A Thousand Years of English Dresses

Executive Summary about English Dresses by Affreca McNaven

Do you think of flowing pink dresses with pointed princess hats? Customs often create a demand for new fashions. Saxon custom "decreed that the locks of the fair Saxon woman be entirely concealed".

During the ninth and tenth centuries, the tunica began to change. The sleeves flared out extravagently. The ideea was for elegance, simple yet expensive.

One thing the invasion changed was the name of the overdress. It was now called a bliaut, the sleeves were still very wide. The top, was sewn to the skirt.

The late twelfth century introduced parti-coloring, lasted until the end of the Middle Ages and is often considered to be a typical Medieval fashion. The fourteenth century, are remarkable for their tight and fitted styles.

Brought back by the Crusaders, buttons made it not necessary foir dresses to be loose enough to be pulled over the head. The waist could be tighter than the shoulders with buttons.

As a result, the cotehardie became the fashion, was a fitted dress that flared out at the hips. It was a style designed to show off how tight your tailor could sew your dresses.

Over the cotehardie was sometimes worn a sideless surcoat. It consisted of a narrow bib attached to a full skirt. This ephasized one of the major parts of this period, slim hips.

From 1350 to 1380 all women of fashion were to be seen with tippets at their elbows. Tippets were not little dogs, they were strips of fabric attached at the elbow to the sleeves of cotehardies, emphasized another focus of this period, the vertical line.

In the fifteenth century, width was now the emphasis, not slim and vertical. The new style of dress was called a houppeland. The bodice had a deep V-neck that showed off the shoulders. Wealth was shown by how much material you could waste in baggy sleeves. The edges of sleeves often had scalloped edges called dags.

English fashion in the Middle Ages ranged from gunnas to houppelands, and many things in between. Flowing pink dresses with cone shaped princess hats was clearly not the case.
A Short Tutorial on Cartridge Pleating a Skirt
Cartridge pleating is a method of gathering large amounts of fabric to a small waistband without adding bulk to the seam, makes the fabric spring away from the waist more than normal box-pleating, knife-pleating does.
This way you can work out the optimum stitch size, gathering tightness, etc. for this particular fabric.

1. Take the edge of your skirt which you plan to attach to a waistband and fold over the edge to the inside 2 to 3 inches.

2. Using a strong thread,sew a largish running stitch half an inch away from the folded edge of the fabric. The size of the stitches depends on the thickness and body of the fabric you're pleating. If you're using a brocade or other thinner fabric, make the stitches 1/4 to 1/2 inch wide.
3. Knot the three threads together at each end. Once you've gathered the fabric, and measured it to see that it fits the waist, knot the threads you used to gather the pleats together so that they stay properly gathered.
4. Sew the pleats to the waistband. Instead of sewing the waistband and the edge of the fabric together as you do with normal pleats, with cartridge pleats, you whipstitch the gathered edge of your fabric to a finished waistband, armscye or other seam edge. Lay the outside of the waistband against the outside of the pleats, with the waist edge matching the edge of the cartridge-pleated fabric. Using a strong thread, stitch the waistband to the top of each pleat with two stitches.