make for a nice somewhat elastic fabric in practice.

Wool Gown - Winter 2019/2020

Fast forward to the fall again, and Athelina and I happened to stumble upon some wool gauze which I bought.

Beautiful, like air, and crumples like crazy from hot water.

So, outer garment that doesn't get subjected to washing! Time for a wearable mock up of that 12th c gown.

Notice that the fabric is so airy that you can see the floor through it? Yeah, we'll come back to that again.

There are supposed to be folds over the midsection. This fabric is puffy and doesn't really take creases as you can see clearly from this sample. Those "pleats" are going to need some convincing.

Pleats over the shoulders, pleats along the side of the body. Then casing over it and lacing rail... It looks like a giant poofy mess cause it is, but under tension that somewhat sorts itself out.

And then... for the sleeves. The upper sleeve is smocked.

Does drawing the dots and putting in the gathering lines take a long time? Yes. Does it look pretty once all gathered? Yes.

And then the even longer process of smocking. However, it's now winter of 2019 and I'm sick and stuck at home again, so... carry on with the time intensive handsewing.

It does look cool as it transforms at least.

You can't very well ask stone statues to lift their arms for a moment to check underneath. I went with the part under my arm being flat:

And then a month later, for An Tir's 12th night 2020, I gave the gown a test run. This is what the sleeves look like, and the side lacing of the dress.

You learn things from wearing your mock ups. From this ensemble I learnt: 1 - Fabric stretches over a long day, especially linen, especially if not straight cut. If you've got an underdress with a generous floor length skirt, expect it to have a bit of a train by the end of the day. Be careful stepping backwards. 2 - Smocking if even partially under the arm will flatten. Avoid putting it in places it will get squashed. 3 - If you noticed that hand-dyed-indigo-silk bleeding colour like crazy as you wove it, don't expect having washed the belt again to keep it from still rubbing off yet more blue. 4 - Loose weave, airy, gauzy fabric doesn't want to hold small stitches. You may have noticed that it was incredibly hard to anchor your stitches well when what you were sewing was open enough to qualify as like 80% air, but you'll prove it when your sleeves pop stitches like popcorn through the day.

Linen Apron - Summer 2020

Now it's spring / summer 2020 and the pandemic has everyone home. What better time to do more smocking? How does a large panel do with just dots and no initial drawing threads? Here I'd found some linen on clearance that was meant for towels. What better fabric for an apron than towel linen? It washes up soft and sturdy and absorbant and... is also actually a rather loose weave. But it's so much less air than gauze! No, it's still loose weave. Loose weave = difficult to hold smocking stitches. Did I make the thing anyways? Yes. Do I now intend on ever smocking very loose weave fabrics again? No.

Materials and Tools

Pleating Machine - Fall 2020

Smocking is time consuming. There's really no way around it. But what if you had a machine that could speed it up? Well, in fall of 2020 I finally found an old pleating machine on ebay with a suitable price tag.

Silk - Fall 2021

A year later, fall of 2021, Athelina and I did a bulk purchase of silk fabric. That included 26.5m of blue silk. You'll see that silk later. I made some other things with some of my part of that silk purchase in the intervening years, but nothing terribly relevant to this story, so let's hop forward some more years.

Partlet / Goller - Spring 2024

I still hadn't used the pleater for a full project yet. Winter/early spring of 2024 was the time to fix that. I'd take another crack at a 16th c shirt, but this time just a partlet/goller. Beautifully soft cotton napkins I'd found on clearance on the way back from an event with Athelina some time prior, was the material of choice. This is the size of the gament prior to pleating:

You thread all the guide needles: Then you wind the fabric through:

And it comes out very condensed. It was hard to feed the fabric without it migrating all over the place as you can see from the 'hem'...

Then I tacked all the folds together, one at a time, with sturdy linen thread And to really keep things in place, sew a back panel on. Then fix the uneven hem.

This is how the pleats drape with a bit of fussing.

A few finishing pieces and another wearable mockup done. The pleating machine is functional.

Start to Step Down - June 2024

At June Coronet 2024, Kheron and Athelina became the Heirs to Tir Righ. I offered to help their upcoming reign. The first task asked of me was help with Athelina's step down garb. So in June of 2024, work began on the actual gown.

The sleeves on the statuary aren't plain diamonds, so work begun with trying to figure out a suitable scaling and pattern.

We decided on this alternating every-other guide thread pattern. Panels for the upper sleeves were gathered through the pleating machine. It's good to wind the fabric around something for easier threading through the machine. The edges of the silk here are also serged because the smocking is going to be a lot of handling the fabric.

Note how much more easily this silk takes a crease than many of the prior fabrics. The lines of smocking took me about a half hour each once I got going, and there were 30 per upper sleeve.

The lower sleeves were pleated flat instead of through the machine. This involved folding one line at a time, and then ironing, and then tacking the pleats in place and more ironing.

One the panels for the upper sleeves and for the lower sleeves were done, we started in on the rest of the dress. The bodice also had to be gathered, and the skirt was going to be crinkled by Athelina with guiding gathers at the top.

The binding was self bias tape.

Slit neckline, shoulders to be pleated in slightly. Athelina had found a slit style neckline construction method she liked by EzaBella in the 12th Century Enthusiasts facebook group, so that's roughly what was done here.

Twill tape to reinforce the edges, and then coverings and lacing ladders put on...

Starting to assemble the pieces:

This is the difference between a panel with the guide threads in and out:

Components look odd as you put them together. Several fittings in short order to try to mash things together... The fabric has a surprising amount of structural integrity, especially treated as it is.

Bookending this project in illness, we're wearing masks while I'm recovering from a cold here. Athelina had found a method of adding an elbow gusset through the 12th Century Enthusiasts group that she wanted to use. (Shortened Chainse Documentation by Helewisa de Frejous / Eleanore Drummond, February 2015) She put the last of the sleeve pieces together, and then we were at her step down court!

Step Down - February 2025

Leaving to join the hunt.