what to do?

I’m at the point with my research to feel confident to give myself a break but I’m so behind in getting my North Rhine gear finished including some alterations. I’m deciding which frock to give tube sleeves and which to leave open. I think I could convert my startling orange to a shorter kirtle and make tube sleeves to my red linen.

These later costume albums might overstate brightness but it would make a fabulous version of this:

I just love the orange tube sleeves as they remind me of the tube sleeves worn by a figure in two of Leyden’s paintings:

Playing chess:

Watching fortune telling.

They do appear all over tapestries, longer usually. And oh they are so beautiful.

And there is this sculpture of Saint Cecelia with the same tube sleeves- her left arm goes through the cut, her right arm through the wrist.

Flemish School; Saint Cecilia; Trinity College, University of Oxford; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/saint-cecilia-282323

So much for lowlands, what about the North Rhine.

I cheated a bit in including Anna Tom Ring as she was further into Westphalia.

And the stained glass might have been restored. So much stained glass was dispersed when the French invaded. It’s good that it was all sold off rather than be destroyed but what a reality. Sadly the lack of understanding of North Rhine culture and dress means a lot of restoration inserted Flemish or German details that now wind up informing what we think of dress of the region.

And all of this of course comes back to my timeline being uploaded to wikipedia. It’s a kind of archive of my site that might survive me, and as there is full credit it’s not like researchers who need to date or fix a restoration can really easily find the timeline.

Anyway. I need to fix all my accessories and get photos. I really want to record my modular linen layers as they are based on extant items, and they make life so much easier in terms of comfort and ability to wash different layers differently.

Mantua page updates

So far it’s essentially how I cut my Mantua, in two parts.

The first is an easy draft using modern fabric widths. and the other is how I cut mine on the floor. I originally posted that over on this blog but now that I’m working on the rest of it now (including stays) I really understand what is going on so I’m transferring those posts across, I’m trying to figure a way to make sure people don’t wind up in a redirecting loop. But I also don’t want to erase my original posts as they have little notes that are not needed in the final page.

So I also need to update my page on the drafts of known mantua now that I know I have them all. And I can use photos of picked pieces to create a draft of them. There are far more images of just the trains laid out than picked items but these can be partly inferred from the drafts that are from the same time.

I try to keep my research and my blog separate in part to make sure it’s easy for people to get to any page no more than two steps from anywhere they might have landed. It’s a realllllly old web development principle that’s actually even more important now with devices and the contraction of time people spend even around sites they enjoy. It’s also why my research site uses a really stable but basic child theme with functions straight from Core and so it rarely breaks while this one has several times. I do need to check what current mobile device screen sizes are because this contributes to time to paint and when that includes resizing everything to fit people can see the bare bones before the customisation. Luckily I can do that fairly easily. I can make tables change the number of cells across based on screen width. I don’t think I can plan well for devices rotated to landscape though. But it should work by using the closest size.

I did also find my photos of how I took a pattern of my Effigy stays to convert them to later stays, and I think I found the source I used to do that. I started getting worried I’d misinterpreted it but no. I’m good. I will want to add one of those little panels that curve at the waist. I need to stitch a finer tape around the new set, I would love to use my green leather for my Effigy stays but I do worry about the dye coming out. So I’m using the same heavier tape I originally used.

I really need a day to file allllllll the bones, but as I’ve used the same boning for both, and for my bobbinet corset and probably for my Elsa long line stays I think it’ll go faster than facing steel. I don’t need it for the Effigy and Mantua stays because they are both fully boned. I’m still working out how best to make it easy to wash all of these, and how to line up edges for the intended gowns.

I have two lovely busks with gold toned studs and loops and I really want to use them. I should be able to make removeable panels for everything metal. It’s just a matter of making sure the stitching and edges are secure. My very aggressive corset for my Bubble Gown needs a lot of steel so for that it’s a matter of making the upper binding secure and the lower easily picked to let them out. It might mean avoiding the channels when I sew the binding that’s pretty easy really. I can use the plastic boning as graduating support and for over the bust.