La Belle Robe Médiévale: Houppelande Mockup process!

It's been a long minute since I had the bandwidth to work on this, had a nasty bout of Covid, and lingering complications along with family issues that sapped my energy the past couple months. I had some more pressing garb to finish, but I'm back at the project now!

So my initial mockup definitely has some adjustments to make.

The I need to make my center center front panels wider, so I can get a properly fit neckline. This problem is also the reason why the extant Houppelande had an extra panel in the back. And so that's probably the best solution without compromising the drape. I want to keep the gore seams on the shoulders for the drape.

And that hem and train is quite a mess.

Houppelandes of this era had a lot of volume.

My pattern took the width of the extant Houppelande panels and just made them longer, meaning the volume of my panels shifted to the hem. So that the circumference around my feet is less than the extant Houppelande. It creates a more tulip shaped gown, instead of an A-line as shown in the art work, and the train doesn't spread or pool as it should.

I could solve this by readjusting all my panels so that they are 15cm at the floor and continuing the angle into a shorter train. If my fabric wouldn't be wide enough for that, then I could add triangular gores to achieve the volume. Or make fewer panels, but wider as I had done in previous Houppelandes.

The pattern fix is the orange dashed line.

And the train would also require a few gores as well.

Also adding 4" to each consecutive panel results in 40" of a train... Im only 5'-2" tall... That's a bit ridiculous even for me. Lol.

The thing is that my panel widths were being dictated by the width of my fabric, 45", which is twice the width of period velvet. Laid out with 4 panels across the period width, gave me almost exactly the dimensions of the extant houppelande.

If I try to layout the panels to piece them, (right half above) it actually creates a lot of 'unusable' waste. Half the cut would be just a gore instead of a usable panel.

If I try to increase the width by cutting 3 panels per width, (left half above) then I end up with one wider trapezoid with 2 bias edges, and 2 thinner panels that have a straight and bias edge. Which would make uneven drape and awkward to pattern, plus strays far away from the extant shape and width.

So I took it to CAD and figured out how much my original panels were short at floor height. Turns out it was about 30cm, or 2 panels worth. Since adding an extra panels in the back already helps solve the neckline issue, I'm choosing to shorten my train, and add in 2 back panels, and some gores as needed in the train. It still works out to use the same amount of fabric and fur.

Wider front panels, shorter train, 2 back panels, and extra gores to maintain volume through the train.

Below I added in 2 back panels to the existing mockup and cut the train to reasonable, it creates a nice neckline for a collar, and now achieves the A line shape!

I call that Success! And it will be better when panels are recut to the shorter length, being a bit wider.

The slits in the train are the areas where I'll need some gores.

Adding an extra 1.5" to each front panel allows for a nice clean neckline, ready for a collar!

Don't worry about the shoulder wings, once I have sleeves and heavier, more supple fabrics, those should lay flat to create a soft drape.

A sketch of my sleeve pattern.

My sleeves like the body of the Houppelande, are panels, each 11.25" wide. They start at 24" long at the front of the sleeve, and 42" at the back. For this mockup I wasn’t sure of the curve needed for the sleeve head, so I ended up leaving 12" of the seam closest to the body open and pined it to the Houppelande. I ended up with a trim line shown in purple.