So I made a sedate little dress with just a teensy hint of a bustle for Stephanie last fall to go under this here little blue dress. By “a teensy little bustle”, I mean something that sticks out roughly 24″ behind her. You know, no bigs… So what’s going on under there?
16 CommentsTag: Support Skirts
If you’re looking for a way to draft gored skirts for your costumes, this is the eBook for you. The method shown is one I’ve worked out over the years, in an attempt to find a possibly period way to create a gored skirt. The instructions can be easily adapted to create a pattern using nothing more than a straight edge and notched tape.
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The Spanish Farthingale is a stiffened underskirt that gives Tudor and early Elizabethan skirts their characteristic conical shape. You can make a very passable one with a full length gored skirt pattern (either a commercial A-line skirt pattern, or one you draft yourself), a lot of ribbon or bias tape, and boning.
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I’m totally obsessed with the Alcega farthingale. I mean, I’m always a little obsessed with it, because it’s sort of the great rock candy mountain for costumers, right? But I’ve been working on an eBook about drafting gored skirts for period costumes, and I thought I’d throw in a little bit of a redraft for the Alcega farthingale. Oh, silly me… I went back through some of my old notes (mostly questions, like “Why aren’t the gores at the same angle?!”), and I’m struck by how much there is to know about the darn thing. So I’ve been in obsessive research mode since yesterday evening, and I’ve learned some new things….
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I wrote this a little while back. It’s simply a chart of hoop sizes to mimic the shape and angle of the Alcega farthingale. The chart is indexed by waist size and waist to ground measurement. The full story of all the maths used to create this chart is available here.
13 CommentsThis is an excerpt from a research paper I did a while back. The paper itself is 40 pages and covers 4 centuries of support skirts and corsetry. I figure it’s more digestible in smaller chunks. Please note: my regularly scheduled writing style has been suspended in favor of something more palatable to the hardcore academia types. Special thanks go to Stephanie for her proof-reading skills.
And now for Everything I Know About 16th Century Support Skirts…
2 CommentsThis is a corded petticoat, meant to be worn in place
of a farthingale under middle class costumes. The base of the skirt is
cheap cotton broadcloth, and it is stiffened with 3.8″ cotton upholstery
cord filling held in a channels created with 1″ wid…
With the help of my lovely assistant, Janey (currently seen
modeling my absolutely excellent “Henchwoman” shirt (thanks, lynn!)), this article
will fulfill a need that does not exist (because drea already wrote the article
on it, b…