Women's dress 13th century: saya encordada and pellote creation

The first piece I needed to create was the underdress with red and blue embroidered sleeves.  I decided to do a wider saya encordada and pellote through the chest area based on the saya encordada and pellote of Leonor of Castilla, rather than the lady from the Book of Games. Since the chest area is covered with the wider saya, I did not continue the embroidery onto the bodice.  This also helped with the amount of time needed to create the underdress as I only had 2 weeks to complete the whole outfit!  I wanted the embroidery to be geometric, as the embroidery in the manuscript image also appeared geometric.  I searched the web for simple embroideries that might have come from the rough time frame from Spain and did not come up with anything I could do quickly or simply.  I broadened my search and found a lovely set of embroidery charts made from extant items by the talented Miriam bat Shimeon.  These are middle eastern and many of them are Egyptian, but the look was right for 2 color geometric.  Here is a link to her website with her amazing charts. I used two of her charts

Cuff, based on Egyptian 10-15th CE embroidery, charted by Miriam Staples

Sleeve embroidery, based on 10-15th CE embroidery fragment, charted by Miriam Staples

 The embroidery actually went really fast and I am pleased with the overall look.  Samples from Egypt may be a stretch for Spanish dress, but I felt they were good enough for my needs and fit the look I was going for.

The underdress is rectangular construction made linen.  The internal seams were machine sewn due to time constraints but I had sewed the hems of the neck and sleeves since they show.

The next part was the saya encordada, thankfully this dress has lots of information readily available online.  The seam lines have been drawn by Marc Carlson (here), making pattern drafting really easy.  The gown is made of faux silk, as I had it on hand. The lacing was done as described in the previous post, I hand stitched ribbon to the inside of the gown with channels to allow lacing.  The original was laced with cord, but I used ribbon, as I had it on hand.  The bodice of my saya encordada is hand sewn and self lined to the hips.

 

The final piece was the pellote.  For this, I used some blue wool I had laying around.  The pattern for the pellote was based on the cutting diagram from Marc Carlson (here). Unfortunately, this wool will stretch, so I bound the arm holes with cloth tape and added some trim to make it a bit more decorative since the tape make the edge very plain.  As with the other dresses, I had sewed the neckline.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with this outfit.  Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of me wearing it.  I did not get much of a chance to wear it, as my cat was in the ICU the day of the event (he has since fully recovered).