Created in 2016 for participation in Kentwell Hall‘s Great Recreation of Tudor Life, this set of clothes consists of a linen coif, two linen smocks, a brown wool petticoat, a russet kirtle, a pair of brown wool sleeves, a linen apron, and a dark grey wool jacket.
The entire outfit was self drafted from my own measurements, and I’ve found little need to alter it over the years, though I’m considering taking the black binding off the hem of the kirtle and simply hemming it instead. Were I to make it again, I’d use spiral lacing rather than cross lacing, since I now know that cross lacing was not really used in the period. I’d probably also lower the waistline slightly, since my waist is lower than I thought it was when I made it!
With the exception of the jacket (or waistcoat, as it would have been known at the time), which I sewed entirely by hand, I used a sewing machine for all of the seams that wouldn’t be visible once the clothes were worn. As such, hems and eyelets and such like were still sewn by hand, while the side seams of the skirt were made by machine.
The coif was based on the one worn in the sketch of Anne Boleyn in a nightgown by Holbein, though I made the earflaps smaller. The rest was based on instructions in the Tudor Tailor.
To complete the outfit, I bought shoes, stockings, a belt, and a knife suitable for a woman of this status in this time period.
As a set of clothes, they’re entirely comfortable and practical (aside from the jacket, which has always been a little small, but still makes a huge difference when it comes to warmth), and still fit 6 years later. They don’t restrict movement in any way, and the options of different layers mean that an outfit can be adapted for different weathers.
The lacing also means that it’s relatively flexible in terms of fit, and so works well enough on other people provided they’re of similar enough size to me (apologies for the incredibly baggy men’s shirt worn beneath the kirtle in the above image: I didn’t have any spare clean smocks at the time!).