The inspiration arrived in the form of a nice chocolate-brown jacquard I found on the cheap at a yard sale. I originally thought it was natural fiber, but I've since changed my mind: while it has the nice drapey-ness of cotton, it is entirely too shiny to be so. Maybe I'll try out that "burn test" everybody's talking about. I got something close to six yards. I have a remnant that I thought would go just swimmingly - it's off-white, green and brown upholstery brocade. It turns out that I have SUBSTANTIALLY less of that material than I thought, so I needed to find a dress that I could make in predominantly one fabric with only accents of the other. I was able to find this glass painting, "Susanna & the Elders" by Aert van Ort (1525).
And for a more targeted image:
You can see Susanna's gown is almost entirely white, but has these really interesting sleeves that seem to use practically no fabric at all! This is PERFECT for my "Wow, I really thought there was more here" bit of fabric that I want to use.
So, now I'm on a mission - how do I best re-create this outfit? I have started by looking up other portraits from the same time period (this glass is from the Netherlands, but I have a number of other locations that provided back-up portraiture) to find similar sleeves, necklines, overall styling and that sort of thing. I'm working on compiling an easy-to-decipher file that will keep all my notes in order. More later!
Doei! (that's "Goodbye" in modern Dutch!)
