Bliaut Crisis!!

[PrincessSara]

Ok so I realize it's not strictly Ren but it is medieval English and it is for a faire.

I've been working for months on a bliaut and I can't get it to fit properly!!  I've made three mockups already and none of them fit.  Most of them end up too tight in the "belly" around my bellybutton and too loose in the natural waist, but it's supposed to fit tight down the whole abdomen.  Also, no matter how much I measure my bust and recalculate and add ease and take ease out and fix lengths and everything else it always seems to end up too loose in the bust.  For one of the mockups I made the bust measurement a lot smaller than it had been and then it was too tight!  Gah!  I can't seem to find a happy medium.

I'm working on a very specific style of bliaut, the type seen on the Chartres and Angers Cathedral statues.  Like this:


It should have a "smooth" bust with wrinkles around the breast, which are created by cutting the neckline as a simple slit and then the tension created by the slit stretching around the neck causes the wrinkles.  It should have a tight abdomen with horizontal wrinkles running from the underbust to the hips and a straight, pleated skirt.  The sleeves are cut in a piece with the bodice to the bicep, where the lower sleeve portion is sewn on and a band of trim covers the seam.  The sleeve is supposed to fit fairly tight around the shoulder-armpit but it is not a set in sleeve and I have no clue how to make it fit like that.

I've been using Arianne de Chateau Michel's pattern with my own measurements but it doesn't seem to work.  Particularly the sleeves, as the length from the middle of my left bicep to my right is 23in, which is pretty much the same as my half-bust measurement.  So her plan for the sleeves doesn't work out for me and I don't know how to make the sleeves work.  My cors (bodice) length seems to work fine but I can't seem to figure out the width part.  I've been trying to pin the latest mockup directly on me to get a specific width for the entire thing but my arms don't bend that way and I don't have anyone in the house who knows anything about custom-fitting so no one's been pinning it correctly.  I know how to make the wrinkles on the finished garment - they will be created by extra length pulled up and tightly laced at the sides.  It's the width that's the problem.

Any ideas for patterns that might work for this?  Fitting suggestions?  Construction ideas?  The faire is in two weeks and I'm out of ideas!

[sealion]

I've never tried to make a bliaut and I found the pattern you linked confusing so I googled and found this:
http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/~lwittie/sca/garb/bliaut.html
It has a few more seams but alot less wasted fabric if you are ready to give a different pattern a shot. Good luck!

[PrincessSara]

I've looked at the gored bliaut and I thought about doing that, but my plan was for a pleated bliaut and the fabric I have is too stiff for a gored bliaut.  The gored bliaut doesn't produce a straight skirt and the abdomen doesn't end up with enough wrinkles.

I think what my problem is is that I'm quite curvy and the bliaut was not designed for curvy women, so I'm having difficulty using a pattern for it.  I need to fit it somehow to get the right curve in the abdomen.  I just don't really know much about fitting and I don't have anyone around who can help me with it.  Right now my mockup is a 78x26 inch rectangle that I put over my head and try to pin tight to my abdomen, but it's hard to get the wrinkles in right and get both sides even cause pinning on yourself doesn't work so well.  I tried gathering the abdomen up to create temporary wrinkles just for the mockup but that didn't work either, I couldn't get them even enough and they didn't create wrinkles all the way across, only at the edges.

I am using an essentially straight construction for the abdomen, but for that to work my measurements would have to be mostly the same from my underbust to my hips.  A straight construction works fine on someone with even measurements, but mine change so much that it doesn't work for me.

For example, Louise de la Mare used a straight construction and got the desired effect, but as you can see she has a flat stomach and a fairly uniform shape so her measurements from underbust to waist were probably fairly similar.  For me, my underbust is 36in, my natural waist is 34in, my hips are 41in, and between my natural waist and hips I have a "belly" that at it's widest point is about 38in.  So I have a curve in at the sides and a curve out at the front, and a lot of variations in the width measurements of the area from underbust to hips.  Louise clearly didn't have that and so the straight construction worked for her with little modification.  For me it requires a lot of modification, which is the part I'm having a problem with.

This is what my shape looks like:

[Lady Rebecca]

This may not be what you want to do at all, but have you thought about having the stomach area as a completely separate piece, like an unboned corset or really wide sash? I've never tried making a bliaut before, but I have the Simplicity pattern (for the one that's supposed to be like in LOTR), and I think that's what that one does.

[gem]

And here's the picture of what it's "supposed" to look like, from the Louise de la Mare link in Sara's post:



I agree that fitting ANYTHING is easier without curves to deal with.  Not to mention by yourself, which may well be impossible in this case.

But anyway, have you studied Cotte Simple's pages on fitting a bust-supportive kirtle?  I realize this is a completely different type of gown, and that its results stem largely from the fact that it's front-lacing, but I'm wondering if there's ANYTHING you can take from the fitting techniques that you can extrapolate to help with what you're doing?

Also, your fabric might be partly to blame here.  How stretchy is it?  Something with a little more give (like a linen or a woolen), or something cut on the bias (or even partly on the bias) will behave better when coaxed around curves.

I'm also wondering if your mockup rectangle might be too big/wide/whatever, and that all that excess fabric is just making it harder to deal with.  Is there any way you can put some seams in it, JUST to get it to behave a little better as you work with it?

In the meantime, feel free to rant and scream about the seeming impossible challenges of fitting a curvy body.  I will be screaming with you!

[Kate XXXXXX]

Have you tried looking at this: http://www.lulu.com/content/1255610

[sealion]

{{{HUGS}}} Fitting a curvy figure and trying to do it yourself is a big PITA! (Which is why I wear late period stuff with a corset to compress my freakishly large chest. :sigh: ) I hope you get it figured out before it drives you insane and that you share your results with the rest of us.

[Lady Rebecca]

{{{HUGS}}} Fitting a curvy figure and trying to do it yourself is a big PITA! (Which is why I wear late period stuff with a corset to compress my freakishly large chest. :sigh: )

Amen! The medieval stuff can be so pretty, but I know I just look better in a boned and fitted bodice!

[Adriana Rose]

Its tough with that period!

Its like the flapper styles,  its hard to pull it off right with a curvy figure!

[mollymishap]

Well...when I've been bound & determined to wear a style that my natural shape just doesn't do, I've resorted to padding or corseting, whichever was appropriate to the goal.

In fact, when I saw your torso pic I had to laugh, because for one character I was playing your shape was what I was after.  My solution was to create a body-suit of sorts.  In this case, you're probably looking to do the opposite (been there, too): minimize and elongate. 

So, my suggestion would be to look into Regency-era corsetry (if none of the other period styles or support solutions suit you) and start with the corset or a modification of it as the foundation upon which to build in the pleats and such. 

My other thought is to get yourself a roll of duct tape and enlist the help of one of your non-pinners (who can surely un-roll tape) to help you make your own duct-tape dummy (of your natural or corseted shape, whichever is likely to be more useful to you).

HTH!