Sue (and other large busted ladies out there!) Here's a picture of my one and only tunic. It's linen, I need a better undergarment (is a kind of old cotton bra... it was ~95 degrees and at an outside demo from 10am to 6pm)
http://pics.livejournal.com/thalionar/pic/0003rrct/g10 One of the things I do (and I saw this *somewhere* with some sort of documentation, but can't find it now!) is make the main panels (front and back) the width of my shoulders, then make flat topped gores that go from my armpits (where my chest starts to become "breast") and goes all the way to the hem. You can see the line of the gore going over the curve of my breast. I then have a triangular shaped gusset at the top of the gore that goes down the arm to about the elbow, and the sleeve is tapered from my elbow to my wrist (well, on this one, actually tapered to about my fingertips as I keep forgetting when I'm not wearing it to trim the sleeve to length). As you can see, the armscye is only about an inch down onto my shoulder. If I'd had more fabric, I would have done center front and back gores. -Irmgart On 7/15/05, Sue Clemenger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It's more likely to be a complete *lack* of fitting, at least with the > folks wearing problem tunics that I've seen. It's as if people think > tunic, and equate that with a shapeless potato sack, or an over-sized > equivalent of a mundane tee shirt. Seems to be more prevalent, or > perhaps more noticeable, on larger people. And being one, myself, I > sometimes wonder how much of *that* is a combination of lack of sewing > experience combined with years of mundane/modern experience with > ill-fitting off-the-rack clothing. ;-( And, of course, having the wrong > fabrics (or less-than-appropriate fabrics) doesn't help any, either. > The other too-large/unfitted thing that I occasionally see is a strong > tendency to using a houpelande without any kind of supportive underlayer > (kirtle, gown, cote, whatever). Looks like a big, sloppy tent on just > about anyone of any size in that instance. > > And speaking of armscyes, if I'm not careful, and do some moderate > tweaking of my body-fabric, I end up with the armscyes on my tunics and > rectangularly-constructed garments down around my *elbows.* I am > exceedingly large busted, and end up with *all* kinds of extra fabric > coming off my shoulders that was needed just below to cover the bust. > (And yeah, I know all about underarms gussets <g>. They only help so > much!) I finally learned when, working on a shift to go with a 16th > century Flemish outfit, and cross-referencing with some of my 18th c. > stuff in books, that I could carefully remove slanted wedges on the > sides of my body piece(s) from front underarm up over the shoulder to > back underarm, and the finished result not only fitted *much, much* > better, but the slanting was completely invisible unless you laid the > finished garment down and looked for it. Although I suppose it would > also show slightly if the garment fabric were striped. It's a solution, > though, that your average non-costuming joe might not think of. > --Sue _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
