One Tough Costumer — Queen RSS

  The Paned Cap Sleeves There are two pairs of outer sleeves, the paned cap sleeves and the long sleeves. For a long time, I interpreted the paned cap sleeves as what we called "shoulder rolls".  I had been taught that they were cut as two crescents, the inner diameter of which spanned the upper two thirds of the armhole. They were seamed together, stuffed, decorated, and whipstitched into the bodice armhole.  But in recent years, I've come to the conclusion that  shoulder rolls on Elizabethan bodices, doublets, and gowns were NOT made this way. On examination of many images, they appear to actually be very short sleeves, with a gathered or puffed overlay, which was often covered with strips of fabric called panes. You...

I just looked at the calendar and there are only 86 more days till Costume College! Luckily, I've been getting a lot done.  Hopefully I'll find time to blog about it as well as do it!  Here's how I've been blinging the gown skirt.    The skirt is trimmed with the 3"  metallic trim that I hand painted. This trim has an iron on backing, but I wasn't about to trust it, since a test swatch peeled off the velvet easily.  It did work well for "basting" it in place, though. I had planned to hand sew the trim, but the iron on backing made it too tough for my arthritic hands. I machined sewed it in place using clear monofilament thread,...