12th century dress for the “12th century wedding clothing project” – sneak peek

The recent weekend my sister Noel kidnapped me and I enjoyed some very nice sewing free days with her and other friends at the local Concave convention. But now I am back again and busy working at my 12th century dress for my 12th century wedding clothing project. 😀

It feels like I have done an endless amount of stitches till now but I enjoy seeing more and more of my new 12th century dress getting finished. There are still many stitches left until the dress is finished but with every stitch I make the dress looks more and more complete. Yes, it finally starts looking more like a 12th century dress and less like just a big pile of silk fabric. *lol*

Well, I admit it, spending several days at the Concave convention messed up my sewing plans for the “12th century wedding clothing project” a little bit but it was totally worth it. Now I will try my best to catch up as fast as I can – I anyway don’t have much time left till our 12th century wedding ceremony at Gulf Wars in March. 🙂

And now let’s take a look at the latest progress concerning my 12th century dress. My sweetheart took a photo for you during the last fitting before I left for the Concave convention – enjoy! 😀

I apologize for my rather angry face expression but it’s my “my sweetheart just drank the last coffee and didn’t start another pot of coffee” face. 😉

Unfortunately – due to the rather short time left until our 12th century wedding at Gulf Wars in March – I didn’t take many photos of the process so far. But please don’t worry, I am going to make many more 12th century dresses like this in the future. Then I will be able to show you all my pattern details and steps how I assemble and finish my dresses.

However, I still can give you some details about this dress and what I did so far. First I started by cutting a very long body part which is about twice the height from the ground to my shoulders with the width of half of my chest measurement (measured inhaled + seam allowance added).

Like usual I made my small two “helping lines”. First one line of simple long stitches with white thread to determine the middle of the fabric. This very first line of stitches – the top line – indicates the highest point of the shoulders and helps me to center my sleeves.

Then I made a second “helping line” – starting from the middle of this first “helping line” – going in a 90° angle to it to both sides. This second “helping line” is a great help when it comes to working at the neckline – regardless if I am making a round or a keyhole neckline.

Though this are just two simple lines of stitches and it’s a little bit more work to do them, this two “helping lines” really help me a lot when I am working at my husbands or my own clothing and really deserve some attention. I think they could also make your 12th century dress construction easier.

I hope this sounds not too confusing to you – if yes, please don’t worry, I already started a short posting about this two “little helpers” and will post more about them as well as some photos as soon as I find the time to finish the posting about them.

In the next step I measured the circumference of my upper arm. After cutting out the body panel the leftover fabric remaining on the other side had just the right length for my sleeves and I used this fabric to cut out my sleeves. With the help of my first “helping line” across the future shoulder line I was able to center and pin my sleeves quite easily and sewed them both to the body panel.

After sewing both sleeve parts to the body panel I started finishing the seam at the bottom of the sleeves. Before continuing with the seam of the body panel underneath the sleeves, I put the dress on for another fitting and re-pinned the body panel to achieve a much tighter look. Ok, I admit it, there is more to this part then just a little bit of re-pinning to achieve this very tight look without lacing but it would go beyond the scope of this posting – if you like, I can tell you more about it in another posting. 🙂

Last but not least I finished the side seams and put the dress on again to control the fit. And as you can see on the pictures above, the dress looks nice so far. I wish I could show you more details of the sewing but this lovely dark blue silk hides all details on photos taken in artificial lamp light very well… 😉

I hope you enjoyed the short sneak peek at my new 12th century dress project – more pictures will follow as soon as possible… 😀