On Tue, 17 Jan 2006, Lena wrote:

>   I'm on my first attempt of making a gothic fitted dress. It's for a
> modern ball, so I'm taking a bit liberty with historical correctness.
> It's basically a MS Bodleian 264 dress, with a shallow wide neck
> opening and tight buttoned sleeves. The sleeves are supposed to go
> down over the knuckles with a small flare, which IIRC are a later
> development.
>    
>   Now, for my problem. What would be the easiest/best/authentic way of
> cutting the sleeves? I'm thinking either to cut the sleeve in one
> piece, with a flare at the end, and then insert a gore in the middle
> (i.e. where the thumb is when wearing the dress) to make the flare
> symmetrical, OR make an ordinary sleeve first and then add a (two?)
> curved piece for the cuff.

I haven't looked up your source, but do I gather that you're saying the
source doesn't have knuckle-length sleeves, but you're adding them because
you like the look for your purposes?

I can't remember the last time I tried these, because most of my
bread-and-butter GFD sources don't have them, and I find them a pain to
wear.

If I were doing them for my purposes, I'd follow clues from my source.
However,
If I were doing them just for show, and not worried about 
historically correct methods, I'd try the following:

1. Build in the flare to the sleeve
2. If that doesn't work, add a small gusset as you describe
3. If that looks wonky, make it a separate attachment as you describe.

I should note that I always create a first sleeve for someone as a mockup,
which I baste into the armhole and fit on the body, so it would be easy to
test various options. I try not to cut into my my real fabric for the
sleeves till I know where I'm going. I will cut with impunity on body
pieces, but I have found so many ways to screw up sleeves, I'd rather make
my mistakes on something I don't mind wasting. And then it saves me time
in the long run.

--Robin

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