> I'm very tempted to cut my fabric in strips 56 cm wide, then use the > pattern almost as is, once I solve the waist width problem. Any tips? > Insight?
This is how I have cut mine :) I folded my fabric in half and cut in the fold, which is sort of like cutting 2 single widths of period silk. As my waist to floor length is proportionally quite long I wound up having to piece my front panels as well. As mentioned I tried cutting the fronts narrower (to just the width of the cut fabric) but it sat very badly on my hoops and so I gave up and just continued with my proportional method. I took the sloping sides of the pattern piece and extended the line up and down until I wound up with a triangle with the apex on the CF and CB lines. I then look my waist to side back measurement and found where that would sit between the CF and sloping lines. Then I took my waist to floor measurement and went from the waist line down the CF line and from waist down the sloping line. Then connected the two in an arc. For the back I started in a similar manner but worked out the CB line as a ratio of the CF line and ditto for the waist. I then followed the line of the hem and chopped some of the train off! I lobe long trains but I decided that long enough was long enough. I even made scale diagrams of the original to match the 1/8 patterns in PoF (and the c1600 Spanish girl's dress in Payne's book) and compared proportions of front and back panels and decided that yes, the back needed to be wider and that I needed to scale it up to fit me. While the Alcega patterns don't show piecing in the front skirt panels the extant items can. Also the Spanish girl's dress has a back panel wider than the front as does the Dorothea Sabine and another little girl's dress in poF. The Eleanora and Dorothea Maria though have narrower back panels than the front. My Valois gown with the full hanging sleeves only took 8m of 112cm wide fabric and as mentioned with a long waist to floor length that's quite impressive, especially with that train! I adpated the farthingale pattern too. I don't know if you have noticed but all the skirts look very long compared to the bodices and appear to be a similar length to the farthingale. For this reason I really recommend not putting in tucks but rather sew on channels as we know was done. There are plenty of texts in Corsets and Crinolines and Hispanic Costume to show the use of contrasting or matching channels. My farthingale is currently in the process of an Extreme Makeover (much like the home show it will not have any part of the original left ;) It's going to be bright lime green (if possible) in a silk twill I bought in pistachio green, and have wine toned velvet casings if I can budget it. There will also be enough to make a matching corset (corpo baxo/corpino) though they tended to match the kirtle- thus why Alcega has them in the same pattern quite often ;) Michaela de Bruce http://glittersweet.com _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
