Here we have a set of 13th century gowns made for Líadain ní Dheirdre Chaomhánaigh, who in April will be the 24th Queen of Aethlemearc. Yes, I am now pimping 13th century clothes to the Royalty. :) The outfit consists of a linen underdress and a navy blue overdress in a 85/15 wool/poly blend. The long seams on each dress were machine-sewn and hand finished.
Side Seam w/ Applied Finishing Strip
The underdress is made in the style of Nockert Type 5 tunics, with triangular gores set inot the side seams and square gussets lending fullness to the sleeves and body. The sleeves themselves are cut straight all the way to the wrist. I had to make two sets of sleeves; I tapered the first set and they ended up being too snug below the elbow. Rather than altering them, I chose to just take out the too-small set and make new ones, because the original set were just the right size for me. I also made a mistake when trimming down the seam allowance on the side seams, leaving myself with no seam allowance to fell over the raw edge. I solved this by simply applying a strip of linen over the raw edges on the side seam. This worked pretty well, and I’m considering using this seam treatment more often. All of the hand-finishing on the underdress was done using linen thread.
Neckline finished with bias tape
The overdress is based on Nockert Type 2 gowns. It has gussets and gores in the side seams and set into the center front and back seams. I used large gussets and set the gores very high in order to lend a lot of fullness to the top of the tunic, as we see in most 13th century illustrations. I also used double gores in the sides in order to make the skirt very full – the final hem is approximately 160″ around. The sleeves of the overdress are very full at the top (thanks to the extra-large gussets) and very tight below the elbow. The neckline is a keyhole style with a very short slit. I finished the neckline with a bias tape made from the same fabric as the gown. I mitered the corners where the round part of the keyhole meets the slit. I did not, however, attach the tape using the same size seam allowance as I had used in constructing the gown, so the seam finishes do not line up perfectly, which makes the inside look a little funky. I do like this method of finishing necklines, but next time I’ll correct the seam allowance size mistake. As with the underdress, I used applied strips to finish the side seams. It did not work as well with this (soft, drapey) fabric as it did with the (stiffer) linen. I did all of the hand finishing with cotton thread.
The Finished Product
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