braies question

[John Vernier]

I think you might as well try a shirt with curved armscye to see if that solves the problem. The St. Louis shirt has a slightly curved armscye, although it seems like the people who have viewed the shirt go back and forth on how much: http://heatherrosejones.com/stlouisshirt/
I think it's interesting that the St. Clare gown has a tiny square armpit gusset despite the shaping of the armscye. I think it's about putting a bit of bias material at the point of maximum stress so that the seam doesn't tear out. Nevertheless if you wanted to shape your sleeve differently I think you could fit a standard cylinder with square gusset into that armscye with a little fiddling.

[Mac]

I think it's interesting that the St. Clare gown has a tiny square armpit gusset despite the shaping of the armscye. I think it's about putting a bit of bias material at the point of maximum stress so that the seam doesn't tear out. Nevertheless if you wanted to shape your sleeve differently I think you could fit a standard cylinder with square gusset into that armscye with a little fiddling.

I see the little square gusset as an exercise in economical piecing. All five of the sleeves in this sketch functionally identical. They just put more or less value on the fabric vs. the labor of the tailor.



Mac

[Mac]

I think you might as well try a shirt with curved armscye to see if that solves the problem. The St. Louis shirt has a slightly curved armscye, although it seems like the people who have viewed the shirt go back and forth on how much: http://heatherrosejones.com/stlouisshirt/

Sean M, has kindly sent me a scan of an article by Anderlini on the St. Luis shirt, which appears to be pretty definitive in many ways; but she seems not to have addressed the curve (or lack thereof) specifically. In her sketch of the shirt, they are slightly curved, but in her cutting redaction, they are straight. From the point of view of fabric use, it's all the same, but the shirt will not lay as flat to be laundered if they are curved. Just how important that is, I don't know. I am sure it will fit a bit better with curved seams. I'll ask Sean if I can forward the article to you if you'd like.

Mac

[Sean M]

It looks to me that in the Good Government from Siena, most of the Tacuinum pictures, the man being mauled by a bear, and the Decameron the top of the armhole is more like on modern shirt than down the arm like an ancient tunic. The dimensions of the St. Louis Shirt and the Rodrigo Ximinez shirt seem to support that.

I don't think they would be worried too much about wasting fabric on a curved sleeve cap say 2 fingers deep, but that curved seam will be a bit more prone to fraying than one cut along a thread. Modern shirts don't fail there though, and breech patterns seem to have had lots of curved seams.

[Mac]

I've just pinned a big bunch of beggars and peasants to the page.

This guy shows the characteristic wrinkles of a sleeve set into a straight seam. He has the diagonal wrinkles which come up from his armpit, and that spiral wrinkle in the upper arm. That's nice attention to detail from the Master of the Wolfeg Hausbuch.



This guy's got them too.





Mac

[John Vernier]

I see the little square gusset as an exercise in economical piecing. All five of the sleeves in this sketch functionally identical. They just put more or less value on the fabric vs. the labor of the tailor.
Mac

They are functionally identical except that the square gusset avoids putting a bias seam diretly on the bottom point of the armscye. This is typical of shirt construction over a long period, and I wonder if there is a practical consideration. It's not clear to me that the square gusset is stronger than two triangles, but it does avoid having one more seam at a busy intersection.

I'd love to see the St. Louis article if possible. I had seen a reference to it and made a note to seek it out when I can get to the University library.

[Mac]

They are functionally identical except that the square gusset avoids putting a bias seam diretly on the bottom point of the armscye. This is typical of shirt construction over a long period, and I wonder if there is a practical consideration. It's not clear to me that the square gusset is stronger than two triangles, but it does avoid having one more seam at a busy intersection.

Ah! Now I see what you mean.

I sort of like the idea of a diagonal seam to make closing the garment from wrist to hem all happen in one operation.... but that's "sewing machine thinking"

I'd love to see the St. Louis article if possible. I had seen a reference to it and made a note to seek it out when I can get to the University library.

I've sent it off to what I believe to be your email address. Tell me if it came through OK.

Mac

[Mac]

For shirt 3.1, I took an inch off of the shoulder width on each side, but kept the skirt the same at the hem. That reduced the chest by about 3" at the level of the points of the armpit gussets.

When the prototype was complete, but not yet hemmed, I trimmed about an inch everywhere, and about another 1/2" in the center front.



The hem is reasonably even in the side view, but it may be a bit long in front, still. The garment can be shifted a bit on the shoulders, so sometimes it looks a bit too long in front, and sometimes not.... I should probably wear it around and see where it seems to settle before I commit to any more trimming.



The back is rather fuller than the front or sides. This is not surprising in a germant which where the front and back are essentially the same and the wearer is paunchy.



Another change I made was to reduce the size of the gussets. I had been starting with 6" squares, and thought that they were too big. These are 5", and I think they are probably too small. When I put my arms down, I can feel tension along the front armscye seam. I will probably rip one of these out and replace it with a 6" gusset to see if that improves things.



Mac

[Mac]

So... returning to the subject of braies...

Just before Pennsic, I made some modifications to my Type III patern, and it seemed to be an improvement. I haven't got any pics of the muslin prototype, because I was in a great tearing hurry to get things done. It took about a day to make 13 pairs in linen.

When I got back, I modeled one of the linen ones and took some pics.



The overall effect is a bit loose. Some of that is trying to make sure the leg circumference was good for sitting, and part of it is that things just end up looser in linen. All in all, they worked better than the ones I was replacing, but they are not all I hope for. They are loose enough that the bottom of the pouch can shift a bit from side to side. This sometimes leads to an uncomfortable feeling of questionable support, but the pouch never fully capsized like on my previous fleet of braies.

Yesterday, I started the next modifications on this pattern. I took 3/4" off each side on both the front and the back panel. When making the waist match again, I moved the sides down just a tad.... perhaps. 1/2" This is in an effort to combat the thing where linen stretches over the course of a day's wear and there is a limit to how high one can retie the drawstring. So, this new prototype starts out just a bit lower than the place where I want to wear the drawstring, to allow for a bit of stretch. I also added a bit fabric to the pouch by sweeping the waist up about 5/8" in the center front.

The prototype is pretty tight in muslin, but the pouch seems stable. The legs are a bit too tight to sit comfortably without rucking them up a bit.



I'm thinking about going straight to linen with these to see if the stretchier fabric is all they need to work properly.

Mac

[Mac]

Yesterday, I spent some time trying to see how my various shirts compared to the one that's been set out to dry here.




My first attempt was to simply flop the shirt over a stick. I didn't think that was going to work, but I had to try. Just for the sake of thoroughness, I pinned the side vent shorter, so it looked a bit more like the one in the pic.




I had slightly better luck with the stick running through the neck opening. That's more secure against the wind as well. Except for the side vents, it ended up looking a lot like the other item on the stick, which I think is probably a woman's chemise.



My next experiment was to see what it took to get the vent in the right place, and for this I concentrated on the square shirt since the flared ones were clearly to voluminous.

It turns out that if you run the stick through the neck, but then shift it till the side visible side seam and vent are in the right place, the arm on the back side hangs down way too far.... But, if you drape that arm across the stick so that it overlaps the one on the viewer's side, it can be sort of made to look like the 15th C image.



The business with the offside arm is a bit of a kluge, and we don't see the wrist in the painting, but I think that I'm willing to conclude that the thing in the middle of the stick is a square-cut shirt and not a flared shirt like I had hoped.

Mac

[John Vernier]

The thing is, there's another pole of laundry in that picture, below the one you have shown in you detail, and that pole has a couple of items which look a lot more like square-cut shirts than the ones you have been comparing yours to.



I haven't found a decent hi-res detail of that part of the painting. The image from Wikimedia Commons is serviceable, though blurry at full size.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... paccio.jpg

I think your first hanging method looks a lot like these far distant shirts, although the armpit gussets are less prominent in the painting.

[Mac]

The thing is, there's another pole of laundry in that picture, below the one you have shown in you detail, and that pole has a couple of items which look a lot more like square-cut shirts than the ones you have been comparing yours to.

Yea. The do. I had not seen the full image in a while and did not remember the other laundry pole.

I haven't found a decent hi-res detail of that part of the painting. The image from Wikimedia Commons is serviceable, though blurry at full size.

I can't find a really good one either, and the wikimedia one is a bit overblown.

I think your first hanging method looks a lot like these far distant shirts, although the armpit gussets are less prominent in the painting.

Just so.

Mac

[Mac]

What I think I really want, is a square(ish) shirt with a better armscye. That would be something that jumped from an 18" shoulder width to something like 46" (circumference) at the armpits, with the expansion happening at the armscye.

I can imagine one, but I can't find any extant example like that. Now, we have precious few examples, and there's no telling what sorts of things we are missing. On the other hand, I don't just want to make something up.


Mac

edited to make it clear that I meant the 46" measurement to be a circ.

[Sean M]

Bishop Rodrigo's short shirt is almost 25% wider below the curved armholes than at the shoulder, but a shirt more than twice as wide below the armpits as from shoulder to shoulder does not seem plausible to me.

It seems like you are leaning towards pictures of shirts much later and higher in status than Maistro Roberto.

[Mac]

Bishop Rodrigo's short shirt is almost 25% wider below the curved armholes than at the shoulder, but a shirt more than twice as wide below the armpits as from shoulder to shoulder does not seem plausible to me.

It seems like you are leaning towards pictures of shirts much later and higher in status than Maistro Roberto.

You know... As I was typing that I was thinking "there's something wrong here", but I didn't listen.

What I should have said (and will go back and edit in) is that I wanted the chest to be about 46" circumference. ie. 23" width.

So, I mean garment which gains 6" of width from the shoulder to the armpit. That's only 2 1/2" on each side, and that seems like a very doable thing.

Mac

[Sean M]

Mac, that sounds like a slightly more generous version of the Archbishop's short shirt (although his is a bit wider at the hem than the armpits). It looks like he was a small guy when he died aged ~77, his linen tailor probably had other cuts for fleshier clients. (Linen tailoring was a trade with apprenticeships and both readymade and to-order garments, I am sure they knew how to handle paunches and pregnancy).

I think that the shirt with a wedge-shaped body would be just fine too.

Is that a sleeveless shirt closest to the house in the painting by Vittore Carpaccio? It could be an apron instead, and its possible that the 'spaghetti strap' shirts were for something specific like swimming. They would not do a very good job of protecting your clothing from you

[Mac]

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/

I'd like to return to this shirt for a moment. I think I disagree about the pattern redaction. When we read the folds and wrinkles, it looks like the fullest place in the garment is right at the bottoms of the armpit gussets. It doesn't get any bigger from there down. That is to say, the shirt is fundamentally a rectangle which has been gathered into the collar sufficiently to bring the armscy seams closer to the shoulders.



When the arms are allowed to hang, some of those gathers from the collar will turn into the broad folds that continue down to the hem.

Mac

[Mac]

....Which brings us to Archbishop Rodrigo Ximenez's shirt, which Sean M has mentioned.



Here is my sketch and redaction of the shirt. I am sure I can see the seams which joint the upper edges of the armpit gussets with the lower edge of the sleeves. I am also sure that I know where the sleeves join the bodice at the shoulder. I am guessing about the line of the vertical edges of the gussets (no amount of blowing up the image seems to make them visible).



If I am right, this shirt is basically a rectangle with shoulder seams and strongly sloping armscyes. As shown, the bodice seems to wast a lot of fabric where the armscyes were cut, but the "sides" could easily be separate panels sewn to the main panels. This would allow any two of them to nest together in the layout, reducing the whole thing to rectangles.

Mac

[John Vernier]

I'd like to return to this shirt for a moment. I think I disagree about the pattern redaction. When we read the folds and wrinkles, it looks like the fullest place in the garment is right at the bottoms of the armpit gussets. It doesn't get any bigger from there down. That is to say, the shirt is fundamentally a rectangle which has been gathered into the collar sufficiently to bring the armscy seams closer to the shoulders.



When the arms are allowed to hang, some of those gathers from the collar will turn into the broad folds that continue down to the hem.

Mac

I think your conclusion is consistent with the reconstructed cutting pattern as drawn (which I posted a link to above), although Burnham's drawing of the "hanging" shirt is misleading in suggesting some taper to the cut. That is, if you think that cutting pattern is inaccurate I don't understand why. I wish I could find better photos of this shirt; one detail which I have seen, but not in a form I can repost, suggests that the shirt is much more fragmentary than it appears in the low-res photo. Most of what we are looking at is modern material.

What you are describing about the gathering of the square-cut pattern is consistent in general with the fit of 18th-19th century shirts I have seen, including a couple of early 19th century shirts I recently was lucky to purchase, and am currently looking over.

[Mac]

That is, if you think that cutting pattern is inaccurate I don't understand why.

I wish I could say it's nothing but plain ignorance, but there must be more to it than that, I'm afraid.

I had not realized that there was a cutting pattern, and made the assumption that what was in the drawing was all there was; and that that the author was presuming a trapezoid.

Indeed, it was not until I reviewed this post that I saw your link to the cutting diagram.

This is definitely not my finest moment.

Mac

[Sean M]

For reference, here are some sleeveless surcoats with deep armholes from the same group of Spanish manuscripts as the shirt with the gussets between the legs above.



Mac's latest sketch also has deep armholes and vertical pleating in the skirt.

[gaukler]

Mac is Spanish now?

[Mac]

Mac is Spanish now?

No, pero mi camisa podría ser.

Mac

[Mac]

Here is the sketch for the Mk 4.0 shirt. The starting point is the Rodrigo shirt, but with full length sleeves that are big enough at the wrists to be pulled back over the elbows. It is also a bit shorter than the Archbishop's shirt; or at least I think it is. It may or may not be as full, but it's probably full enough. I'm also taking this opportunity of having something like "real armscyes" to reduce the shoulder width by an inch from previous shirts.



I hope to start on this today.

Mac

[Mac]

Well.... I made the Mk4.0 like I sketched it. It works, but I don't really like it.



On the plus side...
--The arms a bit tidier around the armpit than some of the previous ones
--There is enough room for my stomach.

On the minus side...
--Like all symmetrical shirts I've built, there is a tendency for it to creep up in front and down in back. I think this rotation makes the arms work better, and that's why it tends to drift that way; but it makes the garment short in front
--It is not nearly so full as some of the shirts in the period images.
--The rectangular cut makes the hem hang long at the sides, and that's not what we see in the period pics.

I made up a fixture to let it hang like Rodrigo's, and took this pic to compare them.



The things that I'm not worried about...
--my arms are not the same shape as the original. I did that on purpose.
--my shirt's shoulders do not slope as much as the original. ditto. I did this because my shoulders are very high, and it seemed ridiculous to give the shirt more slope than I have. This may be a bad decision, but I don't think it affects the shirt adversely.
--my shirt has side vents. This changes the way the sides hang a bit, but it's not where the big problems are.
--my shirt is shorter than Rodrigo's. That's OK, I meant it to be.
--my shirt has a different shape of neck opening. That's OK too.

The thing that does worry me....

--the original has way more fabric and much bigger folds than my shirt. This worries me a lot.



It's clear that I have badly misunderstood the cut of Rodrigo's shirt. I think there are more pieces on the sides that give it that additional fabric. Unfortunately, the only pic we seem to have it the one on the Czech site, and the resolution is just not high enough to find all the seams easily.

I'll think about this more this weekend.

Mac

[Sean M]

Mac,

the original publication of all the garments from the Archbishop's tomb is available for 34 to 47 USD with shipping to Europe (to the USA might cost a little bit more). It might have more sketches, although Anderlini thought that the authors weren't the fastest hands in the tailor's shop.

Maria Socorro Mantilla de los Rios y Rojas et al., Vestiduras Pontificales del Arzobispo Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada. Siglo XIII: Su Estudio y Restauracion (Madrid: Instituto Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales, 1995) https://www.bookfinder.com/search/?auth ... t=xl&ac=qr

I think there were 2 or 3 different garments in that tomb, and Tina Anderlini just sketched one.

[Mac]

Mac,

the original publication of all the garments from the Archbishop's tomb is available for 34 to 47 USD with shipping to Europe (to the USA might cost a little bit more). It might have more sketches, although Anderlini thought that the authors weren't the fastest hands in the tailor's shop.

Maria Socorro Mantilla de los Rios y Rojas et al., Vestiduras Pontificales del Arzobispo Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada. Siglo XIII: Su Estudio y Restauracion (Madrid: Instituto Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales, 1995) https://www.bookfinder.com/search/?auth ... t=xl&ac=qr

I think there were 2 or 3 different garments in that tomb, and Tina Anderlini just sketched one.

I'll see if Marianne can ILL that book.

Thanks!
Mac

[Mac]

I've been thinking about Rodrigo's shirt, and I think I understand it now.

This sketchbook page shows my current understanding.



The page also includes a possible cutting diagram. It presumes fabric of about 40" in width. It that's unreasonable, then the front and back can be cut as halves from narrower stuff. I didn't have enough room for the entire cutting diagram, so I had to break it up. The wavy lines are the breaks.

I'll make up a working sketch for my Mk 5.0 shirt in the next couple of days and start in on it when I can.

This shirt thing is really running through my muslin. When I bought another bolt the other day, the nice lady at Joann's asked what my project was. I told her that "it was a bit bizarre", and then just stopped talking. I couldn't face trying to explain.

Mac

[Mac]

I've done something a bit different for this sketch. The proposed Mk 5.0 shirt is shown on the left, and my latest idea about Rodrigo's shirt is on the right. This should point up the differences and the similarities.

Below that is another version of part of the hypothetical layout for Rodrigo's shirt. It's done (like the sketch above it) to a 1/8 scale. For convenience, I have not accounted for seam allowances. In practice these would not be a make-or-break thing for the layout; but would only necessitate slightly wider fabric then what I have drawn.



The Mk 5.0 should be similar to the Rodrigo in the following ways..
--the angles of the main body panels will be the same
--the angles of the side panels will be the same
--the shoulder width will be the same (this is a thing I have intentionally set the same for scaling the shirt)

The Mk 5.0 will differ from Rodrigo's in these ways....
--it will be shorter
--it will have less slope to the shoulders
--it will have straighter sleeves
--it will have longer sleeves
--it's sleeves will be big enough at the wrists to pull up over the elbows. (Like St. Luis, Rodrigo probably had to be sewn into the wrists)
--it will have a different neck opening shape in front
--the armpit gussets will be slightly shorter in height
--there will be side vents

I'm debating whether to just make up the Mk 5.0, or to begin with a "full Rodrigo" to see whether or not I can get it to hang just like the original. Either way, I hope to start cutting and sewing tomorrow.

Mac

[Sean M]

IThe page also includes a possible cutting diagram. It presumes fabric of about 40" in width. It that's unreasonable, then the front and back can be cut as halves from narrower stuff. I didn't have enough room for the entire cutting diagram, so I had to break it up. The wavy lines are the breaks. Mac

The body of the St. Louis shirt is 90 cm (36") wide plus two seam allowances.

Sir John Fastolfe (the real person, not the character in Shakespeare) owned some linen a yard wide (36") and some linen a yard and an eighth (40.5") wide when he died in 1459. So anything from a yard wide (36") to a yard and a quarter wide (45") is probably fine for linen.

[Mac]

IThe page also includes a possible cutting diagram. It presumes fabric of about 40" in width. It that's unreasonable, then the front and back can be cut as halves from narrower stuff. I didn't have enough room for the entire cutting diagram, so I had to break it up. The wavy lines are the breaks. Mac

The body of the St. Louis shirt is 90 cm (36") wide plus two seam allowances.

Sir John Fastolfe (the real person, not the character in Shakespeare) owned some linen a yard wide (36") and some linen a yard and an eighth (40.5") wide when he died in 1459. So anything from a yard wide (36") to a yard and a quarter wide (45") is probably fine for linen.

Good to know.
Thank you, Sean!

Mac

[Mac]

Further staring at the blurry, over-enlarged image of the Rodrigo shirt makes me think I can see that the armpit gussets are in two pieces, so I have altered the sketch to reflect that. Taking measurements directly off the monitor has also given me some new values for the the overall length and the sleeve length.

In addition, I corrected a couple of errors that crept into my shirt sketch. In particular, the sleeve heights, which had gained an inch somehow.



The new shirt hangs a lot better than the old one. Here we have Roderigo's shirt flanked by the Mk 5.0 on the left and the Mk4.0 on the right. The new shirt is much fuller than the old one, and begins to capture the right sort of lines. The folds still look a bit anemic, but some of that will be about the shorter length and some will be about using cotton muslin instead of linen. In addition to that, it might still be a little on the skimpy side, but I think it will suffice.



The images of the shirt in use show some good points and some bad ones. The best thing is that the shoulders are finally looking like I want them. The worst is that the lower edge is very uneven. It's OK when laid out flat or hanging with the arms outstretched, but the sides are way too long when the arms are down.



Overall, what I've got here shows a lot of promise. The shoulders work, and there is plenty or shirt to go around. However I'd like to make some changes to simplify the construction and reconcile the seams with the art. I'll start addressing that in the next post.

Mac

[Mac]

The shoulders I ended up using on the Mk5.0 were a simplified version of Roderego's. They work pretty well, and produce the right sorts of wrinkles.... but they are a pain in the ass to sew. Those 90° corners may be simple to do with a needle and thread, but they are tedious on a machine. I'm not going to hand sew them, nor will I being paying a seamstress to hand sew them. I want something that produces the same effect with simpler, machine friendly, construction.

My other concern is that we are not seeing that zig-zaggy seam line in any of our art. When we can see armscye seams at all, they are pretty simple.



This example of a beggar whose sleeve has fallen off shows what the ermscye probably looked like when the shirt was in respectable condition.



The sketches below show several shoulder arrangements. All of them will lay flat(ish), and have the same outlines. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, all of them are functionally equivalent.



"A" is what I have used on the Mk 5.0 shirt. As I say, it's a pain to implement.
"B" shows what we might get by extending the gusset over to the place where the main and side body panels meet.
"C" is the same, but we have eliminated the vertical seam by cutting the body in one piece.
"D" rounds the armscye a bit and removes the stress concentration where the gusset seam joins the body. It is not strictly equivalent, because of the curved seam, but it is very close.
"E" is basically the same as "D", but with the gusset cut in one with the sleeve. It's simple, but wasteful.

I will probably try something like "D" on my next prototype. It seems like a good compromise between what we know from the earlier shirt, and what we can guess from the art. In order to cut the body with reasonable economy of fabric, I will go back to using center seams, like I did on the Mk 3 shirts.

Mac

[John Vernier]

Making a shirt along the lines of your drawings b, c, d, or e should yield a seam rather like those in this picture we looked at earlier:


You mention that the Roderigo shirt has pieced underarm gussets. One of the early 19th century shirts I recently purchased has pieced square underarm gussets, though the piecing isn't bilaterally symmetrical. I suspect they are a good place to use up small scraps as they won't be seen in proper use.

[Mac]

Making a shirt along the lines of your drawings b, c, d, or e should yield a seam rather like those in this picture we looked at earlier:

That's what I was thinking as well. More on this later.

You mention that the Roderigo shirt has pieced underarm gussets. One of the early 19th century shirts I recently purchased has pieced square underarm gussets, though the piecing isn't bilaterally symmetrical. I suspect they are a good place to use up small scraps as they won't be seen in proper use.

I think I'm seeing seams within the gussets, but I'm not sure. In any case.. yea.... gussets are a good place to use up the "scraps", especially in a day when sewing is cheaper than weaving.

Mac