PoF and Janet Arnold

[mmcnealy]

Ok, so I went home last night, crawled into bed and read PoF specifically looking for instances of linings and how the linings were attached.
I was perusing the Authentic_SCA yahoo group and they were talking about lined garments and how none of the women’s dresses were lined in PoF. That struck me as odd since I distinctly remembered some of them being lined.
The results of my research are pretty interesting and I am at this moment writting them up. Hopefully I will actually get them posted to my website this weekend, or maybe even tonight.

Comments

[loreleisedai.livejournal.com]

Cooool. I have this thing about linings. There are so many different theories on how a garment was constructed in period. If I had been Janet Arnold, I would have laid out the info a bif differently...more like a modern commmerical pattern instruction sheet. Man, I wish I could get my hands on an extant gown or doublet. Lemmee tell ya color photos would be the bomb.

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

I agree, color photos would be *wonderful* there are just so many shades of gray and its hard to tell sometimes what is connected to what.
I think the reason that there are so many different theories about construction is because garments weren't all constructed the same way all the time, just like they aren't today. Each tailor or region probably had their own style and such. In PoF it describes how QE sent her letters to her Ambassador in France to try and hire a French tailor so that her tailor's could discover the secrets of French and Italian fashions. Obviously not everybody knew how to do everything either.

What I want is a description of a gown, not a loose gown, that is not a grave find. I wonder if there is one in QEWU?

[sarahbellem.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on your definition of "lining", doesn't it? I know that when I was taught to sew, my mom made a big point of stressing the need to line everything, and that meant that bodices had the lining and fashion fabrics sewn right sides together and turned so all the seams were on the inside. It's evil sewing a bodice like this, and I only recently started taking a better look at how it was done in PoF and some of the garments in "Costume Close-up" (18th century). There, it's more like plunk a bunch of layers of stuff down and sew together as one, bind/turn the edges inside and then baste whatever else the bodice needs in the way of boning or stiffening to the inside of the garment and that's that. I like the period way better. :)

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

Wow, when I learned to sew I did not learn how to do linings. Facings and such I learned to do, but I guess that my Mom hates to sew linings so she never really stressed them and I subconsiously tried to avoid them. I define lining as a layer of fabric that covers the inside construction. There are several ways to attach this layer to the outside layer to concel the seams. Bag lining is one of them and is the simplest to do with a sewing machine.

From what I have been reading in PoF, the layers involved and how the garment is constructed depends on the type of garment.

In the case of the doublet, the the outside layer is interlined with linen and any extra support needed for the garment is attatched to this interlining, these layers are treated as one and the garment is constructed. Then the lining is cut to the same size, sewn and then tacked to the outer sections along the edges and the armhole seams.

I need to stop posting here and get working on the document.... :) Thanks for stopping by Sarah