It became an Eleonora di Toledo inspired dress

Lots of fabric, pieces that was left from earlier sewing, fabric I have bought just because it was beatiful. Wardrobes filled with fabric. Well I just can´t buy anymore. What shall I do with all the fabric??

I have to sew something out of it, that takes a lot of fabric, for exampel a dress with a train. That's how it began. I had to do a dress using only fabric that I already had. I started to look around and compose from all my fabric . This is what I came up with.

Who was Eleonora di Toledo?

Some about dresses at 1500 century

Well it bacame so much information that I had to write about it in sections.

The Pattern.

My untidy sewing room, but I have an extreme knowledge about where I have put everything.

And f... the one who borrowes the pair of scissors and missplace them. ( Bad language sorry!)

My thoughts and sketches about a dress, this is what I came up with.

A sketch and a foto of Eleonoras dress.

I started to do the bodice from the personal pattern. I reconstructed the pattern to fit my dummie named LovisaII The back of the bodice is V shaped and the front of the bodice is longer sideways. The shoulderstrap seam is a little bit further back.

What looks like a V back is actually the lacing.

I used Lovisa II to check out the pattern several times, because you who have been reading on this sight before know that I do almost anything not to have to tuck, redo, cut and sew again just because it din't fit. Well well I suspect that I have to make some smaller adjustments any way, but I have to live with that.

 

The bodice
I want the bodice of the dress to be stiff so that I won't have to wear a corset. My ready made corset fabric made of a very coarse fabric, is cut out without allowance. It is supposed to become the interlininglayer. As you can see from the picture, there are no interlining at the shoulderstraps.
MF and MB is layed against folded sides. Cut both the bodice fabric and lining with allowance. Sew the back to the front at the shoulderstraps. Sew the sides together, and put the corset fabric( or stiff material) inside.
Fold the right side to the back and hand stich the hem.

If you unwrappe the bodice it looks something like this. The front is long and the back piece looks like it have a V formation, that is where the lacing will be placed later on.

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Well is this actually going to work?

Somewhere I have read that a pair of lacing stripes is very helpful. So I made me some stripes from an old sheet

Theese stripes are sewed with very long stiches to the bodice and you can laceup, just to check if it fits.

So far so good! I am satisfied whith the bodice. No wrinkle

Fabric check! I just have to check how it may look.

Lovisa II with the ready bodice and fabric just pinned to the dummie.Just so that I can get a glimpse of how it may look in the end.

Why is it green and yellow fabric?

Well I had a lot of fabric in that color.

The skirt

The bodice would be tricky I thought, but not compared to the skirt!

The skirt was a challange!

The skirt is supposed to have pleetes that stands out a little bit. That was not entirely easy to make.As the skirt is going to be pleeted or gatherd, at the upper side, you have to mesure twice as much fabric.For ex if the waist is 100 cm take 200 cm.

At the picture you can see how I made the train. MB is on the folded side of the fabric. and the hem is rounded. The whole backside of the skirt is cut in one piece.

Her comes the tricky part.

The skirt has to fit the bodice. As the bodice has it's lacings moore to the back. Tha backside of the skirt is shorter sideways than the front part sideways. The side seam of the skirt, is placed right under the bodice lacing. Now the front part of the skirt is lower at MB, because of the length of the bodice.

I wasn't satisfied with the width, so I cut the green fabric and, and sewed yellow gussets into it.

To sew gussets in silk, means that it will fray a lot if you overdo it. I did sew the long seams on the machine and hand stiched the tip of the gussets.

Well now is time to do the " standing" of the pleetes, or the gathering. Put a long piece of wool inside, as a sort of interlining between the skirt and the lining, to help " hold out" the pleetes or gathering.
An explaining picture. Don't belive that some sort of brain activity is'nt necessary, when you sew. You have to know how to sew the layers together, so that the result will be as you wish. In this case I wanted the wool to lay as interlining.
This is after I have sewn the layers together and turned it over. The wool lays inside, to stiffen up the gathering, or the pleetes that will come later.

This is a picture of the frontpart of the skirt. As you can see MB is lower, to fit the bodice.

 

The gathering is done like this. Sew 2 parallell seams in different colored thread. ( the different color will help you to pull at the right thread later on) Use the biggest stiches on the machine. When you have 2 seams pull the thread from the sides so that you will get the gathering. Mark MF so you will know where it is. Keep on pulling the threads until the skirt fits the bodice, and you have the exact width. When the skirt fits the bodice sew it together, with a seam between the two different colored threads. When all fabric is in place peel away all different colored threads.

 

The sleeves

The sleeves are supposed to be attached with goldstring loops, over pearls at the shoulderstraps.Between the sholderstrap and the sleeve there will be some sort of thin fabric between the loops

This is a picture that inspired me to do the sleeve the way I did it.

Portrait of Maria de' Medici
1551
Tempera on wood, 52,5 x 38 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Portrait of Maria de' Medici by Agnolo BRONZINO

The sleeves are made of two parts. One over and one under sleeve part

As it is sleeves that are attachable, I use to make some sort of lining inside. The sleeves will feel nicer, to put on and won't wrinkel so easy. Sew two sleeves in lining fabric. You will actually have four sleeves now.

This is the part I like best! Decoration time!!

The sleeves are supposed to have a middle part of yellow, some very thin fabric and some pearls. I found an old curtain some beads and started to play with it.

Handstich the decoration.

Something like this

When I had finished playing around and decided how the decoration finally would look like, I hand stiched it to the sleeves. The lining sleeves are sewn to the right sleeves at the upper hem. Between the layers of fabric, make loops of string, so that they will be sewn into the shoulder seam. When you turn it around the loops will appear.

 

 

supportive pillows

Extra "stand" Well, well the wool ribbon helped up the " stand" a little bit but not so much. The gathering are supposed to look like it stands right out! An ordinary bumroll woldn't work, as the bodice is longer MF. I decided to make some kind of filling supportive pillows or what ever you would like to call it.

Any kind of left over fabric will do for theese small "pillows" In my case I used the curtain, what was left over from decorating the sleeves.

Fold the fabric and make long tunnels. Fill them with cottonwool or something like it.

I stiched the filled pillows along the upper hem at the skirt. The "pillows" are made a little longer than the front skirt part so that the openings will be filled out, just as much as the rest of the skirt and you will not remark the openings, just because they doesn't have the same " stand out" as the rest of the skirt.

Of course there is a pillow at the back.

The left side shows the slight longer "pillow".
Well next trouble to solve. As the " pillows" are stiched to the skirt, as support the skirt comes up a bit and the dress will be to short! I have to make the skirt longer!
When I wrote about this dress it was 1/6 2005 and I was making eyelets by hand, it was summer I was bored and I stopped. Today when I try to translate this page it is august 2/8 I am still making eyelets. The summer in Sweden has been marvelous I have made 2 eyelets so far. I have been to Italy and France, and are soon going to Jylland in Denmark, so I just haven't had the time. The finishing touches will have to wait.