Hemd « Research Dumping Grounds

Hemd

Along with my Trossfrau/Swiss Dress I need an appropriate hemd(chemise).

Inspirational Pictures

Die Augsburger Monatsbilder, a set of 4 murals done in Augsburg, Germany in the 1520's (link) Detail from October

Die Augsburger Monatsbilder, a set of 4 murals done in Augsburg, Germany in the 1520's (link) Detail from April

Detail Woman and Knaves The German single-leaf woodcut, 1500-1550, Max Geisberg ; rev. and edited by Walter L. Strauss, New York : Hacker Art Books, 1974.

Edhard Schoen G.1235-1238. Detail – Army Train 1532 The German single-leaf woodcut, 1500-1550, Max Geisberg ; rev. and edited by Walter L. Strauss, New York : Hacker Art Books, 1974.

One of three linen shirts found in the Shipwreck of the Gagiana. Flury-Lemberg, Mechthild; Textile Conservation and Research; Abegg-Stifting Bern; Berlin; 1988.

One of three linen shirts found in the Shipwreck of the Gagiana. Possibly in the Municipal Museum of Biograd.

Picture found on Landsknecht.org site. I love the smocked neck.

Plan

There are several acceptable styles(high neck, low neck, rounded neck, etc). I’ve decided I like a high-necked front-opening hemd with honey-comb smocking at the neck. When I made the shirt for Fearghus’ Waffenrock I used a pattern very similar to one suggested by Rainillt in the Pleatworks Yahoo! group. It worked well enough but I notice that it has a tendancy to slide and lie flat on his shoulders. I want to try and avoid this so I’ve update the cutting pattern somewhat.

Starting to pleat the neckline. Gather stitches are in red (will be removed), honeycomb pleats started on the right-hand side. Blue marks are a fabric pen. They will wash out.

I started with two pieces of fabric 40″w x 60″t. I’ve whacked a hunk out of the fabric at the shoulders..(3.5″ x 10″) so the neck should have a tendency to stand up. As an added bonus I won’t have that weirdness that comes when trying to make even gather stitches that transition from the front of the shirt to the back of the shirt and have to stretch over the shoulder seam. I plan to do a small flat-fold hem along the outside of the collar and the top of the shoulders and then I’ll pleat around the outside of the up-standing neck and smock that into the honey comb pattern. Once the honeycomb is done I plan to add a strip of fabric to the inside of the neck to cover the pleats on the inside and to make the shirt more comfortable to wear.

I’ve set aside some 2.8 oz linen I acquired online. I’m afraid 2.8 oz may be too fragile.. but I’ll make the shirt up anyway and see how it survives. The linen is very very fine.

The honeycomb pleat should draw in the neckline by ~50%. So I’ve actually left 2x my neck measurement at the top of the garment to be pleated. A while back Cristina Stolte posted a smocking experiment. Using her work I’ve decided to make my gather stitches at 1cm each and each line is 1.5 cm apart. The honeycomb pleat stitches will follow the same line at the gather stitches. This should give me a very nice set of diamonds for the neck line.

Resources

A Sture shirt for a Lady (16th Century) by Lia de Thornegge
Pictures from Uppsala Cathedral Treasury
1520 Queen Mary of Hungary Dress (with chemise) (picture gallery)
Yahoo! Pleatwork Embroidery group
Cut and Construction of Pleatwork Shirt.pdf from the Yahoo! Pleatwork Embroider group files

Progress: Smocking done

At Mists Investiture this last weekend I finished the last of the smocking. I think it’s beau-ti-ful (click to embiggen). I’ve removed the pleating threads and stretched it out a little. After all the smocking the neck came out a little bit bigger than 50% of the original width. I’ve decided to line the collar both for comfort and to hold the smocking at the right size.

The lining was cut out of the same linen at 4″ x 18″ I folded the top/bottom and sides so that I was working with finished edges(Folded, the lining piece is about 3″ by 17″). Then I pinned the snot out of it. Tonight I will hand-stitch this piece of fabric inside the collar. I think I’ll also attach the ties to this lining.

After that’s done I just need to add sleeves (cut at 26″ by 30″ where 30″ is the length of the arm) and gussets (I think I’ll make this 4″ square). Honestly I’m not sure I need the gussets.. but I plan to add them anyway.. along the lines that it’s easier to add them now then to have to go back and add them later. The sleeves are cut intentionally long. At this time I’m not planning to finish the cuff.. but I’m leaving enough fabric so that I could do something nice and fancy to them if the idea strikes me later on.

Lastly I need to wash the hemd to get out the blue marks from my fabric marking pen.

I’m hopeful I can finish all of that tonight.

Picture taken by Edith

The hemd came out beautifully.

Running it through the wash did rumple it a little but it was easily revived with a quick ironing. I did find that the collar may be a bit too tall for my neck. When I tie it closed it bends and folds oddly. I think if I’d made it 2″ tall instead of ~3.5″ tall it’d work beautifully. As it is, I just wore it untied. It works.

Regardless, I really do like the new cutting pattern. The collar easily stands up and isn’t pulled flat by the weight of the sleeves.

I intentionally cut the sleeves long. I think I’ll go ahead and pleat the sleeves on this at the wrist, elbow and half way down the upper-arm. I think that I can easily use this hemd with my next dress, a Linen Kampfrau.

Bones.. and that damned hemd :D

I ended up adding short bones under the hook/eye tape on either side of the front opening. As a happy coincidence the tapes are almost exactly wide enough to hold the bones. So it was very easy to tuck them into place. The bones are about 7 inches long.. so 1-2 inches shorter than the hook/eye tape (I was using what I had on hand). I pushed them all the way to the bottom of the channel, stitched them into place and left the top 1-2 inches of the front opening un-boned. I like the way that worked out so I plan to continue to do that on my other German dresses.

Based on pictures from June Crown it looks like the bones are cutting down on the zig-zag of the front opening.

As a “bonus”, the night before the event I decided I didn’t like the way the collar of the hemd was looking. So I removed the fabric from the inside of the collar (Because really, there’s no better time to drastically alter your hemd collar than the night before an event). This made the collar easier to iron to get a nice crisp honeycomb showing up.. but also allowed the collar to stretch out to MUCH longer than is actually needed for the neck. I’m not pleased with that. The plan right now is to make a new hemd with a smaller collar and then possibly come back to this shirt and fiddle with it later. I don’t want to tear apart my only hemd in order to fix it.. and leave myself with no usable hemd. So I’ll work on a new one first.

Hemd II

My original Hemd was a good first attempt.. but after several months of wearing it I’ve decided it could do with a little improvement. Since I’m deathly allergic to altering garments that I need to wear I instead decided to make a new hemd.

Here’s my new pattern:

Here’s the reasoning for my new pattern:

Problem: Neckline was cut out to be 2x my neck measurements and then smocked to “take up the excess” unfortunately it didn’t really take up the excess.. so it’s sitting WAY too loose compared to what I want. Original was cut at 40 inches, smocking drew this down to 34 inches.
FIX: The new one’s neckline is cut at 20 inches. I’m afraid that may be a bit tight.. but I’ll try it out.

Problem: On the original the collar cut at 3.5 inches is too tall.
FIX: New one will be cut at 2 inches.

Problem: On the original the seam between the sleeve and the body falls several inches down my upper arm. It’s not an issue when I have closed sleeves but in my sleeveless dress or with loopy sleeves I dislike the way it fits.
FIX: I nipped off triangles at the corner to pull the sleeves in Triangles are 10″ (at the shoulder) x 18″ (at the side). This does bring the seam more in line with the top of my shoulder. When I did this I left out the gusset. I will consider carefully for the next hemd whether I put a gusset in or not.

Problem: On the original the sleeves at 30″ long are too long. Add to that the extra fabric at the shoulders.. they’re -way- too long.
FIX: New ones are cut down to 24″ long. With the triangles removed these may still be a bit too long. I’ll have to fiddle with them or possibly hem them.

Problem: Original was cut at 60 inches long which puts it just about floor length. I worry that it will show when I kirtle my dress.
FIX: New one is cut at 40 inches long. About knee length.

Staying the same:
Smocking pattern: Gather stitches at 1cm each and each line is 1.5 cm apart. The honeycomb pleat stitches will follow the same line at the gather stitches. This should give me a very nice set of diamonds for the neck line.

[Edited to add:
After a year of planning to smock this I finally sat down last night and started to smock this.. and found out that with smocking the neck will be too small. So I've changed my mind. This hemd will not have smocking I may embroider it in the future. Instead I'm adding some beads to act as buttons and allow this to close. I will, of course, be adding a Hemd III (hopefully with smocking) in the future.
]

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