Introduction

10th May 2004

I'm planning on sewing a partlet with a high, frilled collar. This will fit over one of my current shifts and should, I hope, be indistinguishable from a high necked shift. It will be made of a remnant of fine, even-weave white linen that's left over from sewing a shirt for my boyfriend, and will be sewn entirely by hand with linen thread.

This snippet of a self-portrait of Sofonisba shows the look I'm trying to achieve. Her collar fastens with two pairs of ties, each of which finishes with a little tassle. I love that detail, and plan to copy it. The ties will be finger-loop braids and will probably be made of silk thread. Linen braids tend to be a little stiffer than these images suggest. But I'll try a few options and see what looks best.

2nd October 2004

It's amazing - leave a project for long enough and you completely change you're mind on what you're going to make.

The big change in this section is that I'm not going to be making a seperate partlet to go over the shifts I already have. I'm going to be making a new shift with a ruffle collar. The reason for this is simple: Kentwell this year was very tough on shifts. The back panel of one, for reasons that still remain a mystery, turned to horizontal ribbons running across my back. Not very decent! And another old, worn favourite is starting to fall apart. The linen thread has lost it's strength, which it tends to do after prolonged washing and wearing, and the fabric is wearing thin. I can - and have - resewn the seams, and am darning the spots where the fabric is wearing through, but there's a limit to how much you can repair.

So, a new shift it is.

I've described at length how I go about measuring and sewing a shift, so I'm not going to repeat that here. Suffice it to say that I'll be constructing it as I always do, by hemming panels and then sewing them together with ladder stitch.

The pattern itself, however, will be a little different from what I've used before. In part this is in an attempt to be more efficent in fabric - the triangular gores I've used before inevitably lead to small triangular scraps which are of little use, and end up cluttering up the sewing room because I'm too much of a pack-rat to throw them away. And it's in part inspired by surviving garments.

So I've been doing a little reading to see if I could come up with a better design. On my shelves I had a copy of an article by Janet Arnold. It's called Elizabethan and Jacobean Smocks and Shirts but unfortunately, because I have just a poor quality photocopy of a photocopy, I have no more reference information than that. In writing about male and female shirts and smocks, she says:

A close examination of thirteen such linen garments, all embroidered or decorated in lace, shows that although there are many minor variations in the embroidery and lace designs, in the position of these decorative features and in the techniques of cut and construction, one major difference which divides them into two groups is immediately obvious when comparing the flat pattern shapes. The specimens in the first group are shirts made from the width of the linen with straight side seams. Those in the second group are smocks shaped by gores at the sides starting from a point just above the waist, widening slowly over the hips down to the hem. These gores are sometimes cut in one with the rest of the front and back panels, if the linen is wide enough. (Emphasis mine).

To me, that sounds like any cutting method that creates that flared body shape is fair game, which gives me some freedom to experiment a little.

Turning to surviving garments, Drea's site has some photos of extant garments in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. I travelled down to see them but, unfortunately, they weren't on display. *grumble*. It's this image in particular that I find fascinating, because the construction is very different from what I've detailed in the shift notes.

Looking at the photo it's quite clear that the side gore is attatched to the body, and then the under arm gore attatches to it. Hopefully the schematic to the right will clarify what I mean.

It seems to me that there are two ways to produce that effect. One is to have a triangular gore - just like before, but a little longer - with a slit running down from it's apex. The second is to have two gores on each side, with the underarm gore between them. The second is both easier to sew, and can be cut very efficiently out of the fabric, so it's that I've decided to go for. The joy of it is that it can be cut simply and straightforwardly out of a single fabric width, with no waste at all. My fabric layout is shown below.

Sewing the Prototype

I do have some very fine, light-weight linen which is ideal for this project. However it was relatively expensive and I don't have enough for mistakes. What I have yards and yards of, though, is the dirt-cheap ikea linen that I've talked about before. A girl can never have too many shifts, so I decided that it would make sense to sew up one out of that stuff, and figure out the kinks before cutting into my nice fine linen.

I've finished the prototype shift and am delighted with it. I can't see myself going back to the pattern I was using formerly. It's probably a little hard to see on these photos, but the fit is simply much better. The shift flows out gently from high in the armpits, and at the hem is very full indeed. Yet the body is sufficiently snug that it fits without too much bunching under a tightly laced bodice.

As always, this shift is hand sewn with linen thread. Other than the changed pattern, the construction method of hemming the panels and then whipstitching them together is exactly as I've described in the shift notes.

Now I have to start sewing on the real thing...