Dressing Ye Part -- Part Eight
We're still on this picture:
I said that I was going to talk about the doublet exterior today, but I ran into a snag. First, a picture of me trying on the boned doublet interior.
It fits pretty well. But do you see what's happening on my upper chest? The bones at center front and just to the outside of center front are tipping too far away from my body. At first I thought to cut them shorter, but the original doublet has the center front bones coming up to within an inch of a the collar attachment. So I didn't want to cut them any shorter than they already are. Nothing I can pin or tighten will force these bones to lay against my chest. Only holding them to my upper chest with my hand put them in the proper position.
Then something ocurred to me: baleen (whalebone) moulded to the body when warmed by body heat. Luckily so does reed! So all I have to do is get my boning to conform to my body shape.
So I spritzed my doublet interior with water and pinned the doublet interior to my mannequin so the bones were bent exactly as I want them to be when worn. I'm going to leave them like this all weekend so they dry to shape. If I had more time, I'd dry them with a hair dryer or steam iron them on the mannequin. But I needed to work on the exterior in order to wear this this weekend, and that's clearly not happening.
Next -- The Doublet Exterior...
© 2009 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial private research or educational purposes provided the copyright notice, the author's name and website, and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
I said that I was going to talk about the doublet exterior today, but I ran into a snag. First, a picture of me trying on the boned doublet interior.
It fits pretty well. But do you see what's happening on my upper chest? The bones at center front and just to the outside of center front are tipping too far away from my body. At first I thought to cut them shorter, but the original doublet has the center front bones coming up to within an inch of a the collar attachment. So I didn't want to cut them any shorter than they already are. Nothing I can pin or tighten will force these bones to lay against my chest. Only holding them to my upper chest with my hand put them in the proper position.
Then something ocurred to me: baleen (whalebone) moulded to the body when warmed by body heat. Luckily so does reed! So all I have to do is get my boning to conform to my body shape.
So I spritzed my doublet interior with water and pinned the doublet interior to my mannequin so the bones were bent exactly as I want them to be when worn. I'm going to leave them like this all weekend so they dry to shape. If I had more time, I'd dry them with a hair dryer or steam iron them on the mannequin. But I needed to work on the exterior in order to wear this this weekend, and that's clearly not happening.
Next -- The Doublet Exterior...
© 2009 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial private research or educational purposes provided the copyright notice, the author's name and website, and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.