It is an oft repeated truism in all forms of re-enacting that people “back then” cut up their clothes and re-used the fabric for other things. But was that really true and how well does it come out if you are constantly re-making things? When do they turn into rags or become so small that even children can’t wear them?

This blog is about the story of one dress, my wedding dress, and its colourful history over 28 years of use, re-use, alteration and re-decoration. The blog is very heavy on photos, so I apologise if it does not load well on phones - I recommend finding a good wifi before reading it!

The Original

This is my husband David, he is the one wearing the shorter skirt. As you can tell, we were married in my home country of Scotland but what you can’t tell (hopefully) is that I designed and made the dress and veil that I am wearing.

I fancied myself to be a bit of a dressmaker after my mother taught me to use a sewing machine when I was a child and then making lots of Sealed Knot costume for David and I when I was a young adult. So when we decided to get married it was no surprise to anyone that I announced to my family that I would make my dress. That was not so uncommon then. My mother had made all of my sisters’ dresses - I have lots of lovely sisters - and all of our bridesmaids’ dresses too. My uncle gave me a wedding gift of the champagne coloured Thai silk and I was off.

The dress was based on a Butterick pattern but I separated the bodice from its sewn-in skirt, put the skirt on a waist band and stiffened the bodice very slightly. I knew from the beginning that the dress would become one I would use for feasts and banquets - I just never realised at the time how long it would be used for.

Let’s have some fun

Once the wedding was over, I did two things immediately. That lovely long train was folded up and put carefully away to become a christening gown, which it eventually did, and the veil was folded up and put carefully away as a keepsake, one that I still have. Both of these are very traditional things to do so I felt OK about setting about the rest of the dress with a passion!

In its first re-make, the skirt was left alone but the bodice was embellished with embroidery - not very seventeenth century embroidery as it turned out. You will not believe this, but 28 years ago there was no World Wide Web, no FaceBook groups, no Wikipedia - yes its true, honest. So, not being a professional historian or researcher, I was relying on the few books and pamphlets about seventeenth century clothing that we had bought or that I could find in my local library. Most of the things I had seen were actually more Tudor in nature, although I did not know it at the time, so the two themes that I chose for this first make over were slashed sleeves and a kind of simple blackwork embroidery that I had seen in a pamphlet. What I had not understood was the scale of the blackwork design, it should have been 1/10th the size I did it. Add some lace and reproduction jewelry and I thought I was the epitome of seventeenth century fashion.

The slashed sleeve was very basic. I knew that the outer fabric should split open to reveal a contrasting lining underneath. I happened to have some glossy pink polyester satin, so I used that. Instead of making a whole new sleeve, I simply filled the gap with the satin, which was never quite right to my eye even then, but it caught people’s attention.

And then there were three

I apologise for the quality of the photos at this stage. In the early Nineties, cheap film was what we all used and the prints have not survived well either.

The next big event for the dress was our first son, or rather his imminent arrival. I needed to re-make the dress so I could wear it while 5 or 6 months pregnant. The main changes were to widen the bodice front, take out its deep front V and spread the front of the skirt out. I sometimes think this mimicked the silhouette change between the Elizabethan period where women were trying to look like a Virgin Queen and the Stuart period where women were trying to look like the fertile royal family.

For the bodice, the back opening was sewn shut, the front was cut open and I made a quilted stomacher. This stomacher sat between the two edges of the expanded bodice and was held in place by lacing across the front. The red blobs were embroidered anchors for thread loops through which a lace criss-crossed down the front. If you squint hard you can just about make that out in the photo below.

The major changes to the skirt were the addition of the large embroidered flowers at the bottom and the addition of two fake skirt fronts. The flowers that I embroidered were a thistle pattern done in crewel embroidery from a book of traditional patterns. Crewel was a favourite style during the seventeenth century so I was getting closer. The false skirt fronts were effectively just folds in the skirt fabric on each side of the front but they were lined in the pink satin and folded in so that it appeared to be a pink satin lined over skirt over an underskirt with embroidery.

It shrunk in the wardrobe!

Over the years after stitching the flowers, we grew as a family, our circle of friends grew and, inevitably, I grew as well. I can proudly claim that I can still wear my wedding dress but unfortunately the dress is not the same size it was that day!

After a move to Edinburgh, we became involved with a group who hold feasts for re-enactors from Viking through to Tudor periods, but not seventeenth century, which is far too modern for them! So it was time to re-make the dress again to fit a new me and a new re-enactment period. Slowly over the next few years, the dress developed a strong Tudor feel, based very loosely on a dress in Patterns of Fashion 3.

The gift of some undyed, golden silk provided the fabric for the bodice. The front V was back but this time the skirt was too narrow to go all the way around, so I attached it to the bodice as an over-skirt. The underskirt is a bright red lustrous silk from China, similar to an underskirt held in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. The cream over-skirt should really come down more to the front of the V and flare out from there but I was making the best of the fabric I had left.

The remainder of the train from years before and the old bodice pieces were used as long strips onto which I embroidered a vine-like pattern that reflected the pattern in the two large flowers. To start with they were added to the bodice only (at the same time as making a French Hood with the red silk). It is very Tudor to have vine-like patterns that reflect larger set pieces but this pattern is not a copy of an original, it is the invention of my nearly daughter-in-law, Hazel. I also embroidered strips for sleeves, but the fist attempt at puff headed sleeves was a disaster. The strips were kept but the sleeves ditched after one wearing!

The photographs below show the various developmental stages up to the current time. Including the remade sleeves.

Extant Evidence

There are some extant pieces that show this form of developmental use of a garment or the re-use of fabric from a larger or differently shaped piece.

In the Colchester Museum there is a coat that was found in a chimney. The conservator dated the body of the coat to the mid seventeenth century from its style. However, the coat has been made to look more modern and late seventeenth century by the addition of some sleeve cuffs. See https://www.kategillconservation.co.uk/17thccoat for the conservators blog on the work on the original coat.

In the mid-90’s, my husband set about re-creating a cloak for me from a pattern in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion 3. The cloak is made of several panels all cunningly shaped to fit together and create a well draped shape. So he carefully drew out all the odd shaped slices and cut up the whole piece of wool that he had bought for this. Having carefully stitched all these shaped pieces together he came to lining the cloak. At this stage he thought he would cheat a little and cut the lining in 2 or 3 panels only since it would not be seen. He lay the shaped cloak out on the floor to get a rough pattern and found, to his horror, that the shaped cloak was absolutely flat and semi-circular. It could have been cut from two large pieces of the wool. The only conclusion one can draw is that the original came from pieces of a different garment that had panels large enough to sew together to make a flat piece of fabric and from this was cut a semi-circular cloak.

I hope you have enjoyed the story of this dress. If you would like some embroidery decoration for you re-enactment clothing or to buy tailor-made clothing, please visit my website at www.properlydressed.co.uk