Current mood:	blah
Current music:	The Killers: Romeo and Juliet
Entry tags:	13th century, sewing

The gown of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia
I decided to try to cheer myself by writing a little bit about my portfolio work for the craft science as a minority subject. I'm actually quite proud of it, considering how little time I had to do it. Of course, I didn't get in, but that's quite alright since they only accept two students per year.

Sooo, I decided to do the gown of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia. I had all kinds of fine words written in my portfolio about the aims and objectives of this project, but I won't go too deep into those here. The most important part of it was that I was not in any way attempting to do a reconstruction or a copy, in stead I would call my dress an adaptation of the original. This because I could never meet the standards set on an reconstruction, but also because I simply didn't have enough information about the dress to do a copy, even if that would have been my aim.

Here is the pattern of the dress and the tools and materials I used:

 

I used gorgeous light green wool tabby  that I had bought a few months earlier. It isn't 100% wool, but looks and feels quite nice. I used white linen thread for the seams and green silk thread for attaching the woollen braid, and bronze and brass needles for sewing. I used running stitch for the long seams, backed up with few back stitches here and there, and I used back stitch for the most parts of the sleeves, since there would be more strain. I finished the seams with overcast stitches. The neckline is finsihed the same way as in mielikkik's dress, pictured here. The hem is finished with hem stitches, but I'm planning on doing there a tablet woven piped edge later on.

I followed the pattern, but adjusted it to fit my measurements, result being that the proportions of my dress are a bit different than in the original, as you can see from these two pictures of the original dress and my version. I think they look quite the same, but my fabric drapes differently, and the original looks a little fuller.

   

Here you can see comparisons between my dress and two German statues from Magdeburg (c. 1250) and Starbourg (after 1277). I look quite horrible and tired in these pictures, but they're the only ones I got.

     

I reeeeally like the way this dress came out, and I absolutely fell in love with this pattern. The dress drapes beautifully because of the wide side gores and no centre gores and it creates very lovely profile.