Making a 14th Century Medieval Dress! (DIY Kirtle Sewing Tutorial: Historical Fashion)

Hello there and welcome back to my channel! I'm Anna and this video is a project which I've had in the works for a long time now, because today we are going to be making a 14th century medieval gown! There's also going to be some fun winter content in general because that's right, it actually snowed last week and yes, I got very excited about that. So I've been interested in trying to do some historical fashion for a while now, but basically I was really interested and I was like, you know what, we're going to have a full project, I do have a separate video on designing as well, so if you missed that you can check it out here. But without further ado, welcome to the making part of this project and let's go sewing! Okay, so the first thing that you might know already is that this kind of medieval dress is known as a kirtle. So working from these technical sketches, I drafted my actual pattern pieces, which is a bit of a nightmare because I'm awful at taking my own measurements. I ended up with this basic layout, so these are the pieces. Next, I had to actually cut these pattern pieces out and because this is a massive chunk of fabric, it took up my whole floor! So ideally, get a large worktop or another flat surface. There are two front bodice pieces, two back bodice pieces, and while I'm cutting out, the first thing I wanted to say was thank you so much for supporting this channel, because I don't know about you, but for me this lockdown has felt like a bit of a weird and slightly surreal kind of existence. So when people have taken the time to be really encouraging about what I'm doing, I just want to say I really appreciate that. The next thing that you need to cut out are four skirt panels, and these are basically triangular gores. So in the designing video, I talked a bit about why I'm using those, and it's because of the way the fabric hangs, because you want it to hang straight rather than slightly stretching and other bits not. I'm kind of trying to use the time as an opportunity for learning, so while basically every video starts with me not being exactly sure what I'm doing, hopefully by the time I merge from this, I'll be a bit more proficient. And lockdown aside, I do believe in learning on jobs, so yeah. And finally, you have two sleeves, and to me they look like an octopus. I'm sorry, I don't know why. So for the two sleeves, you'll need to cut four pieces, because each sleeve is lined. And then the final thing that you have to add is pockets, because clothes without pockets make me angry. So once you've finished cutting out, the next step is the actual sewing, and I'm gonna go ahead and overlock all the raw edges, so there can be no accidental fraying, because that is the bane of my life, I hate it when things fray. So I'm just running all the pieces through the overlocker machine, but you can use zigzag stitch if you don't have an overlocker. And basically this just trims and neatens the edge, and it's slightly terrifying because it trims the edge as you go, so just be careful you don't accidentally cut stuff, because before I've accidentally made holes in things, and it's so annoying, so don't do that. However, one good thing about overlocking is that it is an activity which kind of suits the winter, because you get to stay inside all cozy, and just like kind of watch the bad weather outside, because you live in England. Or maybe you don't live in England, and the weather's good, lucky you. But in fact, weirdly, some of the things that I do really like about the winter are kind of to do with the fact that the weather's so bad. So I really like early mornings in winter, because it's so dark, and when you're up before the sun, it just feels like kind of magical and peaceful, and you hear the birds, and it's just nice. I think this might be because I used to get up at 6am every day for secondary school, so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but at least something positive came out of like five years of sleep deprivation. I also really love heavy rain, especially when you're walking somewhere with an umbrella, because it just kind of makes you feel like a character in a book. This might also be to do with the fact that when I would get up at 6am for said school run, I would get on the bus and read my book, and just kind of watch the rain for nearly an hour every day. That's another thing, winter's like the best time for reading, and you can even pretend that you live in this kind of aesthetic. And I love reading, hence I am doing a literature degree. But back to the sewing. So the next step is pinning and sewing the bodice. So the first thing I'm going to do is join the front bodice with the side gore and the back bodice, and you need to add a pocket in the seam between the two. First of all, stitch the back bodice and the side gore right sides together, and next prepare your pocket. So stitch all around the edge, leaving an opening larger than the floor of your hand, and then start to join your front and back bodice. When you get to the point of the gore at which you want to add your pocket, leave a gap, then continue sewing it down to join the rest of the gore to the front bodice. Um, I'm not exactly sure how you're supposed to do this stage, but I used hand sewing to join one edge of the pocket opening to the side piece, and the other edge of the pocket opening to the front piece. And I forgot to film this, but I did also press the seam at this stage. So I went down to the kitchen and did some ironing. And then while I was in the kitchen, I got hungry and I went to get a snack. And can I just say, is winter food not the most wonderful thing? Like, since I've been back from uni, we have made a few recipes that have been kind of nostalgic, because they're things I would be used to making at home. So that has included marzipan fruits, because Christmas, and damson jam, because there was a tree near us that no one ever goes and collects the fruit from, so we go there and collect the fruit from it and make jam. And also marmalade, because this year we bought a ton of Seville oranges and made a ton of marmalade. More recently, we also made marshmallows, because we haven't done a recipe in like 10 years, and they're really good, but they stick to everything. So if you're gonna make marshmallows, I'm just warning you. But anyway, that's enough of recipes for the meantime, so back to the sewing. The next step of the dress is to join the shoulder seams and complete the bodice. So pin your shoulder seams right sides together, and you should end up with something that looks like this. You just need to stitch it in place, and now repeat the whole process on the other side. So once you have your two sides of the dress, join them together at the centre back, and add another triangular gore between the two back pieces to give the skirt volume. Then join the lower skirt to the centre gore at the front, and I end up splitting the triangular gore just to make things a bit easier to join up at the end, so I just end up with two halves rather than like only partly open down the front. After you've done this stage, this is the overall result, and it's basically a tunic slash gown robe-y kind of thing. It just has no sleeves, so yeah. So at this point I took a break, and at this point we also had a day where it actually snowed. I know I was very excited, and just wintry woods in general, I don't know why, and like the whole kind of thing of snowy forests and all the wildlife we get in the UK is one of the things that does make the winter actually like nice. So if you don't live in the UK, some of the animals that we get here for example are robins, so these are just like lovely little animals, they always make me smile. And one wintry bird that I haven't seen sadly is the ptarmigan, because these live in Scotland, but I thought it was too cool to not include, so here is a picture of it. And look at its fluffy feet! And birds aside, if we move on to mammals, one animal that I did really want to talk about is a hedgehog. So I have a bit of a backstory of hedgehogs, and I'm not going to try and fit it all in this video, but over the last maybe five years we've had about seven hedgehogs living in our garden at various times. So just some advice if you want to try and help look after the hedgehogs, first of all check your leaf piles before you rake them, or stick a fork in it, or burn them to have a bonfire, because sometimes people don't realise that there might be like hedgehogs nesting in there. Another thing is if you have a pond, make sure there's a way out of it, because hedgehogs are good swimmers, but they can still drown if they don't have an exit route. Don't feed hedgehogs bread and milk, because they're lactose intolerant and they can't digest bread well. The only thing you should be feeding hedgehogs is dry cat food. And finally, try to be a bit alert if you do see any hogs out in the daytime, because hedgehogs are nocturnal animals, so it could mean that there's a problem if you see one out in the day. So anyway, it stopped snowing, sadly. So we get back to snowing, and now you need to prepare your sleeves. Pin the long arm edge of each sleeve right sides together and stitch it, so do this for each of the four pieces. And now, you have to pin each sleeve right sides together along the cuff, so this is like a massive cuff I know, and stitch it. So you should then be able to turn this through to give a finished sleeve that has no raw edges, because you're joining the main sleeve to the sleeve lining. And finally, I ironed around the cuff and top stitch it in place to stop it like, flapping about, looking messy. And to celebrate getting this far, let us have an interlude of cool wintery words, because why not? Cougar. This word refers to a mood of coziness with feelings of wellness and contentment. Petrichor. So this is the name of the smell of the earth after rain, so it's very specific, but like, you know it when you smell it. Another word I really like is the word equinox. There are two a year, and these are the days where the day and night are exactly the same length. Right, so the next stage is to make your bias binding, which you're going to use to face the centre front of the dress and put along the neckline, so you don't have any raw edges. And the reason it's diagonal is because this way it stretches, so you get a neater finish if you're using it to put around fiddly details like curved edges and things like that. First of all, you need to pin your binding right sides together down the long edge at the centre front, and then just stitch it in place. Give it an iron to make sure the seam lies flat, and you basically continue down the long edge. It's kind of like a placket, which is the front bit of a shirt where the buttons go, so once you've got that in place you need to fold it over to the other side and press the raw edge under. You can then iron that, and I pinned it, and then you can slip stitch the other side in place at the back. I used uneven slip stitch so the stitches wouldn't be visible from the front, and that is your front edges done. So I just went ahead and repeated the same process but around the neckline. Right, finally, now you've got the edge prepared for the front centre front of the dress, you're gonna make your eyelets ready for the lacing, and this will just mean that you can close up the dress. So I'm using spiral lacing specifically because apparently that's the most historically feasible style, and yes I did have to look up how to lace a corset, and it's more complicated than you would think! Right, so to make the eyelets you need to first of all mark them out on your fabric. I marked mine about an inch apart, so at equal intervals. You need to use an awl to poke a hole through your fabric where you want the opening to be, and the goal of using an awl is to push the fibres apart, not to actually break them, so just bear that in mind. Then thread up your needle and hand stitch the eyelets in place, so you're basically going in and out of the hole all the way around until you don't have a raw edge on the inside of the hole. This takes quite a long time, I'm just warning you, like this took about, oh god, I don't know. After you've done that, you need to actually thread your lacing through the eyelets, so measure out your cord, ribbon, whatever it is you're using. On the topic of things that take ages, making videos is annoyingly also very time-consuming, so I just wanted to say I'm really sorry, that's why I've said I'm gonna make videos on some things that I haven't had a chance to do yet, but don't worry, I haven't forgotten, I will get around to it at some point. However, something that I am really excited to be working on at the moment is another travel vlog. Okay, so back to the sewing, it's now time to attach the sleeves that we made earlier. So what you need to do first is run some gathering stitches along the heads of the sleeve, then pin the sleeves right sides together with the arm side, that's the word for the, like, the hole where the arm joins to the sleeve, and I'd recommend that you tack this in place. So go ahead, stitch it in place, and then turn it through. So we are finally at the last step, and it's time to hem the skirt. So first of all, you need to mark up your hem if it's not, like, where you want it to be, so measure from the floor upwards to get it to hang evenly. Next, you need to fold it, so fold it twice to make a double hem, and pin it in place and iron it. I've done a hem of about 1.5 centimetres, but thicker fabrics tend to kick out because of the weight of the fabric, so depending on which fabric you're using, you might want to go for a deeper hem, just to make sure it hangs nicely. Next, you need to use uneven slip stitch to secure the rolled hem, and this will mean that because it's uneven, it will be almost invisible from the other side. But finally, after the long journey of hand sewing is finished, just give everything a final press, and you are done! So now you just need to find some woods to walk through. Okay, so that is it, and thank you so much for watching! I really hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, then I'd really appreciate it if you could subscribe, and until next time, enjoy the start of the spring, and see you soon! Bye!