and the 1520s court gown has started

My main project for this year is to make a gown suitable for the Swedish court in 1520. 2020 is the 500th anniversary of the massacre known as the Stockholm bloodbath. For English-speaking people here is the wiki article about it, and for Swedish-speaking people I hope you follow my other blog where I'm basically live blogging the events that led to the bloodbath. I have talked for a long time about making a gown that would be suitable for coronation festivites, that were later turned into the massacre. There are not a lot of pictures of Swedish gowns, but I have posted some of my thoughts about Swedish fashion in the time period already.

I have two main inspirations for the courtgown.

This is my main inspiration, but since you don't see very many details I have decided to use this is as my other inspiration.

It's an altar piece by Lucas Cranach, and the saint to the left is wearing a gown and headpiece that I think is very similar to what can be seen on my main inspiration. This altar piece is from 1506, so a bit earlier than 1520, but I will still use it. I also like the simplicity o the gown, it doesn't look like a stereotypical Cranach gown, with a lot of slashing, lacing and fabric poufs.

For material I'm going to use the leftovers from my gold handmaiden gown. The silk velvet that I didn't manage to dye to the correct colour for that project, but I still loved the colour. That also means that I have a very limited supply of material, so it will be interesting just how much I can get out of the remnants. The skirt will definitely involve a lot of piecing, but I hope it is doable at all.

That being said, I have started on the bodice for the gown. I actually did that more than a year ago when I cut out the main pieces to the bodice from the velvet, and interlined them to a very thin linen fabric. Now it was time to sew them together.

Here is the interlined velvet and the lining of linen. Now I soon discovered that it was a problem that I had draped the outer fabric and the lining with more than a year apart.

It turned out that the lining was a lot bigger than the outer fabric. I decided to hope that I had been more careful with the fitting of the outer fabric and cut the lining to the same shape. The next thing was to decide the closure of the gown. The problem with the inspiration images is that none of them show any kind of closure. When I cut out the outer fabric I planned to do a standard front closure, but now I decided to try with side lacing, that would be hidden under the arms.

I sewed the front pieces together and pinned it on to my kirtle that I put on my dress for. I sewed the shoulder seams together and decided to fit it on my body, since my dress form is problematic in the chest area. I couldn't fit it on myself. I wasn't able to pin anything together under my arms, and then keep it there while I held the other side closed. It was also really problematic to get in and out of bodice. Even with the problems with fitting I had a distinct feeling that it was too small.

Some more thinking, and I decided that for simplicity a front closure would be easier anyway. So I unpicked the centre front seam. Since I was redoing most of the seams anyway I also cut out two strips of fabric, interlining and lining that I added under the arms, to make it bigger.

In the end it has taken me the whole weekend to make the bodice, and I think I have sewed and ripped every seam, except he backseam, at least twice. So much frustration.

In this light I also realize that the extra strip has the nap in a different direction. I was so careful to avoid it (I thought)

There are definitely things that I would have done differently, and that's a good reason to not start a project and then leave it for more than a month. I learnt a lot about interlining and avoiding buckling in the fabric when I did the Ladey Poe ballgown. I would definitely have done it differently than how I have added it now. Still without a stiff bodice, and my body shape, the bodice won't be perfectly smooth, I'm hoping that the skirt will add some weight to the gown and help with smoothing out the bodice.

Next step is to either make the skirt, and use whatever fabric I have left to hopeully get a pair of sleeves out of it, or the other way around make the sleeves first and see how big of a skirt I can get out of what's left of the fabric. I also need to decide on how I will do the hidden front closure, since I don't want to have any visible lacing in the front. Decisions, decisions, decisions...