I was inspired by the Hieronymus Franken drawings of the Venetian Carneval (Venice 1564) - mostly for the shape of the dresses, they seem big skirted with the signature V in front and back. I was also inspired by the Giovani Antonio Fasolo frescos of "The Dance" (Province of Vicenza, 1565) - these dresses seem more like "simple country dresses" - one lady looks like she has blackwork sleeves and a striped dress, another looks as though she's take off her partlet - wild thang!

I embarked on a self imposed program of redoing dresses. I had some very nice royal blue and gold brocade birthday material with a pair of sleeves already made from it.

   Next I made a muslin lining and used plastic cable ties for boning stays, I used Jen Thompson's lacing technique of running a line of ribbon behind each of two boning stays on each side - this method really helps stabilize the lacing and keeps everything nice and flat.

 

My excuse for having a plain colored skirt with the fabulous brocade bodice & sleeves is that that's what I could afford - remember I'm trying to clean out the stash, I also wanted this dress to be really light and cool. I wanted to have a pretty pop-over-your-head Italian! (and I wanted to be lazy and not make a camicia, etc. More about lazy and short-cuts later, ugh!)

My skirt is about 5 yards cheap, er, inexpensive poly/cotton (so thin you can read through it!!) - I cut the waist in diagonally about 10 inches and added that to the bottom, this ends up with less bulk at the waist and more skirt at the bottom. (I wanted to wear this dress over a small set of hoops to keep the skirts away from my legs - shade and air! ahhhh!)

I decided to completely remake the sleeves, they were to be light and cool, alas this is not the case. The sleeves are loosely base on Eleanor of Toledo, with faux white muslin pullings-out and gold cord jumps - very pretty. However, the brocade is scratchy and so I flat-lined those parts with soft muslin. HOWEVER - the gold cord jumps are scratchy too! I ended up lining the whole sleeve with another layer of muslin! Finally, I had two slightly different shades/widths of royal blue ribbon - they matched the shading in the brocade perfectly - and I tied double bow faux ties at the tops of the sleeves.