Introducing Lettice Knollys

I'm so pleased to announce that this coming summer, I will be playing Mistress Laeticia Knollys (Lettice or Letty to her friends) at the New York Renaissance Faire!  Letty was a fascinating woman: 1st cousin once removed to Queen Elizabeth, she came to court at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign as a Maid of Honour while her father had a seat on the privy council.  Strikingly physically similar to the Tudor queen with a pale complexion and red-gold hair, Lettice was thought to be a possible bastard grand-daughter of Henry VIII with his mistress, Mary Boleyn.  Lettice was known for being quick-witted, fashionable, somewhat morally lax and very flirtatious.  The Faire takes place in 1560, when Lettice was either 16 or 20 years old (historians disagree on her date of birth) and unmarried, living with the other Maids of Honour in attendance on her Majesty.

She became notorious later in life for her rumored scandals and ostentatious lifestyle and was banished from court when she married Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and Elizabeth I's lifetime friend, companion, and rumoured paramour.  Although the two fierce red-headed women had gotten along well in their youths and Lettice had been a "favourite," they never repaired the rift and remained distant long after Dudley's death; Elizabeth once referred to Lettice as a "she-wolf".  By all accounts Dudley adored his wife, and was known to be very devoted to her and treasure her council.

Although Lettice never returned to court, her son Robert Deveraux (Earl of Essex) eventually became a favourite of the aging Queen, though he hardly deserved the honour and was executed for treason after launching a failed coup and attempting to "rescue" her Majesty from the pernicious influence of her councilors and seize the crown.  Lettice outlived all three of her husbands, her two daughters, her sons, and the Queen, eventually dying on Christmas morning, 1634 at the impressive age of either 91 or 95.  In compliance with her wishes, she was buried next to Robert Dudley and they rest together at the Collegiate Church of St. Mary in Warwick near Kenilworth Castle, where they had lived together.

How to play a notoriously stylish and alluring court lady in her younger years?  I'm thinking a big fancy gown is in order.

Cartridge pleats!  Since we all know that Beauty is Pain, I decided to use a historically accurate technique and hand-sew the pleats into my skirt.  This involved very carefully marking my fabric after inserting a layer of baby flannel under the fold, then putting in two rows of running stitches.  That's 24 feet of hand stitching!  

But every moment is worth it when you pull up those gathering threads and see the lovely, rounded, fan-like result.  This is also how Elizabethan ruffs were made.   

I marked the edged, center, and half-way points with safety pins before gathering the pleats to ensure that they would go evenly onto the waistband. 

Here are the pleats pinned to the waistband; each one had to be individually hand-sewn to the band at top and bottom, which took at least 4 hours.  My fingers were very sore from forcing the needle though the baby flannel and tightly-woven cotton sateen.  

My mannequin doesn't wear the bodice particularly well because she lacks the necessary squishy bits.  Although the mannequin is actually smaller than me, the bodice appears too tight to close.  

Everything looks classier with hems.  I love how the cotton looks in low-light; it really brings out the teal / green tones. 

Finally, I put the gown on for the first time! It's still far from complete, but now you can clearly see the overall shape and proportion.

Feeling like a princess!  Or, more accurately, a Countess-to-be.  

Slow Progress

The good news is, I've been commissioned for some work at a well-acclaimed local theatre!  Yay!  The bad news is, this means I haven't been able to work very much on my Elizabethan gown.   I'm super excited about my work at the theatre, because I'm learning some new skills and have two exciting historical tailoring projects;  a 1927 ladies' wool plaid suit, which I completed last week, and a 1810 yellow 'Spencer' cropped jacket and matching dress, which I'm working on now.  Although I won't post pictures of my commissioned work here, you will eventually be able to see these projects in my official portfolio at samanthareckford.carbonmade.com.

Although work was slow these past few weeks, it didn't stop completely!  

First things first, I drafted a pattern for the gown bodice, and had a sitting over my corset.  The tricky thing here is that my mannequin doesn't wear the corset very well (lack of squishy bosom) so I need to fit it on myself, which isn't the most convenient.  Once my sister gets home from college, I am going to force her to be a fit model, as she is almost my same size.  

Once I corrected the bodice pattern, I cut if from both a nice dense cotton twill and the dyed blue fashion fabric.  I sewed boning channels into the twill, and cut the steel bones to match.  I hadn't planned for the bodice to be supportive without a corset, just nice and smooth, but it's turning out pretty hefty.  Hooray?  

My fabric is big and my table is small!  To cut out the skirt piece, I rolled it Torah-style onto two tubes.  This fabric continues to be confounding, looking completely different under diverse lighting conditions. 

Sewing a strip of baby flannel onto the top edge of the skirt, to support the cartridge pleats.

I sewed my gold trim onto the bodice pieces before flat-lining them to the twill, so that the stitches would be sandwiched between the layers.  I also wanted to get the trim on early so that it could finish nicely into the cording and I don't have to worry about fraying.

Once everything was trimmed and lined, I sewed my seams together and drafted some straps, which will mostly be covered by my sleeve puffs.  

The bodice back, with cording in the seams.  This is more theatrical than historical, but Lord have mercy, I love how it looks.  

This... almost looks like a garment?  Needs more piping.  I'm pausing on the bodice to get the skirt going, because I want to fit them together before finishing any hems.  

My Spanish Farthingale, Myself

With the help of the internet, I set out last week to construct my second piece of shape wear: a Spanish Farthingale.   I found it difficult to discern proper dimensions because of 1. the dearth of full length paintings of women during this period (circa 1558) and 2. the fact that I am approximately a full 8 inches taller than the average Elizabethan woman.  The practicalities of modern theatre also took their toll: at 5'10" there is a good chance that I'll be the tallest women in a given scene (I often tower over men, too) and I don't want my already large presence + voluminous skirt to completely over-power any tableau that I join.  So my goal was be as historically accurate as possible while maintaining proper proportions and trying not to overwhelm everything around me.  Here we go!

During my design process, I've been been taking inspiration from this portrait of Bess by Steven Van Der Meulen.  Called the "Hampden Portrait," it is thought to be the first full-length portrait of the Queen, painted in 1563.  This is just the period I'm looking to re-create, so it's a great resource.

My trim placement and partlet design are also influenced by this painting

What we've got here is an exaggerated trumpet shape, which (unlike most iterations of the Spanish Farthingale) appears to be flared at the bottom.  Liz is also probably wearing a modest bum-roll to get that almost horizontal lift of the skirts around her waist.   I suspect that the flare shape is not actually from her support garments, but from the heavy weight of her voluminous skirts doing an elegant sweep- farthingales at the time seemed to end several inches above the ground so that the wearer could walk comfortably, and the Queen's skirt is widest right where it hits the floor.

To begin, I checked out these instructions from the Elizabethan Costuming Page: http://www.elizabethancostume.net/farthingale/period.html.  Those are based on Juan Alcega's description of how to make a farthingale, which (rock star costume historian) Janet Arnold also studies in her book series.

 I didn't use any of the same measurements or finish my waistband the same way, but I took Alcega's example and began by creating a gored skirt, with four triangular gores attaching to rectangular front and back panels.   I picked a light-weight, faux silk Polyester Nightmare (tm) fabric from JoAnn's for my farthingale because I wanted it to be 1. lightweight and 2. slippery.  I've had problems before with petticoats 'catching' and sticking to my overskirts, so I wanted to make sure that my farthingale would be nice and slick and let the petticoat slide over it naturally.  So far, there hasn't been a downside to this fabric choice, but we'll have to wait and see how it holds up to wear!

I chose to finish my waistband with elastic, as opposed to the more common snaps or ties, because there will already be so many bulky things around my waist (petticoat, bum-roll, overskirt) and I didn't want any more strings or stiffened waistbands to get tangled in.  I wanted to make my boning channels from grosgrain ribbon, but the closest color match at Michael's was satin.  So satin it is, and I hope this won't come back to haunt me.

The gored skirt on my mannequin.  We were having family visit, so I dressed the form up to prove that I am actually up to something, not just making a huge mess.

I had extra fabric, so I decided to make a ruffle!  This took forever (36 yards, serged on both sides and gathered) but I am glad that I did it- I really gives the garment a more 'finished' look, and I hope the ruffle will keep the overskirts from collapsing too much below the lowest hoop.  My skirt is about 3.5 yards wide at the bottom.

Poly nightmare fabric is your friend.

My boning is from corsetmakingsupplies.com and came in a 12 yard roll, which was just enough for my 4 hoops.  I didn't cut it initially, because I wanted to experiment with the size of the bottom hoop.

    

The farthingale with one hoop, worn with my bum-roll and the moss silk petticoat.  It doesn't look quite right- I think I'll be slimming down the sides of the bum-roll.  I can also see the bone pushing against the petticoat and causing an ugly line, which is a big no-no. 

Well, here is that portrait-appropriate flare shape, but it looks like a mess.  Not quite there yet.

Progress!  Here is the skirt with two boning hoops in it:

The left side is sticking out way further than the right- the is solved by sliding the hoops through the boning channels until they lie more evenly.  Eventually, when I decide on a final shape, I'll tack each hoop in a few places to keep them from shifting.  I also chose to stagger where the boning channels open and the hoops connect: this is so that if the hoops are weaker at their connecting spots, the whole skirt won't buckle along one line and turn into an oval or an egg-shape.

The skirt with all the channels sewn, but no hoops inserted.  This thing is huge- I had fun wearing it around, pretending to know Flamenco dancing.

Four hoops! I'm leaving the channels open and unfinished for now- I want to be able to keep adjusting the size. 

Four hoops, with the petticoat on top.  I'm very happy with how the petticoat is falling at the hem- nice and elegant, not caving in or collapsing at all.  I'm not so sure about the shape, though- it's more like a 1860's bell than a 1560's cone, but not offensively different than the portrait.  I'll keep fiddling around.  

I'm glad that I chose to only use 4 hoops, instead of the more usual 5-7.  I can't see the channels at all under the petticoat (yes!) and it's hanging relatively naturally.

It must be the hoop skirt influencing me- while I worked on this, I began to think of my character as an Elizabethan Scarlett O'Hara.  Although I haven't been officially cast, my director mentioned that one possibility would be Lettice Knollys, the Queen's cousin.  Historically, she was a social climber with fairly loose morals who was very popular with the men.  I imagine Lettice as flirtatious, tenacious, prone to jealousy, and a fabulous dresser- just like Scarlett!  She liked to marry up and steal other people's boyfriends.  In the recent BBC mini-series "Elizabeth; The Virgin Queen" Lettice even tries on the Queen's gowns and jewelry when no one is looking.  A 16th century Mean Girl!

Bring Up the Booty

It was a busy week in Elizabethan-Costume-Land- I finished hand sewing the binding on the inside of the stays (the outside seam is machine stitched), dyed my gown fabric under the expert tutelage and supervision of a master dyer (Ms. Tiffany L.) and whipped up a bum roll.  Things are really starting to move along!

Dying is messy!  I wanted to keep the colour of the fabric very similar, while making it a bit darker and richer

Sample swatches:  original fabric is on the right, with progressing dye formulas going left.  These are darker than the final outcome because they have been rinsed but not washed, so no almost no dye at all ran off.  

The final fabric, compared to an un-dyed swatch.  It's amazing how different this cotton sateen looks in different lights- right now I'm looking at it right now at at dusk under electric light, and it looks very green.  Sometimes it seems peacock blue, sometimes turquoise, sometimes aquamarine.  Very versatile stuff!  I'm going to run the entire bolt through another wash n' dry cycle before cutting it, to reduce the chances of the colour bleeding or rubbing off.  

Although it's a (relatively) small difference, I think that the dye job took away the "icy" quality that the fabric originally had, especially in the sun.  The new colour is still bright and bold, but not pastel. 

Trying on my newly completed corset with the bum roll!  The green petticoat was a stitch-and-dye project from years ago- an effort to reclaim some very wild looking mustard yellow textured silk.  I'm wearing it over a vintage (possibly 50's? 60's?) single hoop petticoat made of net, which was found in my great-grandmother's attic.  I'll be making my own Spanish farthingale in due course, but wanted to try on some of the layers with the existing hoop to get a sense of how the proportions will work.

Booty booty booty, rockin' everywhere.  

My bum roll is made of cotton (left over from the stays) and stuffed with poly-fill from the craft store.  I may decide to take some of the stuffing out (it's currently very ample) but it may well compress and deflate with more wear.  I based the pattern on a diagram in Jean Hunnisett's wonderful book Period Costumes for Stage & Screen: 1500-1800.  Jean created the costumes for the fantastic BBC miniseries "Elizabeth R," which were largely based on portraits and are considered some of the most accurate representations to be put on screen.  Her book series in an amazing resource, and even includes patterns for some of the designs used in the production! 

New Sketch

The biggest pitfall with constructing my own designs is that I always end up second-guessing myself.  After doing quite a bit more research and watching the fabulous "Elizabeth R" mini-series from the seventies, I've changed my mind about the bodice decoration.  There is so, so much documentation for "T" and "V" shaped trim on bodice fronts, but not really anything to support my previous stomacher-style design, which I fully admit was inspired by Sandy Powell's designs for "Shakespeare in Love", which are absolutely gorgeous but not exactly accurate.  Sandy has stated frankly in interviews that her designs match the tongue-in-cheek, romantic comedy feel of the movie and weren't meant to be exactly representative of the era.  I agree design choices, and the final product is gorgeous, but I think for this project I'll be erring on the side of historical accuracy (with provisions for the needs of modern outdoor theatre, of course) and move away a little from that inspiration.

Here is a doodle of my new idea for trim placement on the bodice.  I may or may not have done this during a staff meeting at my day job, please pardon / ignore the notes and type.

I know that is wasn't customary to have loose hair during this period, but I want to be a pretty princess damnit and ain't no one can stop me!  At least until my directors tell me otherwise. 

Corset Progress!

I've been working on and off for the past week on a "rehearsal corset"- a simple pair of stays made of inexpensive calico-print cotton and boned with jute twine and zip-ties from Home Depo.  I wanted to make an informal corset that could stand up to washing and hard wear, made of inexpensive materials so that I won't feel guilty submitting it to a lot of hard wear at the Renaissance Faire this summer.

Since this is my fist time drafting a corset, I've been proceeding pretty carefully and learning a lot along the way.  After making a muslin mock-up, I was satisfied with the basic shape of my pieces and ready to start.  The trickiest part of the cutting process was pattern-matching the front pieces-- the front opening is cut off-grain to allow for the difference between bust and waist measurements without having to resort to darts or princess seams, neither of which were used in the 16th century.

Front pieces, matched as accurately as I could manage

Once I had all my layers (fashion fabric, muslin interlining and corset coutil lining) I flat-lined them together and then sewed in the boning channels, using my machine foot as a guide.  Here are all the pieces with the channels sewn in,

Next, I basted the side-back seams together.  

Time for hand-bound eyelets!  I made 58 of these puppies, using a tailor's awl and button-hole thread.  It took my about three days, for a total of maybe 12 hours.   I was watching the 1971 "Elizabeth R" mini-series with Glenda Jackson as I sewed, so I wasn't being very efficient.  

Hand-bound eyelets, seen from the wrong side of the fabric.  These were actually pretty fun to do, although my fingers got sore from tugging the needle through the coutil.  I'll need to add a few more later, to attach the shoulder straps in the front and add points where my petticoats can attach to the stays. 

I drafted a simple set of shoulder straps once the eyelets were finished and I could lace the bodies onto to my dress form.  Now it was time to add the boning.  I used a double strand of jute twine, inserted with a bodkin, to bone the back and side-backs so that the bodice would provide support without being uncomfortable stiff.   I have very good posture (partially resulting form a spine surgery several years ago) and didn't want too much support.  The front is boned with 14inch plastic cable ties, the ends of which I smoothed out with a file meant for acrylic nails. 

With my boning in place but the corset still unbound and unfinished, I wore it around to an afternoon to make sure that I was happy with the level of stiffness, the front length, and so on.  Although the fit was generally pretty  good, I needed to scoop out each armscye (no one likes getting poked in the delicate under-arm area!) and adjust the front dip a little to be truer to my actual waistline.  At the first fitting, I liked the length but the tabs needed to be cut about 3/4 of an inch higher. 

Looking good!  Here are the stays this morning, after my pattern alterations.  

Now that I am satisfied with the shape, I'm going to do final trims on the boning, trim out the seam allowance, and bind this sucker up with bias tape.  

The Blue Elizabethan Dress- Introduction

I began daydreaming about this project back in January, and knew that I wanted to do a 'French Gown' in they style of the later 1500s, in either light blue or blue-green (which was called "watchet" by Elizabethans).  The full ensemble is going to consist of the gown as well as a shift, pair of bodies (corset), bum roll, fathingale, petticoat, forepart, partlet, removable sleeves and a miniature hat.  This will be my second large scale, independent historical design and production project- I completed an ensemble in the Florentine style of the 1490's back in September,  2014.    

Photo of my design rendering

 Planning stage is done, including purchasing fabric, and I began drafting a corset pattern yesterday.  I've decided to create a version of the famous "Effigy Stays," made of corset coutil and silk taffeta, with additional back lacing so that the stays will fit despite potential future weight change.   Here is my schematic sketch, which may or not prove to be incredibly wrong (it's my first time drafting from scratch!)

And a sketch in my notebook of how I'd like the corset to look.  I am going to make my shift with wide sleeves so that the gown can be worn without over-sleeves on the hottest summer days.  I'd still like a square, low neckline so that the gown can be worn with a partlet (for everyday wear) and without (for fancy occasions, evening, etc.)