The Korean project is moving along

We decided that Maja and Valeria could use the same fabric for their chima, and the same cotton for their jeoksam, the blouse worn under the jeogori jacket in the medieval period. Valeria will have a light blue linen jeogori and Maja will have a light green cotton jeogori, but I haven't started on those yet. After all they're not going to wear them until November, and I have other interesting projects.

Valeria in jeoksam and chima.

Medieval and 16th century Korean dress: A chima

So, it appears that a new(ish) interest is Korean dress from the period that the SCA covers. Mainly because all my daughters are huge K-pop fans, and thus became interested in everything Korean.  The fact that my 1330s Genoese outfit reminds everyone of a woman's hanbok because of the high "waistline"also helped.

So, the plan is to make 14th-16th century style hanboks for both Valeria and Maja. I started yesterday, at Gotvik's sewing meeting, by making a chima (wrap skirt) for Maja from a linen/cotton blend. Ideally it should be hemp or cotton for lower class garb, and ramie or silk for higher class, but this is such a lovely fabric. And it has stripes, which was popular for unmarried girls and women.

The chima was pretty easy to research, there are several preserved ones from this period, such as these:

A chima made for Jung, On (1481~1538), a 5th class officer in the reign of King Joongjong. It is made of fine tabby silk and has various Buddhist scriptures around the knee portion. This suggests that this Chima was specially made for a placement in coffin as an element of the burial, and also as an offering for the late husband’s soul to rest in peac

From Google Arts&Culture

This unlined ceremonial Chima was worn by Lady Han of Cheongju (region), a great-grand child of King Joongjong. It is made of satin damask with a lotus and seven treasures pattern and is decorated with two lines of satin tapes made with supplementary golden wefts to create a lotus and child pattern.

From Google Arts&Culture

But I need more info for the rest of the outfit. I have ordered Traditional Korean Costume on ILL, and I have found two blogs with historical info, as well as a wonderful artist on DeviantArt who draws historical Korean outfits.

A hanbok fit for a 16th century Gisaeng.

So steady as she sews

Glimja at DeviantArt

And I am ever so grateful for the Metropolitan Museum of Art for making so many of their publications free to download. Like this: Art of the Korean Renaissance.

My Pinterest page on Korean dress, which includes later periods

A sottana and camicia based on preserved 16th century garments

One of last year's big projects was making a reconstruction (within certain limits) of the funeral gown of Eleonora di Toledo, duchess of Florence, who died in 1562. This included the gown, a netted caul and partlet, and a camicia (smock) based on another preserved 16th century garment, this one from Prato, another Tuscan town.

You can read all about it over here, on its own documentation page, where there are also lots of photos.

Finally some photos!

It has been finished for a month, but either she has been ill, ow had exams, or I have been working or otherwise busy.  But this very busy weekend, which included celebrating Imbolc on Friday, annual general meeting for Gotvik and celebrating my husband's birthday on Friday and celebrating my youngest niece's birthday today, we finally managed to get photos taken.

Writing the documetnation will take a few more days, but for now I give you two photos of Valeria in her Eleonora di Toledo gown.

Previous blog posts about this project:

The fabric - guess what I'm going to make?

What I am making for Valeria

Finished bodice

The embrodered camicia ready to be worn

Details of the construction of the skirt.

Embroidered smock progress

Sewing - a little bit of this and that

When trying on Valeria's camicia and gown I realized that they seams attaching the sleeves to the body of the camicia would be visible when she wore them together, and that this meant that I "had" to embroider over that seam too. I started a little while I was in Delft, and continued last week at home. One of the sides is now made and I have done about half on the other.

However, yesterday I got tired of embroidery, and started on a muslin gown from c. 1810. Since it's not all hand sewn (though there's enough of that too) it ought to be finished this week.

The skirt is sewn, and I have attached (by machine) the 7 metres of hand-hemmed ruffle at the hem. Now I need to make sleeves, and attach the skirt.

I finished the Eleonora di Toledo skirt

While the bodice has been finished since April it took a while to get around to finishing the skirt. Not only because that's  a lot of trim to sew down, because that was finished this summer, but partly because I didn't have the unbleached linen I wanted to use for lining, and mostly becuase I started worting on the embroidered camicia (see last post) again.

But now the skirt is lined and finished. This would have gone much quicker if I had simply baglined dit, but of course I wanted to do it the way the original was done - apart from the fact that it wasn't lined, but I do that top spare the silk satin of the train from the dirt of the floors at events.

First I sewed a wide strip of the silk satin, the lining and the top fabric together on machine and then I folded all the seam allowances up against the skirt and whip stitched them in place.

 I then folded the silk satin strip , making it stick out about 1, 25 cm/1/2 an inch from the edge, and sewed it in place by hand.

It does take time to round 5 metres of skirt twice ;)

The I pressed it, and started cutting the edge with scissors.

Finished!

Since I probably have to take in the bodice a little I will have to wait for Valeria to come home so we can try it on, before I attach the skirt.