you brought it on yourself miss twiddle

It has been way too hot to even think about trying to drape a pattern for the fitted part of my dress, so I have been making a shirt out of the free cloth I got at that garage sale a year ago. [Because I am good about citing my sources: I more or less am following the instructions here.] I could have sworn that I barely had enough cloth, but, as I am assembling the pieces, it turns out that I am going to have a shirt of Immense Pouffiness. I think that I will be able to wear it with normal clothes, although when you always wear long skirts like I do, any kind of blouse that looks even vaguely historical makes you look like you wandered in from some sort of living history demonstration! Also, I am afraid that it will shrink when I wash it, making it less pouffy, but perhaps makeing the collor/cuffs too tight as well.

This is really turning into half dress diary, isn't it? All I need is a cat and a digital camera and I would be all set!

Aren't these hats absolutely nifty? I wish I could knit like that, but the only one I think I might be able to do is the Monmouth Cap (and that's because I found several other patterns for it elsewhere on the web.) I feel so unskilled.

I got impatient with my farthingale this morning, mostly because I think I am going to have to take out the straw rings and put something more reliable in, so I decided to start draping the bodice of my dress, because I shouldn't need an accurate sense of how the skirt will fall for that, should I? I want to do a doublet-style bodice, because a) They look much nicer than the standard low-cut kind, b) I've already made several "Renn-Faire" Elizabethan bodices, and c)women's doublets were semi-controversial in the 16th century, because they were men's clothing, and this makes the project more interesting!* I haven't decided whether to do the doublet + shirt + separate skirt/kirtle version or the doublet + attached or at least matching skirt + sleeves. I'm kind of leaning towards the latter, because all of the paintings of the former kind have lots of poofs and bows and decoration that I'm not sure I could do at all.

I managed to download Phillip Stubbes' Anatomie of Abuses to get the exact passage, which I transcribe here (I don't know how to get the s that looks like an f (does anyone know how to make this character? It looks all wrong when I change it to regular s), so I have to change it -- sadly, no Stan Freberg joke here):

Philo. The women also there haue dublets & Ierkins, as men haue heer, buttoned vp the brest, nd made with wings, welts, and pinions on the shoulder points, as mans apparel is for all the world; & though this be a kinde of attire appropriate onely to man, yet they blush not to wear it; and if they could as wel chaunge their sex, & put on th ekinde of man, as they can weare apparel assigned onely to man, I think they would as verely become men indeed, as no they degenerat from godly, sober women, in wearing this wanton lewd kinde of attire, proper onely to man.

It is written in the 22 of deuteronomie, that what man so euer weareth woman's apparel is accursed, and what woman weareth mans apparel is accursed also. Now, whether they be within the bands and lymits of that cursse, let them see to it them selves. Our Apparell was giuen vs as a signe distinctiue to discern betwixt sex and sex, & therefore one to weare the Apparel of another sex is to participate with the same, and to adulterate the verities of his owne kinde. Wherefore these Women may not improperly be called Hermaphroditi, that is, Monsters of bothe kindes, half women, half men.

Spud. I neuer read nor heard of any people, except drunken with Cyrces cups or poysoned with the exorcisms of Medea, that fmaous and renouned Sorceresse, that euer woulde weare suche kinde o attire as it is not onely stinking before the face of God, offensiue to man, but also painteth out to the whole world the venereous inclination of their corrup conuersation.


I mean with a recommendation like that, who wouldn't want to make one?

Hee! Stubbes is incredibly subtle: his pamphlet is entirely about that fictional country Aligna… I don't think I'll have time to read the whole thing, but the bits I am finding are quite funny.