Skip to main content

I Promised my Friends a Tutorial for Reinforced Eyelets

 Hello Beautiful Humans!

This week is a electronic gift to one of my friend's who recently had a birthday and asked me for a video tutorial a year ago on how I incorporate rings into my eyelets to reinforce my 16th century gowns. To give you some historical context, in the second half of the 15th century having elaborate lacing rings for your gown was very popular in Florence. By the 16th century the fashion had disappeared, but the fitted bodices of gowns continued. When Elenora di Toledo was burred, her funeral dress had small brass rings sewn into her eyelets. Exact sizing and details on this dress can be found in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 3. It makes since that over a 100 year period the rings would have transformed from a practical focal point into a discrete reinforcement method. I usually get my rings for lacing, awls, and other tools from Renaissance Fabrics You can also find awls, thread, chalk, etc at your local sewing store. This video will walk you through 3 different ways to sew in eyelets. The skills from each style will build on the previous style until you are finally making the ring enforced eyelets at the end. I love using these rings for any of my self supporting dresses. I've also found I don't need boning along my lacing strips, if I have reinforced the eyelets with rings already.




Step 1. Prep your Fabric with some basting stitches around where you will be sewing to make sure fabric does not shift and role on you.
Step 2. Mark your eyelet holes.
Step 3. Stab marking with your awl.
Step 4. If you are using a ring to reinforce your eyelet, do a few quick whip stitches around the ring and through the hole so you don't have to constantly hold the eyelet in place.
Step 5.Stitch around hole with even tension.
Step 6. Burry thread ends or bring thread over to your next eyelet.

Thank you to my friends in the Society for Creative Anachronism for your patience while I looked at all of the new shiny projects. While I do participate with the SCA, I do not speak for them as a whole. Please check out www.sca.org to find out more.
Happy Birthday my friend! I am excited to see your new dress with reinforced eyelets when we are back at in person events. Bisou Bisou, Maridith

Comments

  1. This is a very useful post, I was looking for this info.Private Tutor Boca Raton thanks for sharing the great ideas...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pockets in the 16th Century?

So if you are new to my blog, Hello! I took July off to focus on work and realities of covid life. Thanks for hanging in there.  This week we are doing to cover 16th Soccocia and their role toward the origin of pockets. People need a place to carry and keep their small items as they walk around. In the middle ages you might have a pilgrim satchel or a belt pouch. Some women in the middle ages had the brilliant idea to stop wearing their money purses outside of their over gowns and instead would wear them between their kirtle/sottona layer and over gowns. This arrangement still gave you access to the purse, but made it harder for thieves to cut your purse strings and run.  Fast forward to the 16th century and we find the heirs to this practice in socaccia. We have some visual evidence of these in mid to late 16th century art out of Italy. This is a detail of Alessandro Allori's,  Woman at her toilet, ca 1575-78. Currently in Florence, Church of Santa Maria Novella, Gaddi ...

Making my Viking Apron Dress

  This Week's vlog is the follow up to my Viking Age Tunic dress which I posted last week. When discussing the clothing of Birka and other Norse cultures, a woolen dress is an iconic look which is functional while tending a fire or many other activities. My apron dress is inspired by the finds out of Birka. The wool I used was a light weight suiting with a 2:2 twill weave. The long seams of this dress were finished with a machine for speed, and all of the seam finishings were hand sewn. I used a woolen finishing technique I learned about while flipping through Woven into the Earth by Else Ostergard. The technique involves using wool yarn and a couching stich of sorts to encase the raw edges of the wool. The end result is a low profile and durable seam around the neck and hem of my apron dress. I love that all of the hand sewn elements of this dress start to create a decorative finish on the outside of the dress and the only extra embellishment I added was a herringbone stitch over...

Costumes in Wolf Hall

Many of us who love historical costume were completely smitten with the production shots we saw before Wolf Hall aired earlier this year. Now the series is available for sale through PBS, BBC, and even national retailers like Target. With the popularity of this series I want to take a moment and give those new to Tudor fashions a few notes before you take everything in the series as gospel. This is one of the most accurately costumed historical dramas that I have seen in years. The color palate, cuts, underwear, and fabrics are impeccable. But don't forget to do your own research into the clothing as you make your own ensembles. Odd Piece #1: French Hoods I appreciate the costume designer here for acknowledging French hoods need veils. I doubt though that you will find a single portrait from the 1520's or 30's in England or France that uses fine silk chiffon. Typically you will see a solid black veil on the French and English hoods. Medals done in profile from the time...