1490’s Under Gown Mock-up v1
This was Zanetta’s first mock-up from a pattern Vittoria di Carduci helped her make. It was 2 layers of duck with the boning channels, another layer of duck on top, cotton lining, and then a fashion fabric of greenish-blue linen with embroidered flowers in pink. She learned a lot during the process of this piece although, in the end, it was not a successful fit. It remains unhemmed and will probably never be worn as it is significantly too big in the bodice.
In previous efforts, Zanetta had flat-lined her fashion fabric to a single layer of duck, then bag-lined with cotton to produce the bodice. This process is much more modern and was not used in this effort. Instead, multiple layers of duck with boning– cable ties– were employed. The lining was then flat-lined to this to provide lamination of lining, duck, boning, duck, duck that were all sized exactly to the pattern with no seam allowances. The fashion fabric was then cut larger than the pattern and wrapped around the laminated structure and hand sewn down.
The straps were separate pieces from the bodice front and back. They were two layers of duck, lining, and then the fashion fabric wrapped around and stitched down.
The straps were then whip stitched to the bodice front and back, making the bodice one continuous piece, open on the sides.
Lacing loops were then added to both sides on the front and back of the bodice. Doubled pearl cotton was used and the blanket stitch was employed to create strong loops that would be able to maintain the tension from lacing the bodice.
Next, the skirt panels were cut. The front panel was cut to be 3 times the length of the front bodice piece. The back skirt panel was cut to be 3 times the length of the back bodice piece. A walking gore was added at each side that was cut from a 45-inch wide panel cut on the diagonal. The seams were flat felled.
The skirt was hemmed at the top edge and then knife-pleated from center front to center back with the pleats falling open to the back. The center front and back had a box pleat.
Once the pleats were secured down, the skirt was whip stitched to the bodice. At this point, it became obvious that my skirt panels had been slightly mismeasured which required a double pleat just off-center front on both sides on the front panel and then another double pleat just behind the side seams on the back panel.
At this point, I was able to try it on and get a solid idea of the fit of the bodice. I found that the bodice was about 2 inches too big in the front and another 2 inches too big in the back, even when fully laced. As correcting this issue would require removing fabric from both the center front and center back as well as both sides and I had NO extra fabric, this project was set aside and the pattern modified with what I had learned from the fitting. The bottom hem and hem stiffening were never finished.