braies question

[Mac]

Mac, is this painting by Domenico di Bartolo, Sienese (d. 1446) in your Pinterest? It shows breeches with an eliptical gusset between the legs.

Sorry I missed you post

That's a nice detail of a classic Type IV! I'll go pin that now.

Mac

[Mac]

I did a bit of work on the "Type IIIs" just before Pennsic, and made up a dozen braies to replace my old ones. They worked OK, but not perfectly. I'll document that a bit later... I'm still recovering.

Meanwhile, though.... I could not help noticing that my shirts are in dire need of replacement. I'm fatter than I was when I made them. Does anyone have any good info on men's shirts from the early 15th C? I figure I'll start another Pinterest page, but I hope to find that someone already has one that I can use as a jumping off point.

Thanks!
Mac

[Mac]

OK... I've got a start on the shirt thing, and begun a (wait for it..) pinterest page of Medieval Men's Shirts. Please point out any images I missed.

Thanks!
Mac

[tiredWeasel]

You already have on picture from the Karlsruhe Passion - but this one is also good for shirt related studies.

I focus mostly on the time around 1460 but in a HRE-context there are mostly two types of neck openings: the classic keyhole and a simple slit wide enough for the head to pass through and then folded once under the doublet (that type is also common in italian art and can be seen at least two times in the Karlsruhe Passion, in the link above it's the fellow in the middle with the red felt hat).

On a semi-related note: the linen version worked just fine. I will post about it as soon as I finished the second piece with a bias cut.

[Sean M]

Don't forget BNF Nouvelle acquisition française 5243 Guiron le Courtois (painted 1370-1380, men's and women's shirts side by side!) http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4365/16843/
BNF Français 343 Quest del saint graal fol. 32 http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4317/7121/
ONB Cod. 2537 Roman de Tristan (c. 1410-1420) http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4935/14796/
BNF Français 357 vol. 83r http://manuscriptminiatures.com/5182/16309/ (c. 1420)
The Execution of Olivier de Clisson, BNF Français 2643 fol. 126 (painted 1470-1475) File:Ex%C3%A9cution_d%27Olivier_IV_de_Clisson_(1343).jpg

Edit: Fixed link to Clisson

[Mac]

You already have on picture from the Karlsruhe Passion - but this one is also good for shirt related studies.

I focus mostly on the time around 1460 but in a HRE-context there are mostly two types of neck openings: the classic keyhole and a simple slit wide enough for the head to pass through and then folded once under the doublet (that type is also common in italian art and can be seen at least two times in the Karlsruhe Passion, in the link above it's the fellow in the middle with the red felt hat).

On a semi-related note: the linen version worked just fine. I will post about it as soon as I finished the second piece with a bias cut.

Don't forget BNF Nouvelle acquisition française 5243 Guiron le Courtois (painted 1370-1380, men's and women's shirts side by side!) http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4365/16843/
BNF Français 343 Quest del saint graal fol. 32 http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4317/7121/
ONB Cod. 2537 Roman de Tristan (c. 1410-1420) http://manuscriptminiatures.com/4935/14796/
BNF Français 357 vol. 83r http://manuscriptminiatures.com/5182/16309/ (c. 1420)
The Execution of Olivier de Clisson, BNF Français 2643 fol. 126 (painted 1470-1475) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... (1343).jpg

Thanks, guys!
Mac

[Mac]

The last time I examined the question of shirts, there was no internet, and I only had a couple of things to go by. Now, I see that there is a lot more to them than I had imagined.

It seems like the overall length varies by quite a bit. Some shirts might barely reach the hips..



.....while others go almost to the knee.



Even within a single source, there might be length variation. These examples both come from the "Tres Riches Heurs"



Arm lengths vary as well.

Here is an image with two different lengths of arm.



There is even this example of a sleeveless shirt.



While many (most?) have side vents.....



...some clearly do not.



As TiredWeasel suggested above, there are a number of necklines. Some are simple ovals or "Vs"....



Most seem to be some variant of the "keyhole". The length of the vertical opening ranges from diminutive...



...to plunging....



...with most being somewhere in between.




Mac

[Mac]

OK.. so, here are my design perimeters and requirements for this project....

---The time frame should be early 15th C. Roberto thinks it's 1419, but like all old guys, his fashion sense is a bit behind the times.

---If my exemplars are North Italian, so much the better; but I'm not going to stress over it.

---I need a shirt that I can be "decent enough" in when it gets too hot at Pennsic to wear much. They need to fit loosely enough that my fat stomach has some slack. My current shirts no longer fulfill this requirement.

---I need a shirt that is long enough that I can wear it (and it alone) to and from the Pennsic privies at night. My current shirts just barely fulfill that requirement. That is to say, they did until we had kids in camp.

I'll get some pics of the current shirt model later today to show where I am coming from.

Mac

[John Vernier]

Lots of variations in shirts to be sure. I made some of the short length type when I was experimenting with cotehardies. I think as long as your hosen point to your braies the shirt can be long, just a bit shorter than the skirt of your tunic so it doesn't peek out. Once your hosen point to your doublet you need to be able to tuck your shirt tails into your hosen, so you want to keep the tails to a minimum. Excess shirt bulk wadded into tightly fitted hosen just looks like crap (though I suppose if done artfully it might be used to correct some deficiencies?).

The type with no vertical slit shows up when the shirt front becomes a fashion detail in the 2nd quarter 15th century, when the doublet begins to be worn slightly open in front. This type is a bit of a puzzle because it generally has some excess material at the breast which bows forward if not constrained.

However, if you just make the shirt wide and with a long horizontal shoulder slit, it will tend to fall off your shoulders. The Clisson execution scene hints at how this was made, with the excess width gathered in the back but not the front, thus defining the width of the shoulders and leaving the front of the slit effectively longer than the back.

[Mac]

I think as long as your hosen point to your braies the shirt can be long, just a bit shorter than the skirt of your tunic so it doesn't peek out. Once your hosen point to your doublet you need to be able to tuck your shirt tails into your hosen, so you want to keep the tails to a minimum. Excess shirt bulk wadded into tightly fitted hosen just looks like crap (though I suppose if done artfully it might be used to correct some deficiencies?).

That was my thought as well. It looks like the age of doublets ushers in a general shortening of shirts among the stylish. I wonder if that means that those noble fellows who are showing up at their executions with the "old fashioned" shirts have made a choice to do so, or whether the artists have just done them the favor of covering up their braies. In either case, I notice a sort of dichotomy between the high status guys who are executed in their shirts, and the villains who get offed in their braies allone.

However, if you just make the shirt wide and with a long horizontal shoulder slit, it will tend to fall off your shoulders. The Clisson execution scene hints at how this was made, with the excess width gathered in the back but not the front, thus defining the width of the shoulders and leaving the front of the slit effectively longer than the back.

Oh! Good call! I had not noticed the gathering at the back of the neck.

I'm glad to see that you are watching this thread, John. I hope you will keep me from doing something ill advised.

Mac

[Mac]

I took some pics of my current shirt model, and I have to admit that it's worse than I had suspected.

The general cut can be seen here. There is no shoulder seam, and the bodice widens slightly from the shoulders to the top of the side vents. My thought at the time was that I should stick to something that is pretty much a rectangle.



The front view begins to show its faults. The wrinkles that start at the ends of the armpit gussets demonstrate that it is too tight there.



I make a point to hold my stomach in tightly for my infamous braies pics, and I am doing so in the right hand image. The left image shows that the truth of the thing is even less attractive. But, a shirt has to fit when the wearer is relaxed, so this is what I have to deal with. Again, we can see those wrinkles proceeding from the ends of the gussets. We can also see that the front is shorter than the back. This would probably be true even in slimmer days, and was a patterning error even then.



The back view is not so obviously egregious, but we can still see those wrinkles. In back, though, they angle up toward the shoulder blade bulk.



Some of the things that need to be changed are pretty clear.....
--more circumference in the chest, both front and back
--better balance of front to back skirt length
--longer skirts
--more fullness in skirts in general
--some curve of the lower edge to make it fall evenly.

There are some features I think I will retain...
--armpit gussets. These appear in a couple of images, as well as in the St. Luis shirt, and the shirt in the laundry scene (below).

--"keyhole" neck. This looks to be the default for the early 15thC.
--side vents. These are not universal, but they are probably typical.
--wrist length sleeves.

Mac

[Mac]

It's a rare thing when artists show us any seam lines, and we have to be grateful when they do.

Here are some examples of seams.

A center back seam, arm seams, and (perhaps) and armpit gusset from the 1330s frescoes in Sienna.



What looks like an open front seam from a Tacuinum Sanitatis.



A shoulder seam and an armscye seam from the Sienna frescoes





An inset gore from a 13th C (?) Spanish image. The extant St. Louis shirt (also 13th C) has these as well.



Armpit gussets and side seam from a 15th C. Italian scene of laundry drying.



Another open front; suggesting a center front seam. From a 1460s French book of hours.



A shoulder seam and an armscye seam (well off the shoulder) by Dirk Bouts in 1458



A center back seam from a 15th C French Froisart's Chronicles.



A shoulder seam, armscye seam, a side seam, and an armpit gusset from a tacuinum sanitatis from the turn of the 14/15 C. I cant tell is that's supposed to be a gore or a vent at the lower end of the side seam.



Armscye seams which lead down to points in the side seams. I suspect that there were armpit gussets here as well. One of the shirts is open in front, suggesting a front seam. This is again from the Sienese governmental allegory frescoes.



An open front; suggesting a front seam. From a 1440s Crucifixion scene.



Shoulder seam, side seam (with gusset?) and vent or gore. From a tacuinum sanitatis.



A shoulder seam and an armscye seam from a 15th C book of hours (?)



A shoulder seam and an armscye seam from a tacuinum sanitatis.



A suggestion of a center back seam from a book of hours of C 1500



Here's a shoulder seam, and an armscye seam. There is also a horizontal line at the level of the armpit that may tell us something important. The shallow "V" of the back neckline suggests a back seam as well.





I'll edit more into this if/when I find more.

Mac

[Sean M]

Mac, if its any consolation I had to scrap the first shirt I cut from good linen because it was too narrow in the chest. Because we are used to stretch fabrics and clothes that open up the front, I think we underestimate how much fabric we need in a cote or shirt that pulls over the head. Like you say, the shoulder seam should sit closer to where the bottom of an English spaulder sits than where the shoulder strap of a breastplate sits.

In 1769, Garsault says that a typical man's shirt should be 2/3 of an aune (80 cm) wide. His men's shirts had straight sides, but for you one of the kinds with side seams that flare outwards would probably be a good idea.

Here are some more of his patterns for women's shirts in the English and French styles on 80-120 cm broad linen. There is a German commentary here that you could plug into Google Translate.


I think the Tacuinum thresher has a gore in the bottom of the side seams of his shirt, the line of the bottom of the shirt runs straight across the breeches.

[John Vernier]

I noticed the gathering on the Clisson shirt because I was looking for it - call it confirmation bias, as it's not a detail which shows up in a lot of other back views of this type of shirt.

Fair warning that I've been looking at a lot of 18th- and early 19th-century shirts this year, so you may consider my thoughts as well contaminated, though I've been looking for some earlier evidence lately. I'm pretty much of the opinion that shirts are made from squares or rectangles most of the time, with occasional triangular gussets. At least from the 16th century onwards, gathering is used for fitting and creating fullness, but curved seams are something I tend to doubt were used, as being wasteful of material. This doesn't seem to change until after the middle 19th century. One good source for the period I've been looking at is The Workwoman's Guide from 1838.

https://play.google.com/books/reader?id ... .PA136-IA2

The writer exhorts the learner on economy, including using fabric of the correct width for the size of shirt so that the body can be cut selvedge to selvedge with no waste. This implies that different widths were deliberately woven for the purpose, which makes sense, though I wonder how far back that practice goes. The size chart indicates widths for an adult man between 13.5 and 16 nails, that is just over 30 to 36 inches (a nail is 1/16yd or 2 1/4 in) - and note there is different sizing for working men and gentlemen, the upper class shirts being cut larger! At this period a lot of fullness is gathered in to the collar at the neck, so the shoulder line is not the full width of the fabric, but that width is in play for the chest and belly. I don't know if gathering was much used for shirts before the 16th century, but it can be a pretty subtle detail which might often not be represented in a drawing.

To me your old shirt pattern looks plausible but small. I would make a larger rectangular pattern and see how that works before doing anything more complicated. I think your general observations about what to change and what to keep are sound. I am skeptical that the bottom hem should be anything other than a straight line, though, as this is not something intended to be seen, like the hem of a skirt or tunic.

[Mac]

I think the Tacuinum thresher has a gore in the bottom of the side seams of his shirt, the line of the bottom of the shirt runs straight across the breeches.

I think you are right about that. If it were a vent, we should see flesh color there.

Mac

[Mac]

So... I have been thinking about something that got bigger as is went down, but still preserved a reasonable shoulder length.

Perhaps like the two panel thing on the right. I was also leaning toward a four panel construction (left... smaller scale) so I could sneak in more fabric in the middle. Having a center seam would also simplify the keyhole neck.



I was also thinking about resuming a straight grain drop from the tops of the side vents, like the four panel thing below.



But now I have cold feet. You guys have convinced me that I should at least give a rectangular plan a try.

So... I am going out to the shop to chop up some muslin. I'm not sure if it will have center seams or not (getting to put the keyhole on a seam is a very attractive idea) but it will be Big Frigg'n Rectangle. The armscye seams will be way off my shoulders, but perhaps that's just OK. We never know for sure till we try.



Mac

[John Vernier]

Well I'm feeling a bit guilty now. As is often the case, your problem solving approach is making me rethink my assumptions, and I welcome that.

FWIW, shirt armscyes being well off the shoulder seems to be typical on 18-19c shirts. I'm trying to get used to it.

[Sean M]

I just measured one of my medieval shirts, and it is currently 64 cm wide. Add the seam allowances back in, and I think that 3/4 your chest is a good minimum width for the shirt at armpit level. Caroline Johnson makes her early 16th century shirts a yard (90 cm) wide, and the Pazyryk shirt from ancient Siberia is "93.5 cm (38") wide at the shoulder."





In this picture¸ my finger tip is on the hard bone at the tip of the clavicle. There are at least 6 fingers between it and the join with the sleeve.

Mac, some of the pictures you found are making me grudgingly accept that some of these shirts have a center front seam or a center back seam..

I like the idea of the shirts with the long vents as basically rectangular, but some of the ones in your pictures bell out. I think that may be a better choice for a prosperous physique.

[Mac]

I've got the prototype under way, but will not be able to get back to it till tomorrow. There's an amateur astronomer's meeting tonight.

The prototype should be ready for testing by noon; and I'll report back then.

Mac

[Mac]

The sketch below is what I worked from for the prototype I started yesterday. It's about 4" (100mm) bigger in the chest than than my old shirts, and a couple of inches longer. I decided to put the shoulder seam at the widest point of the neck opening, instead of the highest place on my shoulders. That turns out to be an ugly mistake, but it's not the worst part.



Here is what the prototype looks like. I have not bothered to finish the seam allowances, except for the shoulder seams.



This is what it looks like with the old shirt laid over it for comparison. The additional with of the panels put the armscye seams out about two inches, and that much was removed from the sleeves to keep the wrists in the right place.



I only got one pic more before the camera batteries died, but we can see that it's really not a significant improvement. It fits my chest more comfortably, and there is (almost) enough space for my stomach, but it still hangs badly in the shoulders. On the plus side, the length would be about right if I hemmed the edge.



I'll post the side and back views when my batteries are charged.

Meanwhile, I'm going to think about a different cut.

Mac

[Mac]

Here are the other two views.



I'm pretty sure now that the rectangle is a dead end for this sort of shirt. I'm just not getting the same sort of drape, and there is no trace of folding in the skirt. I'm going to try something based on four trapezoidal panels, and see where that gets me.

Here are some things I will try to address....
--getting folds that begin at the chest and get bigger at the hem.
--eliminating the unsightly wrinkles that rise up from the armpits
--moving the shoulder seam back
--making the neck opening a bit bigger in the front to back direction
--making the skirts be the same length all the way around

I also plan to try making the armpit gussets more "kite" shaped, rather than square. I think I need to get more fabric into the bodice and less into the sleeve than the square ones are doing.

More tomorrow... or perhaps Monday.

Mac

[Sean M]

Mac,

Garsault may be telling us something about how to deal with fleshier bodies when he makes his women's shirts flare out below the shoulder. The Rodrigo Ximenez shirt and the St. Louis Shirt both have that feature too.

That said ... it looks like the old shirts were 19" wide at the shoulder, and the new one is 23". My shirts with rectangular bodies are 26" wide and that is kind of narrow, Garsault recommended 32" or 36" for a man's shirt with straight sides. Here is how mine look from front and behind.



And here is it with my hand raised like I am threshing.



Also, European shirts in this period are not supposed to look good: they are supposed to protect your clothing from you and you from your clothing, manage temperature and humidity, allow a full range of motion, and survive being laundered every week or two. After fashions change and polite people start to show their shirts in public, they develop features like embroidery, pleating, cuffs and collars, ... And in general medieval clothing looks worst when you are standing with your arms at your side, and best in motion (the opposite of fashions today!) So I would try not to think about "unsightly" and just ask whether it fits the functional requirements and folds and pleats like the paintings.

[Mac]

Opps!

I'm removing this post because it didn't do anything. I started quoting Sean M and then decided to take a different approach. Meanwhile I seem to have posted the quote without comentary

Mac

[tiredWeasel]

My shirt is made of panels 70cm (27,5") wide, the arms have a circumference of 50cm (19,7") with square gores 10cm (4") wide - "The Medieval Tailors Assistant" advises panels with "half chest + 15cm or more" and that's pretty much what I did (chest = 110cm). It still could be wider, but I guess that's a matter of enlarging the gores under the arms.
So don't be afraid of making this wide!

For someone with more girth I would still recommend the basic rectangular pattern but with side and front gores. It's a simple undergarment, I would not recommend a more complex pattern. It's easy to overthink this.

[Mac]

To my eye, the rectangular shirt is not giving the proper line. It looks like the shirts in the 14th-16th C images are generally fuller, with some folding/draping of fabric beginning in the middle of the chest and back.

The tightest and most straight sided of them are still noticeably fuller than what I am getting.

Here, we see the start of vertical wrinkles beginning by the middle of the armscye, and yet the seam is still distinctly on the shoulder. This suggests a bodice that is more trapezoidal than rectangular. At the very least, it means that the width of the bodice is significantly greater below the arms than at the shoulders. ( I don't think we can rule out a curved armscye or some pieced-up approximation of one. )



This fellow's shirt is also pretty "straight" as they go, but he still has significant folding below his butt. There must be at least 18 inches of extra fabric there in the back to produce that effect. If that bodice were a rectangle, there would be a lot more fullness in his upper back than we are seeing.



Rectangular shirts were the norm in the 18th and 19th Centuries, but I don't think the visual evidence is supporting that for shirts of the 14th through 16th Centuries.



I'm not looking for something that looks "good" in the sense of being attractive, but only good in the sense of looking like our iconographic examples. When I call those wrinkles "unsightly" I mean that they are not like what I am seeing in the pictures. To me, they scream "wrong". If I started with an even bigger rectangle, those wrinkles would probably coalesce into one big fold; and while that would look nicer, it's still not the pattern we are seeing in the images.

Sadly, our surviving shirts and shirtlike garments are all a century or more earlier than what I am after. On the other hand, they tend to have gores which make them get wider toward the bottom. Even if we presume that the coarse of fashion takes a smooth straight path from St Louis shirt to the ones in Garsault, (which would be a bold assumption, indeed) it still suggests that the early 15thC shirt should be more trapezoidal than rectangular.

My next prototype will be a departure from the rectangle. The only question I am currently wrestling with is the nature of the armscye and the shape of any gussets it may have. I hope for some success, but am (as always) prepared for failure.

Mac

[Mac]

It's easy to overthink this.

That's very true. But it's also easy to underestimate our ancestors. These are both things to guard against.

At the end of the day, the garment has to look like how the guys who painted and drew them thought they looked. The wrinkles, folds, and seams should be in the right places. The artists may have exercised a bit of artistic discretion, and idealized the form; but they wore these shirts and knew what they really looked like. We may presume that they exaggerated, but we can not presume that they made things up. We have to trust them. They are all we have to go by.

Mac

[John Vernier]

To me it seems clear that the St. Louis shirt is essentially cut like the tunic it would be worn under. Perhaps it is a less bulky version of that pattern, but the pattern is the same in concept - and that's a perfectly logical way to conceive a shirt, although it obviously isn't the way they were conceived in the 18th century. A lot of the 15th century drawings Mac has pulled up look to me like they are draped rather like skimpy versions of houppelandes. The folds fall in the same way, sometimes strikingly so, to a degree that I find a bit improbable:

But never mind my doubts. I would love to see how close you can come to replicating this cut of shirt. I have no doubt you can make one which will cut a dashing figure on the way to the porta potties at Pennsic. What I want to know is whether it will tuck conveniently into your braies with all that extra fullness. And we can address the question of when the square-cut shirt came into being separately. I think the Gnalic shipwreck shirts of c.1570 are a good place to start.

I believe this is the same shirt which Dorothy Burnham illustrates as the Zadar shirt on p.15 of Cut My Cote.

There is a cutting diagram as well, but it's too tall for me to post:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/568016571730365420/

[Mac]

Here is my current idea for shirt 3.0. It's represented by a split front/back plan.




I've decided to put some slope in the shoulders because otherwise there is not much point in a shoulder seam at all. Since our artists show a seam there when they show seams at all, it's probably a common thing to have it. I'm planning to make the seam the mid point of the armscye at one end and the wide point of the neck at the other. That's how the seam runs on my modern shirts, and the result does not look unlike the way the shoulder seam is represented in period art.

The skirt will be longer in front than in back. I hope this will accommodate my stomach. I thinner guy would probably do just as well to have them the same length.

I really hate armpit gussets, but it seems like I should have them. I am really tempted to make a curved armscye like on a Herjolfsnes coat, but I think I need to give this at least one more try. Besides, our artists sometimes show some sort of gusset, so it's probably typical.

Perhaps I can get this patterned out and sewn up today. If not, then tomorrow, for sure.

Mac

[Sean M]

Mac,

I am starting to see a Germanic tradition of shirts with an open front in the 15th century.

Christ bearing the cross 1415-1420 IMAREAL 013016
Christ and the captain of Kapharnaum 1425-1435 IMAREAL 005146
Trojan War 1445-1450 IMAREAL 006477
Martyrdom of St. George with Fire 1465-1470 IMAREAL 000570

I have not seen these anywhere outside Germany and Austria, so I would be very cautious about extrapolating to Italy, but they appear in the period and social status you are looking for.

[Mac]

Mac,

I am starting to see a Germanic tradition of shirts with an open front in the 15th century.

Christ bearing the cross 1415-1420 IMAREAL 013016
Christ and the captain of Kapharnaum 1425-1435 IMAREAL 005146
Trojan War 1445-1450 IMAREAL 006477
Martyrdom of St. George with Fire 1465-1470 IMAREAL 000570

I have not seen these anywhere outside Germany and Austria, so I would be very cautious about extrapolating to Italy, but they appear in the period and social status you are looking for.

Good stuff! Thanks!

I've put some of those images into my Pinterest page. There is a surprising number of images of shirts in that Life of Jesus MS. I'll pick out some more later today.

I think you are right to not extend the open front thing to Italy, but I think these Germanic images lend support to the idea that a front seam is common in shirts.

Mac

[Mac]

To me it seems clear that the St. Louis shirt is essentially cut like the tunic it would be worn under. Perhaps it is a less bulky version of that pattern, but the pattern is the same in concept - and that's a perfectly logical way to conceive a shirt, although it obviously isn't the way they were conceived in the 18th century. A lot of the 15th century drawings Mac has pulled up look to me like they are draped rather like skimpy versions of houppelandes. The folds fall in the same way, sometimes strikingly so, to a degree that I find a bit improbable:

Those are my thoughts as well. Those guys in the Boccacio even have collars on their shirts. I don't think we see this anywhere else till quite a bit later.

But never mind my doubts. I would love to see how close you can come to replicating this cut of shirt.

Me too I just hope I hit on something good before I run out of steam on this project.

I have no doubt you can make one which will cut a dashing figure on the way to the porta potties at Pennsic.

Almost anything will be an improvement on my current shirts. If I can be dashing while dashing, that just gravy.

What I want to know is whether it will tuck conveniently into your braies with all that extra fullness.

I'm not worried about tucking the hems into my braies. That's for guys who wear doublets and short outer garments with nice hosen. I think they would wear a short version of the shirt to begin with. I'm never going to wear anything but longish coats, so long shirts will be fine for me.

And we can address the question of when the square-cut shirt came into being separately. I think the Gnalic shipwreck shirts of c.1570 are a good place to start.

I believe this is the same shirt which Dorothy Burnham illustrates as the Zadar shirt on p.15 of Cut My Cote.

There is a cutting diagram as well, but it's too tall for me to post:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/568016571730365420/

That's certainly an interesting question. It looks like that shirt is on the road to the square shirts that come later. Someone (not me, I hope) needs to work on figuring out the history of shirts.

Mac

[Mac]

I made a change to the shoulder while I was making the patterns. The slope seemed a bit much, so I decreased it some. As it was in my sketchbook, it would probably be well suited to the average shape; but my shoulders are very high, so it just seemed ridiculous not to flatten them some.

Here is how the body panels laid out on a double layer of fabric.



The prototype ended up looking a lot like my sketch, except for the amount of extra length in front. Somehow that seems a bit shy, but it might just by how the two layers of the garment are sitting on the table.



I'll go take some pics of how it fits, and post them in a little bit.

Mac

[Mac]

Here is the 2.0 shirt shown on top of the 3.0 for comparison.



The 3.0 has a lot more room, but I still don't like the way the armscye areas behave. There are two things that sort of piss my off. The first is the extra material in front of the armpit. This is in part from having the armscye seam off the shoulder, and I'm thinking about how to fix that. It's also about the nature fundamentally square nature of the seam. This is just not the nicest way to make two cylinders join. The other thing that I don't like is the diagonal wrinkle across the upper arms. I have not yet understood what caused that. I doesn't make any particular trouble, but I don't think I'm seeing it in the period pictures.



In this side view, the fabric happened not to fall into a fold, but rather just stuck out looking dorky. It normally folds, but that's not what it did this time In any case, the skirt is even enough, but too long.



The back view is the best, really. I like the amount of fabric. If it fell into three small folds, rather than one big one I'd like it better. We can still see some of the problems resulting from the nature of the armscye seam and the fact that it's too far off my shoulders, but they are not so obvious in back.



I'm going to think about all this and see what I might do to improve it in Mk 3.1

Mac

[John Vernier]

One detail which caught my eye among the images you posted was the angled straight lines under the arms of this shirt:

Too bad there is nothing much to corroborate it, as it can be interpreted as a sleeve fitted rather like in the gown of St Clare, as here:




It's hard to read the surviving garment but the diagram seems clear. That shape of underarm seam only makes sense with side gores, but it does sort of automatically put you on the way to a shaped armscye, even if you don't cut a curve into your main body panel.

[Mac]

I found a bigger image of that one here, along with a couple others from the same calendar.



It looks like the artist really meant it, and that those lines are not just some slip of the brush. I'm thinking about collecting all the images where something is revealed about the armpit and seeing if I can sketch out a likely construction for each.

I wish we knew more about how important is was for the tailor to use every bit of the fabric and for the resulting shirt to be able to be laid flat on laundry day.

It seems to me that the big difference between the Ste. Clair garment and something with square gussets in the armpits is that the fronts of the armscyes are curved a bit.



I would really like to be able to justify that, as it would remove some of those diagonal wrinkles in the upper arm that I was complaining about earlier.

Mac