After sleeping on the kirtle problem, I got up yesterday and cut into my green linen.

I’m rather disappointed in the linen – it seems to have been ‘cottonized’, because the threads I pull from it won’t do for sewing.  They break in about two inches.  So I had to use standard cotton/poly sewing thread.  That does mean the sewing goes faster.

It also goes faster when you let yourself use a sewing machine for basting.

I don’t regret it.  Here’s what I had at the end of the day.

That’s a back bodice, folks, with a center back seam, and diagonal shoulderblade seams, a la Brughel.  All handsewn and flat felled.  The skirt is pleated on – they’re half-inch pleats.  Those pieces left and right that cross the back waist seam are the right and left front, which I’m accomplishing by draping.  Because what I want is…


these pleats, which I’m calling pregnancy pleats.  Durer liked this dress style – he put it on an allegorical figure in Coats of Arms, a drawing reproduced teensy-tiny in A History of Private Life, which I just finished reading, and enjoyed very much.  Lots of good stuff in there.


See, pleats under the bosom, tied buttons pulling the v-neck together, and this time, a Smocked German Hemd.  I imagine my new garb for RUM will look more like this.

Well, except the kirtle is sleeveless.  The Hemd is wearable, though Not Quite Finished, and I’ve been testing it.  I wore to work outside two days in a row.  I need to pull the neckline up EVEN MORE, because it’s too low in the back.  Which may require resetting the sleeves…sigh.  I’m glad I prefinished all the pieces.

But the outside test was a success!  The mosquitoes in particular, seem to be confused by white baggy linen, and I didn’t sunburn through the fabric.  (Another reason to pull the back neck up.)  It was very comfortable, and I’m going to make another, with the type of yoke shown with the red dress, above.  As soon as I figure out how it works.