Making a Medieval Heraldic Dress! -- (Extra Long Vid!)

good morning I'm Morgan daughter and today I want to show you this exciting new project that I'm gonna be working on a late 14th early 15th century style supportive dress or curl so as I usually do let's start off with the historical versions of this we just say they're kind of undone because it's kind of not a thing now there are examples of heraldic clothing you see it on a few different burial effigies both like statues and the brass plackets and you see it a little bit in some manuscripts but all in all the evidence that actual people truly went about their everyday lives wearing clothing that essentially screamed hi I'm the wife of the Duke of such-and-such an actual thing it's just kind of a visual shorthand for saying that this is a representation of this entity so whether or not it's an actual period thing that people would have worn doesn't matter I'm still gonna do it I'm super excited to make a heroic style of Ko Hardy or Colonel or dress or gown or whatever word you want to use for it in my previous video I gave some quick pointers on how to draft a four-panel style dress which this is the pattern I'm gonna use today however I have gone through the trouble of making a couple mock-ups to make sure that the draft fits as well as possible typically drafting out your measurements and putting them on paper will get you close has something that fits you well but probably not perfect at least not for me I always have to go through several mock-ups before I get it just right so I'm gonna be making this fabric out of some heavyweight 7.1 ounce linen that I from fabric store fabrics sore dot-com linen isn't necessarily the most documented ly correct fabric to use for a dress but as I've already discussed this probably isn't a dress that would have existed anyway so I'm gonna do what I want so linen fabric is what I went for and I got it in the mail the other day I made sure to first surge all of the edges or well zigzag the edges this is not a surgery but whatever toss that into the wash and that surging is going to protect it in the wash and keep it from fraying and losing several inches of fabric due to that fraying and tangling it's no good it is now pre washed and ironed and I'm gonna do a bit of fabric testing now to verify that I don't accidentally make a dress that bleeds onto itself the fabric color bleed test went really well so let's get started on the dress before construction though I should probably show what I'm planning on making my darling sunshine mr. Morgan Donner and I have these really fun medieval s Carol Lee designs there they're not from our family history or anything like that they're just funsies mine is the red one in his is the green I really loved the idea of putting our designs onto a dress much like the memorial statues and plaques I showed earlier super dank you right okay design stuff done let's go on to the actual making here's my paper pattern both back in front let's take away the back and focus on the front piece for right now you might be wondering where the heck the rest of the skirt is well we'll add that as a separate piece soon I never bother making an actual paper pattern piece for this section of the skirt I just measure the length where the pattern cuts off and rotate it in time at the same angle as the hip this is approximately what that missing skirt piece will look like enough about that let's work on the main body piece first I'm tracing around the pattern using white chalk I like using chalk personally because in my experience it washes away without problems whereas sometimes some of the like various pencils and markers I've had issues so chalk it is cut out the torso using the talk marks as a guide now do the same thing for the back piece lay the fabric out use the chalk to mark the pattern cut the fabric torso piece out and then place your brand-new back piece on top of the front piece from a moment ago the angle of the skirt at the hip is the same for both of these at least on my pattern so I can get away with cutting out both triangle pieces at once be careful where you start your triangle since you must keep in mind that you will be taking seam allowance out where these two edges are sewn together you don't want to end up with a we are not missing here where the added triangle didn't go up as far as it should it's much better to have the triangle be a little too long rather than too short after all you can always cut off excess if you made it too long use a ruler or something similar to make sure that you have the right angle and then trace along the edge with chalk just like I showed earlier measures the length of the skirt at the start of the triangle and then use that measurement to determine the length of your new line cut the triangle out and then neatly line up in torso and skirt pieces you might be tempted to sew the two together right now but wait a second there's a little trick to it for those of you not familiar with fabric grain a plain weave fabric like this one is going to be made up of perpendicular threads much like a grid the thread is sturdy and less likely to stretch along with straight grain but will happily stretch along the bias when making a skirt if you have bias seems like this then they are pretty likely to sag over time causing sad and uneven headlines but if you flip the triangles so that the bias is sewn onto a straight grain seam then they won't be able to move or at least not as much we want to take advantage of that non stretch and flip the triangle over so that the bias edge is going to be sewn to the straight grain edge pin the triangle to the main skirt piece here and then repeat all this to make a second pair of triangles for the other half of the dress so the pin seams and then iron the seam allowance down remember when I said that it's better to have too much fabric because you can just cut off the excess well now is that time I'm going to cut the extra couple inches off so that everything matches the angle set by the original paper pattern at the hip are you worried about having an uneven line grab out that trusty ruler again and trace out a cut line again following the angle of the skirt at the hip which is in the lower right hand corner part of the screen at the moment now that the skirt is all in one piece we can lay it out on another fabric and cut a lining to match as tempting as it might be to simply cut out the lining right here and now as it's lying under the red fabric it might result in sagging due to bias with bias instead we'll do this right and mirror the construction method of the outer red fabric one little extra thing though I'm gonna toss an additional layer of this white linen between the lining and the outer red fabric this will act as a sort of inner lining layer to help provide some extra strength for this style of dress the waist and the bust seams are under a lot of strain so a little extra support from the fabric in that area doesn't hurt pin everything in place so that the fabric doesn't shift around and then do the same thing for the back piece I'm gonna want these three pieces of fabric to stay together for quite a while at this point so to reduce shifting and to reduce the number of times I accidentally poked myself with a pin let's just toss some basting stitches all around the edge of the torso they don't have to be particularly neat but if I am careful about keeping them within the seam allowance then I won't have to remove them later bonus I need to finish off the missing triangles for the white lining so I'll add some fabric on top and once I'm sure that the fabric is big enough to cover the remaining red section I'll flip it over and start pinning for those of you following at home if you've been paying attention you might have noticed that I just made a critical error can you guess what it is let's keep going for now and see how long it takes me to notice so keep pinning and then so this current seam on machine iron the seam allowance open which makes it live eautifully flat and smooth then get rid of the excess fabric by following the outline of the red fabric underneath the white I'll use this cut off piece of fabric down here to make the second triangle for the other side of the skirt quarter and here's what I've discovered my mistake from earlier see that pin sleeve how it has a straight grain fabric on one side and bias on the other that's how it's supposed to be on the previous seam I forgot to flip the triangle piece over so I ended up with straight grain touching straight grain damn it alright fortunately I don't think this is going to be a big deal since as long as I don't make the same mistake again on the other skirt piece that this will be sewn to it'll still be on the straight grain and it'll still be up to that challenge of preventing bias stretch it'll be okay I think so let's keep going I'm basing the skirt layers and that'll help keep everything really nice and smooth until I'm ready to sew all four panel pieces together I don't need all this extra white lining fabric around the edges so let's cut that away and yet again repeat all of these steps for the other half I know that some of you out there are probably a little bit annoyed that I keep doubling up on my various steps but I know that when I'm following a tutorial it helps me to see a visual reminder that the steps need to be repeated sometimes otherwise it sort of feels like things are skipping by too fast and I feel like I've missed something now we are ready to join the two red panels line the side seam up pin it to keep it lined up and then toss this whole dang thing through the sewing machine as always iron the seam allowance open after sewing each seam we'll worry about finishing the raw edges here later and evening up the jagged bits at the bottom here too so remember the heraldry design stuff in the beginning now it's time to get the apron on to the skirt it's going to go right about here centered on the side seam i nabbed the silk out of my stash it was already hemmed because i was going to make it sort of a shoulder scarf part thing but I never really end up using it so now it's gonna become a heraldic hip apron I cut off some two it strips to be the apron strings and it'll look something like this I'll double-check that everything is even and pin the edges in place I'll try to get these folds looking nice and ironing them down will help me visualize what will actually look like in the end and of course pin them all down - this is now a very prickly apron I really love how the silk has such a different Sheen from the linen and it has a really interesting texture - I'll stitch down the perimeter in each of these pleats with a very wide running backstitch the apron embellishment won't be under any particular strain so long stitches like this won't really hurt anything for the apron strings I'll join the two strips that I made earlier and then fold the sides in and stitch it down just like the pleats inside the dress we'll want to take care of any unfinished seams by folding them under and stitching the seam allowance down inside the fold so the red half of the body is all done let's start on the green side I have my lining fabric laid out and I'll trace the torso piece around the paper pattern using a ruler I can continue the angle of the skirt past the point where the paper stops and just like the red half I'm tossing an additional layer of linen in the torso as an inner lining pin the fabric together to keep things from shifting around on you and then cut out the traced outline to get this last little bit of skirt I cut out a triangle of approximately the right size airing on the side of caution and making it a little bigger than needed and now of course I need to sew those two seams so so so so so and the lining layer is done I have a few different layers going on here from bottom to top we have the thicker 7 ounce linen which will be the outer fabric and then 2 layers of the lighter 3.5 ounces in the lining and the inner lining and then on top we have a strip of the green 7 ounce linen once I'm satisfied with the placement of that green strip I'll fold the line back cut the thick white linen to make space for the green if you do something similar make sure you remember to include seam allowance before cutting I will sew along this long edge of the white and the green on the machine for speed you know but to finish off this top corner I'd like it to be very precise so I'll do this bit by hand I folded the seam allowance back and then carefully pin it in place unlike most of my seams I will not iron this one open but instead I'm gonna iron it towards the darker fabric the white fabric is pretty opaque but it's still possible to see the seam allowance fold it over through the outside of the garment so we'll just fix that by shoving everything towards the green side for hand stitching I'm going with a fairly small and extra tidy stitch since this is up kind of high and chest height and will be quite visible if I am at all messy with my stitching I don't mind being lazy when it comes to stitching things you can't see but this line is worth the extra effort and time to make it look nice I decided to do a quick loose backstitch up the length of the machine sewn section as well mostly to keep the seam allowance pressed to the green side I'll repeat all of the cutting and sewing so far so that I have two of these white and green pieces but you know reversed of course I'll tuck the prepared linings under the fashion fabric panels let's focus on just one for a second and I have it flipped over so that the lining is now on top pin all three layers together and then we'll get these skirt triangles sorted out I need to add some white fabric right here and some green fabric over here using chalk I'm marking the green fabric and then cutting along that same mark don't forget to check the grain line currently I'm looking at two parallel straight grain edges we want to flip the triangle over so the bias is touching the selvage in the seam and then this is ready to be sew sew sew sew sew sew sew iron the seam open we've got a little bit of extra here but we can trim that away later repeat the same triangle steps for the white half of the panel cut out the triangle flip it pin to the body so the pin seam on the seam allowance open and tada I would like to reduce the number of pins currently being held hostage by the stress panel so I'll add a row of basting stitches all around the edge reclaim those pins back and then trim off some of this excess fabric around the edges time to join our two halves line the edges up pin them together and sew iron the seams open and then we'll have a pair of goth quarters the base pieces are all done so we need to tackle those are mine spots I thought it might be fun to do some fabric stamping so I got out a block of wood topped with linoleum I don't need this whole thing just this little top section I've sketched out a cute little Oh mine spot and then had the bottom part removed then using a speedball linoleum cutter I started carving away the bits of the design that I didn't want in the final print side note you really shouldn't be cutting towards your fingers like this I strongly recommend using a bed chuck to hold the block in place while you cut I couldn't find mine so I went ahead without it because I am terribly foolish I did in fact end up cutting my finger despite being careful so you know fYI I did a few test prints on some scrap linen and while they turned out okay I didn't like the faded parts in the middle a proper printing setup might have changed that but in lieu of having that I decided to try stenciling instead I have some stenciling plastic around so I put it on top of the ermine block and traced the design in marker I cut out the bits I didn't want and tried a few more practice tests on scrap fabric immediately I love how much darker and solid the design turned out I think I am sold on stenciling instead of stamping following the paint directions I've given the paint 24 hours to dry and now the instructions say to iron the paint to sort of heat set it which I've always done before but I'm kind of curious if it actually makes a difference so my very unscientific test is to iron the right half of the stamp designs and this one stenciled spot too I did some quick zigzag stitches around the raw edge of the test and then toss the thing in the wash once it was dry I gave the whole thing a once-over with the iron and I guess the heat setting did in fact make a slight difference the heat scythe stayed darker so I guess the instructions on the bottle have a point yeah who knew I am not 100% sure of where I want those urban spots to go so I'm spraying a few spots on paper and then cutting them out to make quick movable spots this way I can play around with placement and spacing before committing the actually painting them in be aware the paint might seep through the fabric and maybe prepare a bit of cardboard to place under the fabric as you paint now go nuts with painting [Music] dad dab dab right Christine don't forget to iron the spots and once the paint has had a day to dry let's get this leaves started I have four layers of fabric here a thick red and a thick white linen and then two layers of a very thin white silk your initial inclination might be to orient the grain of the fabric straight down the middle of the sleeve pattern but I'm gonna make the grain go approximately with the longer side seam I read that this is a better thing to do for tight sleeves since it puts things slightly on a bias let's give it a try trace around the paper pattern with your preferred fabric marking device and then cut out all four layers at once the white sleeve needs some Hermine spots to match the body of the dress so we'll paint those on with the same stencil once it's dry check that you have two mirrored sleeves and then fold them in half and check again that you still have a pair of mirrored sleeves it's a pain in the butt if you accidentally make two left sleeves so double check before you sew sew up the sleeve seam and then iron the sleeve open like usual if you don't have a sleeve ironing board which I don't then just grab something sturdy and firmly wrap it in fabric or a towel repeat that for both sleeves and sleeve linings turn the fabric right side out but leave the linings wrong side out check that you have the right lining for the right fashion fabric by comparing the top curve where the seam terminates toss the linings inside I of course ended up undoing this later in order to tighten the fit of the sleeves a bit but yeah if your sleeve pattern fits perfectly then this method is great the shoulders need to be together so that we can sew those sleeves in I don't want to sew the lining in the seam just yet so I'll separate that out and then just sew the other four layers I'll stitch down the seam allowance to keep things neat and trim and flat and then fold the lining inward and pin it in place while I whip the two edges together those sleeves in the body are ready to be sewn together whoo pin a billion pins until the sleeve head looks something like this so the arm site removing pins as you go unless you'd like to live dangerously in which case leave the pins in okay look at that beautiful slip Oh looks like I got a wee little pleat in there so I'll seam ripped in that open I guess and Riso that spot all right there we go much better repeat all of that for the red sleeves if you are like me and are constantly trying to shove a slightly too big sleeve into a smaller armhole area then try gathering the sleeve with a running stitch use a sturdy thread so you can then pull on the thread and gather the sleeve as needed pin the sleeve inside at the arm side until you've used all the pins in the entire room and then so that's leaving let's see if I did any better with this one nope still have a big old pleat all right same rip try again it's not perfect but it's good enough the bodice front and neckline still have raw edges to take care of I could do a double fold like this but I thought that would end up looking too bulky instead I'm gonna go with some unnecessarily time-intensive nonsense instead based a little further in from the edge because I'm about to remove the based edge here that we did at the beginning I want the finished edge to be exactly half an inch from the cut edge and I don't trust markers in such a highly visible area so let's do some running stitches with a ruler guide to keep it at precisely the correct seam allowance then I can fold the extra under using that stitched line as a reference point and keep the seam allowance tacked down with a quick row stitches I won't be taking these out later so I'll try to keep some extra neat and tidy on the outside we still have the lining hanging out here so we'll want to fold it under just past the visible edge and then stitch it in place I'm using something vaguely whipstitch like it's pretty right guys we are ready to join the two halves of the dress I'll pin the back seam together sew it up and iron flat I'm doing the front seam next but I want to make sure the top is perfectly even first and then move on to actually pinning the skirt portion so this and then we'll iron open like always to finish the seam I'll trim the lining down to about a quarter inch and then fold the longer top edge allowance over the trimmed edge you could do this without the trimming it would just be a little bulkier whip stitch the folded allowance down trying to grab just the white lining if possible rather than letting the needle go all the way through to the front of the fabric I went ahead and did most of the eyelets for the front opening I have set up my lacing holes for the spiral lacing method which means that we'll want the top two holes to be mirrored but it's all sort of offset nonsense after that see how I have these two closed holes on the red up here after that extra coat the eyelet the rest are set in a sort of zigzag pattern search for spiral lacing to learn more about that to make a new eyelet I'll poke a hole with an awl and then I like to have my thread starting on the outside of the garment so I'll poke it through to the other side and start my stitches by going down through the all made hole and back up just next to the previous stitch with each stitch lightly pulled to keep the hole open you can make a far denser eyelet with really close stitches much closer than what I'm doing here but I'm lazy and I find that just doing ten stitches is enough to make the eyelet perfectly functional here's the same step on the green fabric I know that it can be a little tough on some screens to see what's going on on the red polka hole stitch to stitch to stitch now I can try the dress on all in all I'm pretty ding-ding pleased the upper sleeves are a little big but the flared cuff is so cute I need a couple more eyelets at the bottom here and I should probably also get rid of all of these basting stitches at some point the primary construction is done so it's mostly cleanup efforts now to tame the raw edges where the sleeve meets the shoulder I'm just gonna run it through a quick zig-zag stitch on the sewing machine now I'm just gonna leave it like this but if you wanted to do a more period seam treatment I recommend covering the seam allowance with a woven or bias tape again I'm a lazy so I'm just gonna leave it at faux surging I've been pretty loosey-goosey about the hem so it's very uneven at the moment there's no point in the greenside being long within the red so let's trim them evenly so both sides match then I'll fold the hem under two inches deep all the way around and then try it on to see how much more it needs to be hemmed I don't know why I bothered wearing a shift under for the hemming but that's just what you do I guess it's looking good the center of each front panel is maybe a little too high it's not quite touching the whereas the actual like center front is a couple inches too long I don't want it dragging under my feet and tripping me so let's pin that up a little higher and that's definitely better we'll refine it a bit once it's flat on the table again my smallest bit of a hem is about one inch deep so I'll cut all the rest of the hem to match then I just turn the edge inward and stitch try not to let your stitches show on the outside of the fabric though or if you'd rather not hand so you can try your luck at machine blind hemming sorry Bernadette if done correctly this shouldn't be visible on the outside I can start removing some of those basting stitches so exciting so for the sleeves I've lined up the seam on the red and lining fabric and I'll toss some whip stitches around the edge to secure it in place I got some very cute little wee buttons from Billy and Charlie I'll link to their pewter reproduction items down below their buttons are so much nicer than mine highly recommend I had sort of forgotten and that I wanted to do buttons on the sleeves here so I had to seam rip the wrist area of the sleeve open and I'll stitch it kind of just like you see it pinned here with whip whip whip whip whip whip stitch again proving that I am a lazy noodle I didn't feel like making a bunch of hand-stitched buttonholes I didn't even feel like making a bunch of machine buttonholes but I did want buttons so I cheated after measuring out the placement of each button I pierced through the fabric by making a hole with an awl just big enough to get the button shank through and then I kept the button in place with a pin then I stitched the other side to the button shank from inside the sleeve I used rather loose loopy stitches since I didn't draft the sleeves here to be all that tight if you need your sleeves to actually button and unbutton then this method is decidedly not for you but it is a rather convincing way to make a sort of faux button-up sleeve and I think it looks really good and works well now that the sleeves are done let's try it on again and take a look the dress fits well and I feel pretty dang cute I'm really happy with how these buttons turned out but I feel like I'm missing something hmm let me go look over some of those medieval ladies again you know what I think I might need some Tippit's okay so these are sort of a silly accessory they're sort of a vestigial sleeve tail but they are kind of cute and they're present in a bunch of late 14th century dresses so I think I'm going to make a pair of very simple ones just making one really long rectangle and turning it right-side out I'm adding the sturdy cord with a knot at the end to the inside of the casing which will make it easier to turn iron it flat and crisp and size it to whatever you want on your arm I'm making mine foolishly long because the extra the armband part needs to be just a little bit bigger than the bicep - maybe a little too long here turn the raw fabric edges inward and Stitch the ends closed I pinned them in a circle and then opened a small part of the side seam here with the seam ripper that's where I'm going to tuck in the hanging part of the tippet make sure that the two are even and match each other nicely and then stitch everything in place I'm afraid I didn't get any footage of the tip it's being stitched in place but I can show me removing them so that you at least kind of get an idea of how it was done and we're all done doctor that uh now begins the weird narcissistic montage in the park section of today's video [Music] [Music] I went for green socks I thought that green and red might be a little too on the nose your branches are looking very Twiggy today ah yes a random path in the woods let's see where this goes that's never how horror movies begin I hope you guys enjoyed the longer video I've received some feedback requesting exactly that this project took me a lot longer than I expected but hopefully the wait was worth it if you make your own 14th century gown inspired by my video heraldic or not I would love to see it tagged me on instagram at Morgan Donner good night everyone and happy sewing I'm not mom post-post exhibit tipet's [Laughter]

Channel: Morgan Donner

Views: 353,712

Keywords: making historical clothing, historical cosplay, supportive undergown, morgan donner sewing party, medieval costume, medieval costume diy, sewing historical gown, morgan donner, society for creative anachronism, middle ages clothing, renaissance fair costumes, medieval costumes for women, medieval princess costume diy, medieval dress, medieval costume tutorial, renaissance fair, medieval dress tutorial, Making a Medieval Heraldic Dress

Id: KXv5I1A3WQQ

Length: 33min 10sec (1990 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 07 2018