Landsknecht Gown

I made this gown and smock for a customer. She wanted a yellow, black, and white 16th century German gown, and I was quite happy to make it for her! The women who wore this style are often referred to as kampfrau or trossfrau, the women who followed the Landsknecht soldiers in Germany and Switzerland.

The dress is made of linen with wool guards, and the bodice laces in the front. There is a little bit of visible machine stitching, as normally happens when you're working out a reasonable budget, but I have a lot of tricks to make it very minimal.

I took photos of the dress pre- and post- slashing. Both ways are acceptable style options, but in this case, we were going for the more detailed slashed version.

I'm really happy with it! I was actually thinking about how I'd like to make a new slashed German gown so I could implement my new research into it, and then this one just came to me!

My Old Green Kirtle

This is my old green kirtle, made in early 2007 to wear underneath my Burgundian over gown. This dress is a pretty ubiquitous 15th century style. I have newer and better kirtles now, but Jocelyne makes this one look so good, so I thought I'd share! She's also wearing my velvet belt and my linen coif, both of which were made sometime around 2011-2012.

http://www.faerie-queen.com/green-kirtle/

Van Der Weyden / Memling Kirtle

This is a Nether­lan­dish kir­tle from the 15th cen­tury. Though the style is not exclu­sive to Rogier Van Der Weyden’s or Memling’s paint­ings, I used these sources as my pri­mary inspi­ra­tion. This kir­tle has a waist seam and a sep­a­rate skirt, and the front closes with lac­ing rings and hand­made cord. This is my first waisted kirtle, and as much as I love it, I have to say I prefer the fit of the non-waisted kirtles. That said, I won't stop making these because they are also lovely!

The belt is made of vel­vet with metal fil­i­grees.
The ruf­fled veil is linen. I hand stitched all the edges!
The sleeves pin on. They're made from a bit of brocade I had in my remnant stash.

This style was also worn under the famous Bur­gun­dian, or Nether­lan­dish, gowns, in addi­tion to being worn on its own. I intend to make a new Burgundian gown in the near future, and that was my excuse to make this dress too.

The last photos are me being silly, trying to pose like the women in the very dramatic scenes I stared at for hours when I made the dress.

You can see more photos here: http://www.faerie-queen.com/van-der-weyden-kirtle/

Costumes For Sale!

In an effort to clean out my closet a bit, I'm doing a costume sale. This is round 1! I have some historical garb and some cosplay outfits for sale.

I just keep making new things, and I've reached maximum closet capacity. I don't wear all of these outfits anymore, so it's time to let someone else love them!

Historical: https://www.etsy.com/shop/fqcouture?section_id=13360643
Cosplay: https://www.etsy.com/shop/fqcouture?section_id=13360525

1490s Italian Renaissance Dress

I love the Italian Renaissance, especially 1490s fashion, but I'm sad to say I haven't done much costuming from that era. Well, let me just fix that! I was particularly inspired by the Girl With Cherries painting by Ambrogio di Predis from c.1491-5. As per my usual methods, I was not interested in making a direct copy of the dress in the painting but rather using it as my primary inspiration, with supporting evidence from other various period sources and other similar dresses.

I purchased nothing new for this dress! It was meant to be a quick fun project to use up some of my materials on hand and give me a new dress I can wear on an everyday basis that's not another gothic fitted gown. The outer gown is made of rough dupioni silk and lined in hemp. The under gown is actually a false gown! It's just a bodice and sleeves. It's a clever solution to many layers when you live in a hot climate. The under gown is made of green cotton velveteen and lined in linen. I already had a camicia! All of the eyelet holes were done by hand. I grumble about all the time it takes, but really, I just do them while catching up on tv shows at night, so it's not such a big deal!

More images are here on my website: http://www.faerie-queen.com/silk-and-velvet-italian-renaissance-dress/