Grand plans don't come to fruition, but I still have stockings and a sash.

 I know I talked about doing a sprang poste back at the beginning of this endeavor.  It still is on my list of things to try but I never settled into it and got going with the experiment.  The dress still needed the option of that splash of color at the waist to tie together the color in the sleeves and trim.  I still wanted to make something pretty and not just a strip of silk.  I considered doing pewter mounts like I'd done on my last poste/sash.  I didn't want to just pour more of my heart mold though and never came up with something nifty to carve a new mold of so it kept getting delayed.  I figured I'd better make something before time completely ran out.  So, here it is. Rather boring, but I did learn a new stitch.  The sash is actually 3 lengths of silk held together by an interlaced herringbone insertion stitch.  It's done in a blue bamboo rayon thread that matches the dupioni silk of the sash.  The tassels are the same thread.  The herringbone is interlaced in gold cord.  It is a bit too heavy to work properly so next time I will use a lighter contrasting thread.  I stitched on a few pearl and gold beads and ta-da.  Not my grand planned piece, but it does the job and the tassels and beads weigh down the bottom nicely.

These are quite obviously not my blue knitted Eleonora stockings.  I WILL get those made.  Eventually.  I'm going to give it another go in January I think.  I hope.  In the meantime, I made these since you can never have enough socks.  I just used the same pattern I draped last year for linen hose and cut and stitched them.  There's a bit of lace trim and a blue and orange woven ribbon to top it off and firm up the upper edge.

Poste revisited

I had a brain storm this morning while tying to decide what I wanted to do for the poste (sash.) Last time I made one I just hemmed a rectangle of silk and added tassels and pewter plaques. I keep throwing Luca Moia's definition of a poste from The Silk Industry in Renaissance Venice around in my head. "Poste: Silk veils related to sendals, sometimes made like a net, and usually worn around the waist as a belt."

The "sometimes made like a net," keeps getting stuck. There is this set of garters at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston dated 1575-1600, accession number 43.2001a. (The super cute pink and green ones.) They're made of silk using sprang.

Military officers (including George Washington) of the 18th century wore beautiful netted silk sashes made using sprang. . .

Various cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean islands as well as some Slavic groups still utilize sprang sashes as part of their traditional folk costume. . .

Am I completely up in the night here or might there be a connection? And if there is, do I want to pursue it? Making a silk sash using sprang is going to be a significant commitment of time and money, especially as I've only ever done tiny samples of sprang, nothing even approaching this magnitude. How crazy am I really?

Pewter, silk, pearls, and tassels

Since no one had the time to read my documentation at 12th Night, I figured I'd just finish up posting the last few items I made to go with the patchwork dress.
A little drier than normal, but I'll try to throw in a few jokes to keep y'all on your toes.
First up, my poste (actually probably a sottoposte because its a lesser quality of silk) a silk scarf to be used as a belt.



As my dress is a transitional style from the 1530’s and the portrait does not have a waist ornament, there are a couple of possibilities as to what could be worn with it. To give myself some options, I decided to make a poste or silk belt sash. Poste were an extremely popular export item of the Venetian silk industry. They were worn by both men and woman throughout Italy and the general use scarves were exported throughout the continent. Originally fine scarves intended for a variety of uses, as the 16th century went on, they became more and more narrow. By the second quarter of the 16th century they were sometimes described as narrow as eight inches. They were decorated with velvet, tassels and other ornaments.
Although Bacchiacca’s painting, “The Preaching of Saint John the Baptist” is earlier than my dress, it provides a good look at a long poste with tassels. I have included several other paintings with silk sashes tied at the waist that have more in common with my dress (balzo, full upper sleeves etc.)

Bacchiacca’s The Preaching of Saint John the Baptist

Portrait of a Woman by Paolo Zacchia the Elder


Bacchiaca
In making my sash, I chose to use a scrap of bronze silk and blue cotton tassels made from crochet cotton. I added a blue decorative stitch on the edges using my sewing machine. To add further weight to the tassels, I topped them with pewter castings of my krin (heart with fleur) badge. The castings are my first attempt at pewter casting, made in a class HRM Clare and Mistress Giliana taught at Collegium. I carved the mold in class and we poured the castings at that time. I filed them at home and drilled some holes in order to attach them to the sash. For further decoration, I painted them copper and bronze with enamel paints and stitched through pearls that seat into the drilled holes.
References used:
The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice by Luca Mola p. 168
Sugar and Gamurre’s article on poste.