> What would be a good fabric to use to make a houpelande? > Is taffeta too stiff to use? This would be for a man's, > thigh length and perhaps bag or wing type sleeves. > Thanks for your input, in advance.
I've had really good results with wool flannel (_not_ coat weight), which drapes very like the pictures. But I'm a sucker for pretty fabrics and have made them out of brocades with reasonably good results. All but one of the upholstery brocades I've used have the problem of being slightly too stiff so that the sleeves and hem aren't flowing quite the way you see in the illuminations and in the portraits. The too stiff ones were similar to the fancy brocade tablecloths you see in Macys, if that helps at all. My guess is that taffeta will be both too light (flopping around in the breeze) and too stiff to do bag sleeves well. One can get away with a lot with wing sleeves if you make them on the pattern that Cynthia proposes (http://www.virtue.to/articles/laurel/laurel_constr.html shown in green about 2/3s of the way down), and especially if you line it with something heavier. By the way, I had amazing results using Cynthia's bag sleeve schematic (unfortunately, I don't have any pictures... But it was great!) her article on it is http://www.virtue.to/articles/bag_sleeve.html. -sunny _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
