Tutorial: Cartridge Pleating

Another Old-To-Me-But-New-To-You tutorial. Not really new to anyone, as this technique is centuries old, but yeah. The tutorial itself is newish. Cartridge pleating pops up over and over again over the centuries. Pretty much any time fashion required large amounts of fabric to be squashed into a small space, tailors employed this technique. 

There are multiple schools of thought on the proper method of attaching skirt to waistband - some sew only the outer folds to the bottom edge of the waistband, others sew both the inner and outer folds, and others still will sew along the entire serpentine of the pleats. This tutorial focuses on the former, but that is not to imply that this is the best and only method. In fact, I generally stitch both the outer and inner folds when attaching slops legs to canions/leg bands in order to get the right look. You also don't have to add felt to the pleats; it's pretty and eliminates the need for a bumroll, but it's not necessary to do, if you don't mind a more smooth/flat transition from waist to skirts. 

It's also worth noting that some people prefer to stitch gingham ribbon to the inside of their skirts, as the little squares in gingham weave make it easy to gauge their stitch length. And others still employ shirring tape, meant for drapery, which eliminates measured stitches entirely. The only downside to this last method is that you can't control your stitch length, so you'd better hope that your fabric isn't too thick to fit into whatever you're planning to attach it to.

Okay, enough pedantry. Onward, to the tutorial!

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Cartridge pleating is a period method for gathering a wide piece of fabric to be attached to a smaller width of fabric, like attaching a skirt to a bodice or full slops to a waistband. This kind of pleating allows the skirts or slops to spring out from the waist, creating a period silhouette. In this tutorial, you will learn not only a method for cartridge pleating, but how to pad out the pleats and make them fuller and sturdier. You can use one thickness of felt or two – one piece will give you a nice, soft curve to your pleats, and two pieces will give you a very sturdy and rigid pleat. This tutorial uses a sewing machine and hand stitching, but if you’re feeling really gung-ho about it, you can hand sew the whole thing.

You will need

 Your skirt fabric

Your lining fabric

Your already constructed bodice or waistband

A strip of felt the same length as the circumference of your skirt or calze

A spool of the strongest thread you can get your hands on (I like upholstery thread)

A sturdy needle

A thimble (or a dime stuck to your finger with a bandaid)

Optional – A second strip of felt the same length as the first, with half the width

Step One: If you are using a double thickness of felt for your pleats, stitch the two widths together at least once. If you are only using one width of felt, you can skip this step.

Step Two: Sew your skirt/slops/whatever fabric and lining right sides together along the waist seam, with at least a ½” seam allowance. If your fabric isn’t pressed yet, you should probably do this now. I’m using some cabbage left over from another project, so let’s just pretend that this sample is pressed.

 Step Three:  With your skirt/cslops/whatever fabric and lining pressed open with the wrong sides facing up, stack your felt on top of the seam allowance. With one side of the felt butted up against the seam, stitch the felt to the lining, about a ¼” away from the edge.

Step Four: Flip your garment right side out. Using your extra-super-strong thread, make two lines of stitches through all layers of your skirt (self, felt, lining), near the top of your skirt/slops/sleeves/whatever. Don’t eyeball it like I did; take the time to make sure your stitches are evenly spaced. Remember that the circumference of your garment will determine how wide your stitches are. Mine are usually at least 1”.

Step Five: Gather your stitches, making sure that the fabric folds where you want it to. Extra funky folds should be tugged or cajoled into place. The tighter together your pleats are, the more rigid they will be.

Step Six: Right sides together, stitch the top edge of your slops/skirts to the bottom edge of your waistband/bodice, using the same heavy duty thread. Make sure to pass the needle through the lining, the felt, the slops/skirt fabric, the waistband/bodice fabric, the waistband/bodice interlining, and the lining. You can use as many stitches as you want per pleat; I use two.

Congratulations! You have finished cartridge pleating your garment! And look – they spring away from the body without the aid of a bumroll or arming bolster! One less layer to don in the morning; how exciting is that? If you’re wearing a sottana and properly executed the doppia at the hem of your skirt, you have eliminated TWO extraneous pieces of clothing! For an example of what this looks like in practice, check out my hastily compiled post on the Florentine Barbie ensemble.

Tutorial: Doppia, or Stiffened Hems

Let's talk about stiffened hems! For Renaissance Faire costuming, it's widely accepted that farthingales and/or bumrolls are the way to go when you want to keep your skirts from looking limp and lifeless. But what if there's a third option? Because there totally is. 

I'm not going to pretend I came up with this concept, because I definitely didn't. Fourish years ago, I was scavenging the furthest reaches of the internet because I was about to make my very own Italian working class costume. And I didn't have to go very far before I stumbled on Anea's article on stiffened hems. If you haven't seen her site, I highly recommend you take the time to look at it. Her articles are well-researched and packed with great information. I'm also not going to give you any references or examples of stiffened hems in artwork or extant clothing because, frankly, it would be a rehash of Anea's writings and why am I going to bother giving you evidentiary support when you can literally just click the link and have it all right there.

This is my quick and dirty method for creating the doppia with a machine, with no visible stitch lines. There are multiple methods for stiffening a hem; this tutorial is but one way to do so. Adding these extra layers really makes an enormous difference to your skirts! Your hems will have wonderful life and body, while still maintaining graceful folds that were particularly popular in 16th century Italian clothing. If you want to get extra fancy with your hems, you can add single-fold bias tape between the outer layer and the lining, and then go back once you are done and make little snips perpendicular to the hem. These little picadils really finish off a costume.

(Sorry for the bad pictures. Bad lighting, bad camera. But hopefully you get the idea.)

What You'll Need

Your skirt fabric

Your skirt lining

A 3” strip of felt equal in length to the circumference of your skirt

A 2” strip of felt equal in length to the circumference of your skirt

Step One: Stack your two different strips of felt on top of each other. Stitch them together down the length of the strips. You can run just one line of stitching, or you can do multiple lines – the choice is up to you. More lines of thread will make the felt slightly stiffer. Many lines will make your felt super stiff.

Step Two: Right sides together, sew your skirt fabric to your lining, using at least a ½” seam.

Step Three: With the wrong sides of your garment facing up, stack your felt strip on top of your lining fabric and butted up against the seam, making sure that your skirt’s seam allowance is laying underneath the felt. Stitch the felt to the lining, making sure to catch the seam allowance. I prefer to sew about ¼” away from the edge of the felt. Do the same thing to the other side of the felt strip.

 

 Step Four: You’re done with your hem! This is what the skirt will look like with the skirt fabric and lining laying open. The lining should have two lines of stitching running parallel to the hem. Now it is time to press your hem!

This is what your skirt hem will look like as you’re wearing it. (Pretend I actually bothered to press it) See how nice that is, with no stitches showing?

And this is what your hem should look like from the inside. Two tidy stitch lines that no one will ever see – especially if you use thread close in color to your lining fabric.

Et voila! Beautiful hems that stand away from your body with no visible machine stitching!

Whoops, Where Did That Year Go?

Apologies to anyone who attempted to follow my exploits, only to be foiled by my lack of posts. Seriously, I am a jerk. I made promises. I hinted at projects that would be blogged. And then I lost track of it all. I'm a jerk, and I'm sorry.

Also, despite my profuse apologies, I have no images to share with you at the moment. I have a number of projects that were completed, including those for Giovanni de Medici, Luigi Gaddi, Giovannie Salvatore de Malatesti, and the Russian Court Gown. These will all be given attention, and they will be posted. Just not today. I also have a number of other projects that I have finished or am currently working on, but some of them will not be given a blog post until after the Renaissance Pleasure Faire has opened. For nondisclosure reasons, of course.

Oh! And other news: I have been hired as costumer at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Irwindale! Yay, me! Also why I can't share everything I make with the world. You'll just have to come and see my work for yourself, while enjoying historical reenactment, artisan crafts, stellar entertainment, and delicious pear cider. It's a tough life.

Keep your eyes peeled for things to come soonish (I hope).

Revisiting Old Work, Florentine Barbie Edition

This really isn't an update. At the moment, I'm elbow deep in costuming for Mario Sforza, Giovanni de Medici, Pietro Medici, Luigi Gaddi, Salvatore Malatesti, my mother, and the Russian court gown. But I'm taking a break to talk about a sottana I made last year. I say sottana, but it was more than that. Let's cover it piece by piece, shall we?

The Inspiration

This a portrait by Batista Moroni. I honestly don't know the exact date of it. But when I started planning out a costume for my new role at Faire, I knew I wanted pink. Pink is an often overlooked color, and it's commonly thought to be a historiccally inaccurate color. But as you can see, pink did exist - now that I have looked for examples of pink clothing, I see it in a lot of Florentine portraiture.

My character is basically a mistress of Pietro de Medici, played by my fiancé. My character has little purpose in life beyond gambling, entertaining, and being decorative. Emphasis on the decorative. More than once, I have compared my persona to Paris Hilton's chihuahua: Cute, but not much good for anything. Pietro's fashion accessory. This concept is the basis for my costume. And also, why I went with pink.

The Corset/Bodies

This isn't a historically accurate pair of bodies. We have no proof of bodies existing in England before 1590, and none whatsoever of them in use in Florence during this period. And they certainly didn't look like this. But, corsets/bodies are an accepted Faireism, they help achieve the right shape, and they distribute the weight of the 10ish yards of fabric in which we cloak ourselves. Why does it not have the shoulder straps? 16th century Florentine clothing for women places a high importance on the décolletage, with shoulder straps placed on the points of the shoulders. With necklines the way they were, the standard Effigy Bodies pattern would look silly, with its high strap placement. 

The other slight oddity about this corset is that it relies almost entirely on hemp cord to keep its shape.

I first ran a test patch, to figure out ratios for shrinkage. This is an incredibly important step, as the added thickness can reduce the original waist measurement by 1"-2". Your results may vary.

After the rate of shrinkage was identified, I made my adjustments and sewed it up in the standard way. I made 1/4" channels, and ran four lengths of hemp cord through the channels, using an umbrella rib. 

The advantages of hemp boning? It breathes, has enough give to be comfortable, allows me to slouch and bend sideways, and is machine washable. I did end up sewing four pieces of boning into this corset, to increase rigidity in the center front, and to help better displace the weight of my skirts off my kidneys. That done, I absolutely love this corset. Now I just need to scrub the taco sauce I spilled on it while driving to our last invent.

The Underskirt

The underskirt was pretty straightforward. I found a copper silk damask hiding in Michael Levine's, jammed it under my juki, added piping and some felt to the hem, and cartridge pleated it to a waistband. See how that hem just floats out away from the body? Felt is magic. There's no bumroll or farthingale in that picture; the skirt just does that on it's own. Magic, I tell you.

The Sottana

So, yeah. The sottana also went pretty smoothly. Mostly. I was in a rush to get the dress done, and didn't bother to make sure that the red velvet I bought doesn't bleed. It does. I can never get this dress wet. That said, I drafted a sleeve, then sliced it down the front of the sleeve. I added my red trim, my gold trim, and ribbon twists to approximate the look of the sleeves in the portrait. I then went back and stitched gold tubular beads to each twist to look like aglets. And then more twists to connect the sleeves to the shoulders, and the puffy baragoni that typify Florentine style.

Here's the bodice and sleeve, pinned to a form. I do this sort of thing a lot as I work, to make sure I'm really getting the result I want. What you can't see is how after the person who was going to help me left, I ended up having to fit the bodice to myself. This is incredibly hard. Lacing yourself into a back-lacing corset is a cake walk, by comparison. Because of this, there were some minor fit issues. That said, I did all right, all things considered.

Here is a shot while my sweet fiance helped me pin the hem. Poofy. I swear this skirt has relaxed quite a bit since this photo was taken. The day after he pinned the hem, I went ahead and chopped off the excess fabric, stitched it all up, completed the velvet guards,  and threw the ensemble back on to see how it all looked. The pink hem was an inch shorter than the underskirt. I freaked.

I tearfully called the fiancé, who came over to help. I talked to the kind, loving, people on the Elizabethan Costuming group, who gave me very helpful solutions.I was still ready to throw it all out and quit. Drew convinced/coaxed/wheedled me into the whole getup, had me jump up and down a couple times, and twirl, before facing the mirror. And what do you know? It was perfectly fine. The hem was where it needed to be. This was definitely a lesson in stress management.

Accessories

 Because no outfit is complete without accessories, I made myself a rosary with freshwater pearls and some glass beads I found at Bohemian, in the garment district.  I also bought (not at the same place) and Indian wedding necklace set, complete with tikka and earrings. I cannibalized the earrings and tikka, then wrapped them with wire onto a brass headband, with some gold roses, flower-ish brass bead caps and garnets from a broken necklace.

 This is my girdle. I found a fun brooch on eBay and added it to a string of beads I found at Michael's. Simple.
 Not the girdle I wanted, but it works.

I also started working on a zibelleno. I molded the head out of Sculpey, then added some brass filigree, micro pearls, and chain, to create a harness. I glued this to a repurposed marten pelt. I haven't used it yet, though, as I haven't settled on how I want to attach it to my dress.

And then it got hot, and I needed a fan. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of the whole thing. I bought 100 bleached peacock feathers from Perial, downtown. Perial is absolutely amazing for feathers, masks, and trim. A lot of their customers are bellydancers and burlesque performers, and by golly do they know their customers. My fiancé cut down a dowel for me. I painted it, glued on an acorn knob, then sandwiched it between two manila paper circles. To this base, I glued my feathers and added some wood shapes from Home Depot. It took forever to set completely.

 And then we went to the Bristol Faire in Wisconsin, and I needed another fan. Really, it was an excuse to make another accessory, but I didn't want to smoosh my feather fan in my suitcase. So Drew and I made a flag fan. Drew took a dowel and, with the magic of carpentery, affixed it to a flat wood piece for the fan. We hammered a veritable buttload of filigree pieces to cover the fan handle, and added a brass lamp finial to the end. This was then covered in shrink tubing to protect the filigree. Not period in the least, but it sure is effective.

A friend gave me an ornament from Florence earlier in the year, and I copied its fleur de lis on some paper and added a border. I traced this onto fabric and embroidered the design, adding some gold spangles. Because I'm Florentine Barbie. The other side of the fan has a mirror, surrounded by more gold embroidery and pearls. Because I'm Florentine Barbie. I glued some leftover filigree to the wood base, then sandwiched everything between the embroidered pieces. 

Not pictured in this section are my four sets of earrings (because a girl needs options), two necklaces I made (again, options), my saccoccia/pockets, my garters, and my camicia. I also never got around to making a colletto/partlet, because I ran out of time and haven't bothered with it, since.

End Result

Photo courtesy of Kenny Jewel. You can book this talented man through his Facebook page.

Overall, I'm pleased with how it looks. I'm still not happy with the fit issues, but I don't care enough to go back and fix them. And I've learned some awesome tricks to get around the bleeding trim issue when cleaning this thing. And the taffeta has calmed down enough that I no longer look like Scarlett O'Hara. Once I get around to making another dress, I'll likely still wear this one, on occassion. You know, the options thing.

Non-Update, aka Revisiting Old Work

So, Halloween has just passed, which means that up until this week, I was busy working odd hours and fighting illness (every year, I get sick. It's tradition, now). But now the chaos of haunted events and the Playboy Mansion is over, and I have some fun stuff to report: The busk for the late Victorian/Edwardian corset arrived, which means I can finally get going on it, again. And while I was waiting on the busk, I got a doublet and sleeves drafted for Luigi Gaddi. Progress! That said, I don't have much else to post about, so I'm showing a veste I worked on last Winter/Spring.

The Chocolate Veste

This was the inspiration portrait. I have no idea who painted it. The woman who wanted it for Southern Faire was keen on keeping her original main color, which was a black/orange shot taffeta, which reads as brown. Because she was playing a Baronessa, we chose to trim her veste in a subdued gold that reads like gold with extra nickel in it. This was the second Italian dress I'd worked on, and the first noble costume. This costume had a number of challenges. First and foremost, the woman who commissioned it was planning on losing weight. A lot of weight. between her first corset fitting and the final veste, she lost somewhere between 4 and 6 inches in her waist. This was awesome for her, but quite challenging for me. Also, San Lorenzo, the guild we're in, has a history of trouble with collars on vesti. Women either had collar flop, or resorted to inserting boning. After trying two different collars on my toiles, I realized I could just make a built up collar that was an extension of the bodice.

Pretty satisfying. So far, this is just one layer each of taffeta and cotton canvas, with two lines of trim to cover the shoulder seam. So, first hurdle was complete. Next up, the dreaded baragoni. The portrait had four rows of loops, so I attempted to do what I could to achieve the same look.

My baragoni are definitely bigger. But, in this case, I was okay with that. The woman who commissioned this veste has a broader ribcage and hips than the little young thing in the portrait, and the larger baragoni really help to show off her ever-diminishing waist. I ended up started with a short sleeve as the base for the baragoni, before tacking down strips of taffeta and trim. It was a simple solution, and a pretty effective one, if I may say so. I have no clue if this is the way it was done during this period, but it was the most straightforward method I could come up with.

And this was the veste, once I attached the skirts, which were padded and pleated in the usual way. See how tiny that waist looks, between the baragoni and the skirts? And I swear this dress isn't as shiny in person; the flourescent lights in the shop are reeeeaaaally making it look funny.

What I Would Do Differently

What did I take away from this project? Overall, I like it. The veste looks like a chocolate box, which pleases me. However, next time, I will do my damnedest to convince the next person that they should really be wearing two layers (a sottana AND a veste), as it never looks right otherwise and creates extra issues that have to be solved in a theatrical manner, instead of maintaining a better level of period accuracy (like adding a zipper to keep the skirts from gapping in front). I would love to never ever put another zipper into a Renaissance costume. Ever. That said, you can't actually see the zipper, so it works from a theatrical standpoint. But everything would have been much more satisfying if I had made two whole garments.

Up Next...

The corset to go with the Russian Court dress, and some toiles for Mario Sforza and Luigi Gaddi.

The Beginnings of Mario Sforza and the Russian Court Dress.

The Russian court gown is coming along sloooowly. Most of this is because clothing from the Romanov era requires the proper underpinnings - specifically, a proper corset.

I started out with a pattern from Ageless Patterns. If you're curious to try using something from this company, you will need a good background in period clothing construction: There are NO instructions. If you have never made a corset before, I would recommend starting off with another company, like Laughing Moon Mercantile. Ageless Patterns is not for the faint of heart. 

 I found the size closest to the customer's waist measurement and proceeded to make a mockup. Now, here's the thing about Victorian corsetry: The more Rubenesque you are, the closer you will come to achieving that lovely wasp-waisted figure that was so popular during the turn of the century. The customer who commissioned this costume is willowy enough that the extremely pinched look can't happen without adding so much padding that it would look unnatural. So, some sort of happy medium will need to be achieved.

I ended up removing the bust gores and two of the hip gores, to achieve a better fit. Also, the dress form is doing a horrible job at filling out the garment, as per usual. So far, the body of the corset is together, and I'm waiting on a busk to come in the mail, before I can continue working on this piece.

In the meantime, I have begun drafting patterns for the Mario Sforza costume. I have the doublet done, and am hoping to complete his slops and sleeves while I await the arrival of the busk. I have no pictures to prove any of this, though, so you'll just have to believe me. Or not.

To make up for lack of photographic documentation, here's a picture of Zita, hiding in my sleeve:

Upcoming Projects

I've got a number of commissions/projects coming up, but since most of them are in the planning stages, I don't have much to write about just yet. But I CAN share images of the inspiration/basis for what I'll be working on.

The boyfriend is in dire need of a new suit, and wants a copy of the burial clothes of Don Garzia de' Medici, which resides in the costume collection at the Pitti Palace, in Florence. I've set him to work on all the gold couching, so this costume is waiting until he's done. In my version, his calze will have 26 panes in total. I believe he has 11 done, so far.

My current project is a Russian Court Gown. This isn't actually the image we're using for reference, but I honestly just couldn't remember where to locate the other one on the interwebz. Right now, the corset is in the middle of construction, and we're waiting on a busk and boning. More on this in future entries (possibly).

Also on the list of to-dos is this portrait, by Sofonisba Anguissola. It will be made for a teenager portraying one of the Medici Boys (Giovanni) at Southern Faire. In all likelihood, this one will be done before the Garzia.

Other costumes in the works include clothing for a retired captain of the Bande Nere, Mario Sforza, a Florentine physician, and a new dress for me. However, I do not have any photo references for these, yet. Stay tuned for more adventures in costuming!

New Side Project

In between a few different commissions, working on a number of dance costumes, and the Halloween season (sideshow gigs), I've decided to start a new side project. I got re-addicted to cross stitch, and am in the planning stages of developing a new pattern: Francesco de' Medici's coat of arms. If all goes according to plan (read: I don't hate the project before I finish it), this will be displayed in either San Lorenzo's guild yard or safely at home. So far, I've got a black and white copy that I've filled in with color, to get an idea of what I want to do.

I was undecided whether or not the figures (seraphim?) should have blue or green tunics, and gold or burgundy tassels hanging from the Maltese crosses. After coloring everything, I think I'll be going with the light green tunics to tie in with the garlands, and the burgundy tassels, to add weight to the bottom.

Since the original image gets pixelated at even the size of a quarter page, I went ahead and freehanded an approximation of the original image.

It's not perfect, but it's close enough for cross stitch. Also: Yay, tracing paper for creating symmetry!

The image, so far, is roughly 14"x14". The next step will be to get the drawing on a light table, under some graph paper, and fill out the 1/16" squares with color. It's a tedious way to map out a cross stitch pattern, but I don't have a program that will do it for me, and this method will give me the results I want. I also don't have a light table, which means I'll be improvising with a glass-top table that's been sitting in my mom's barn. Necessity is the mother of invention, right?