June 2012
This type of dress is worn by a young woman so I asked the daughter of Alessandra da Venizia to be my model. This dress is inspired by the Ausberg Panels showing the four seasons. This is from the April-June panel…The same panel that inspired my orange dress. You can see the panels online here: http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/kurzweil/season.htm

The outdoor shot in natural light shows the silk sleeves as purple. It’s a truer color that the indoor shot against the red curtain.
The dress diary begins with the pieces of the bodice cut out. The bodice is self-lined. The linen that I used is a heavy-weight linen, probably too heavy but it drapes nicely.

The lacing strips are prepped. They are bias-cut pieces of the same black linen with hand-made lacing holes. I used the information in the Janet Arnold book.

The skirt is prepped in the same way as the orange and blue skirts. The only difference is that I used box pleats on this skirt. A box pleat is photographed in the dress diary for the Blue German dress.

This is a test run of the finished dress and sleeves. I made a set of sleeves and a brustflek out of linen. It was important to get the size right before I cut into the purple silk.
Mistress Sophia Kress helped me with the bodice pattern for this garment.
I made a set of yellow linen sleeves and brustflek so that Christie would have washable parts to wear to outdoor events. The silk sleeves, brustflek and belt are for indoor wear. For this reason, I made the sleeves laced-in. In the original painting, I believe that the sleeves are probably sewn to the dress.
There is a gold headband for this dress, which you can see in the test photo. It didn’t make it into the photos of the silk dress. More photos will have to be taken in the future!