Black Widow Doublet

Elfsea Baronial College was at the end of September. I was intrigued by the prospect of a full day of A&S classes (like a mini King's College!), but I was really hooked when I learned that they were having a "Disney your garb" costume contest. Any Disney-owned character was fair game. Some friends and I decided to go as Avengers. Chris was Dr. Strange, Franchesca was Pepper Potts, and I was Black Widow. The pockets, and the to-be-made sleeves will have their own posts, later, but here I'll show the doublet I made. It was pretty, functional, and carried the theme of the character well.

I did not win the costume contest, but I enjoyed playing with the techniques and exploring how the dress in the painting might have been made.

This painting of Lucrezia de' Medici, Duchess of Ferrara, was made by Agnolo Bronzino (or quite probably by his student Alessandro Allori) in 1560, a year before her death at age 16 from tuberculosis. It is held by the North Carolina Museum of Art. Her end was tragic, but her dress is really beautiful, and I wanted to explore the challenge of all the various techniques it used. 

The Disney character I chose was Black Widow. I had been wanting to do something with the Lucrezia Medici painting for some time, and the pointy collar and doublet skirting reminded me a little of spiderwebs. I wanted to made an outfit that was evocative of the comic book character while still staying true to a period design. I simplified the decoration used in Lucrezia's gown, and made only the doublet portion, rather than the whole thing. I strongly suspect that the doublet and skirt were separate pieces that were held together with a lacing strip at the waist (like a man's doublet and hosen pointed together), but that detail is speculative since any lacing would be completely covered by the doublet skirting, and pattern books of the time left out construction details and anything not cut from the expensive outer fabric.

I started pattern development with a doublet pattern that I've made several times over the years. I knew it would need modifications, both to fit over my hand sewn black linen kirtle, and to change the shaping to better reflect the inspiration painting. I made a mockup out of lightweight cotton flatlined with acrylic felt to capture the bulk of the velvet and the stiffness of the canvas. I did some work on patterning up the complex sleeve design, but when I realized how my time was going I decided to set the sleeves aside for a later project. Expect a later blog post on those.

Trying on the mockup over the chemise and kirtle I intend to wear it with. This is important, as these garments will have an effect on the fit. In particular, the kirtle is supportive, and affects the bust position. Decent fit through the back, though it needs a smidge more room through the waist. Nice tall collar! I'm pleased with the fit of the skirting.

The center front needs to meet a little bit higher - the "French neckline" (as Moda a Firenze calls the style) was generally not open so deep down the center front, and Lucrezia's portrait is also not open so far down. I'm happy with the smooth line. No bones anywhere in this outfit.

The collar is nice and tall in the back, but entirely too floppy toward the front. I'll need to fix that.

Pattern modifications and fitting the mockup took longer than expected, and a number of real-life obligations meant that I was cutting the fabric out after lunch Tuesday. I was leaving town Friday evening. This needed to get made quickly. Sleep is for the weak, right? In actuality this project was aided and abetted by my very understanding family, who put up with a week of Mom being mostly-absent from their lives, and many frozen meals warmed up for dinner.

The outer fabric is a black silk-backed, rayon-pile velvet from Dharma Trading. It's under $15 / yard (at the time of writing), and in person it's much nicer than the website photo would lead you to believe. It is a joy to touch, and I look forward to using it on future projects. I've looked for more historically accurate 100% silk velvet in the past, but I've found that it's either impossible to find for sale, or multiple hundreds of dollars per yard. Just no. The Medici may have been some of the most wealthy people in the world in their time, but I am not, and I simply cannot afford that kind of expense. I have handled silk-pile velvet, and I honestly did not see anywhere near enough difference to justify the astronomical leap in price. The rayon pile of this velvet is just fine.

The off-white cotton canvas interlining came from a set of curtains my sister donated. Reduce, reuse, recycle!

I pinned the velvet onto the canvas interlining and cut them both at the same time. I cut the left and right sides individually, rather than trying to cut a double layer of super-slinky velvet.

Background: velvet and canvas pieces cut and stacked. I tried not to leave pins in the velvet any longer than I had to, to avoid potentially marring the pile. 

Foreground: I had already made a few test pieces to experiment with the slashed decoration, but I made one more test with the actual velvet and satin. Based on that test, I decided to only cut the slashes through the velvet, and to leave the canvas uncut. It added to the complexity of the process since I could not immediately baste the canvas and velvet together, but it got a better result.

For the red fabric, I used a large scrap of red polyester satin, left over from hemming a prom dress. I cut semi-bias strips of the satin (constrained by the fabric I had to work with), then stitched and turned tubes that were long enough to decorate each section of the doublet. I ironed the tubes flat so they would lay correctly.

My usual method of finishing the raw outside edges of a doublet has been to bind them with silk bias strip. But I can't do that here, since that's not how the doublet in the painting is made. I decided to start with the skirting, since it's a smaller piece to handle. I machine-basted the velvet and canvas together, then clipped into the seam allowance of the outer curves. Then I used black sewing silk to whip stitch the velvet seam allowance down to the canvas, being careful not to stitch through to the face of the velvet. This method was much slower than simply bag-lining the piece, but it gives a much nicer result. The outside edge is far less bulky, and because of the slight tension put into the fabric by the hand stitches, the piece tends to want to curve toward the body, rather than flipping away from the body. I did this treatment on all the outside edges of the garment.

The white dashed lines on Lucrezia's dress were a bit of a puzzle. If you zoom way in to the painting, you can see that they are clearly painted as very narrow lines, with tiny black breaks. The lines are too long and narrow to be pearls or seed beads. I've not seen any evidence that glass bugle beads were used in this time period, though in later centuries Venice's Murano would become a famous source for them. The two most likely options seemed to be that the lines were either white silk embroidery (probably a back stitch), or some kind of thin white or silver cord, couched down with black thread. The art history book I consulted (Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal in the Court of Duke Cosimo I) discussed the politics of Lucrezia's marriage and the symbolism of the various items in the painting, but offered no observations on garment construction. The ubiquitous Dressing Renaissance Florence remained silent on the topic of thin silver or white lines as surface decoration on gowns. A kind friend lent me her copy of Moda a Firenze, which I had hoped might have the dress listed in the Medici wardrobe accounts. No luck. There were also no explicit mentions of the similar black-with-white-trim dresses that Lucrezia's mother Eleonora of Toledo, her sister Isabella de' Medici twice, and another woman were painted wearing. 

I decided that the only way to know which method was used was to simply try one, and see how well the result matched the painting. Since I didn't have silver cord on hand, I tried the backstitch option. I used used the white 2/20 weaving silk I already had from another project, together with a #4 tailor's between needle, and an open top tailor's needle.

To transfer the trim position lines, I laid the pattern paper over the velvet, then carefully placed pins into the fabric underneath to mark the position of each double row of trim. Then I traced the line of pins with less-stabby thread basting. I used white thread, for visibility against the black velvet, and it was removed as I stitched the trim.

I used an Ex-acto blade and a cutting board to cut slits at 1.25" intervals in the velvet. Then I threaded the red satin tube through the slits, and pinned it into place at the top of the first slit. I stitched that first position, then pinched the middle of the tube together (to take up the amount of fabric needed when the hourglass waist was stitched later), and pinned the bottom of the section in place and stitched. I repeated this process for all of the hourglass decorations on the doublet. The top stitching holding the satin in place was visible on close inspection, but not too bad, and at a distance the black thread disappears into the black velvet. 

 

The back side of the velvet, with the red bias tube sewn in place. I clipped the tube between each hour glass to prevent the tube from pulling and warping the shape of the garment.

Now to create the waist of the hourglass shape. I pinned together the velvet and the canvas and pinned them at the edges. Using strong upholstery thread, I tightly stitched the middle of each hourglass, both pinching it together and stitching it down to the velvet and canvas.

Stitching the double rows of backstitch decoration. I used white 2/20 weaving silk, a #4 tailor's between needle, and an open top tailor's needle. These stitches go through both the velvet and the canvas. I sewed the front collar on first, since the white backstitch is also applied around the collar seam and into the collar seam allowance. 

The inside of the front piece, with all decoration complete and the front collar attached. This shot also shows the black wool melton padding / stiffening that's machine pad stitched to the body side of the canvas on both the front and back pieces. I also used wool stiffening pad stitched to the canvas of the front collar pieces, since I knew they would need some stiffening, but I wasn't sure how well my normal hand pad stitching through all the layers would work with the while silk decorative stitching.

The outside of the front piece.

One half of the back, just before I secure the hourglass middles. I had to guess what a reasonable design for the back would be, since I could find no images of the backs of high-necked Italian gowns from this period. I do not feel that the surviving low-necked side-back-lacing gowns were likely to have been decorated in the same way as a front-opening gown.

Thursday evening, taking a break for dinner. There was still a lot of decorative stitching to do.

I joined the front and back pieces together. Normally I would have joined the two back pieces together first, but I was trying to minimize the amount of bulk in my hands while I did all the hand stitching for the decoration and turning in the edges. It worked well.

Here you can see the collar seam allowance secured toward the back of the garment. The whip stitches only go through the off-white canvas and wool, and do not reach the outside of the velvet. The black wool padding is clipped back away from the seams and edges, to reduce bulk.

Friday's task list, in order. I write out the day's work on a Post-It note and stick it to the lamp that's just below eye level over the table.

The lining is a thin black silk taffeta. I cut it to the same pattern as the outer fabric, sewed it together, and layed it into the doublet. I lined up the seams and pinned the layers together, careful not to let it stretch or warp. Then I hand-basted the lining to the body of the doublet along the center back, side, shoulder, collar, and skirting seams. 

Then I folded under the raw edges of the silk and slip-stitched the lining to the previously-finished velvet edges. This process was fairly quick along the straight edges of the center front, but very time consuming along the scallops of the skirting and collar. As I had opted to skip sleeves at this time, I basted the lining and velvet at the raw arm holes. The volume of my white chemise sleeves hid most of the raw edges, and I'll have the sleeves made and attached before the doublet is worn again. Hooks and eyes completed the front closure.

At the event, in the company of Doctor Strange (Chris), Pepper Potts (Franchesca), and the Queen of Hearts (their daughter Alexys, who very nicely did not try to cut off my head). The Queen of Hearts outfit is actually one I made years ago for Rachel, and it was fun seeing another girl get to enjoy it.