As the Cranach gown is shown in so many variations in all his pictures, I’ve decided not to make an exact copy of one of those gowns but take bits and pieces that I like best from all the portraits – and combine them in a single gown. I have also finally decided that I [...]
Cranach Gown
Study
A gazillion people have already studied the Cranach gown, so I don’t expect that I will come up with something new. However, I have discovered something that I have not seen come up in any other Cranach study, so I thought I should write it down. To make such a ‘German’ gown, of which none, [...]
Planning
I’ve decided to start with some basic measures that I would need to actually make the gown.. As explained in the planning of my ‘Hardwick’ gown, I’ve first laid a digital grid over the painting of the ‘Magdalena’ so that I could estimate the actual width of the stripes in the skirt and the sleeve [...]
Neckring
Surprisingly I didn’t finish of the clothing parts for this costume first. Instead, I suddenly had the inspiration to make the neck ring. I used Fimo (an oven-hardening, flexible clay), leaf gold and Swarovski rhinestones. Here’s how I made it: First, I sculpted the neck ring from Fimo. I did that on a dressmaking model [...]
Skirt
I made the skirt with the pattern that I pictured on the ‘Planning’ page from golden brocade and plush rayon velvet which I dyed to a beautiful garnet red color. The actual skirt was sewn pretty fast; just to add the linen lining took a bit longer as the skirt just didn’t want to cooperate [...]
Brustfleck
I started by decorating the fabric that’s supposed to become the Brustfleck. I am using the same brocade as I used for the skirt, and decorated it with silver and golden embroidery yarn, *real* garnets (no, *not* rhinestones. The real stuff; Rosen cut!) in rim settings, Swarovski Golden Shadow rhinestones (which look like tiny golden [...]
Bodice
Constructing the bodice was relatively simple, I basically constructed it by draping and having a mix of the back of an Elizabethan dress with scooped neckline and the front of a Robe à la francaise lining in mind. Sounds weird? I guess it is, but those seemed the two patterns that resembled the painted bodices [...]
Sleeves
I know it’s getting a little mixed up… am simultaneously working on Brustfleck, bodice and sleeves, but… Here’s a first making-of picture of the sleeves: I used my ‘sleeve scale’ picture from the planning: drafted a sleeve on white silk satin and then decorated it according to this sleeve planning picture with rhinestone-glue-sealed strips of [...]
Finished gown
And here are the first pictures of the finished gown on the dressmaking mannequin… …and here’s the one single picture I so far have of myself wearing it The change between the above shown dress mannequin pictures and this one is that I re-arranged the ladder lacing and used black lacing instead of gold (as [...]
