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Heraldic Cotehardies: Short article concentrating on the concept of "heraldic cotehardies" and featuring links to excellent sights about the cotehardie. If you have not read it, you may wish to do so.

Heraldic Arts and Sciences:
Beyond the Banner and Shield
Dress Diary for
Cotehardie with Device and Badge!

This dress was born of two desires: my wish for a heraldic fitted outfit that was not the typical SCA full-field heraldic cotehardie, and a new dress to wear to the events that would give birth to the SCA Kingdom of Northshield. For me, these two desires married with ease: by lucky circumstance, Northshield uses black, yellow and white as its colors and the gryphon as its "totem animal." Initially, I sketched a completely period outfit—essentially, a black dress with yellow tippets, a yellow underdress, my arms embroidered at the right breast. However, I wanted a bigger display of my arms than a single embroidery squished up at my shoulder. And dang it, I had twenty yards of Master Drix's Northshield trim begging to be used.

The dress went through a lot of design incarnations, and I will certainly incorporate some of those design ideas into other heraldic outfits. However, all that putzing around atop my God-given anti-talent for wildly underestimating the amount of time a project is going to need left me in the position of either wearing the outfit before it was complete, or not wearing it for its intended purpose.

So we'll talk about the dress, and then we'll talk about what it needs to be complete.

Go to work as of Oct 2004.
Go to update of Feb 2008.

Cotehardie with heraldic device and trim.

This is the outfit in its "done enough to wear" stage. The dress is a cotehardie made of dupioni silk and decorated with an appliquéd shield of the same, commercially woven trim, and grosgrain ribbon. Like the first cotehardie in this series, it is a modification of Medieval Miscellania's Period Patterns: Early Tudor.**

The remaining heraldic components of the outfit are: a black and yellow beaded veil, a Laurel medallion suspended from a hematite and amber string of beads, and a signet ring. Although this outfit is not yet complete, it's destined to become one of my favorites.

Meanwhile, I love the flow of the dupioni silk and the dress is very striking when worn. I finally learned how to do a blindstich hem (Thank you, Melisande!) and this is a great improvement over either hemming by hand or with a straight stitch. I continue to like the lined dress hem, but I did not have sufficient material to line this dress. I may make that modification in future.

The shield placement does not, to the best of my knowledge, reflect period practice. The dress is intended to be plausibly period rather than perfectly period or merely peri-iod. While I am at this point in time unaware of any known dresses featuring the shield at knee level, there is evidence of shields being worn on the side breast, on the shoulder, and elsewhere. It was on this basis that I designed the dress; however, after making it, I found a reference in Stephen Slater's The Complete Book of Heraldry to tomb effigies featuring women with shields placed upon their legs—see page 112. Thus, this design would not be outside the medieval aesthetic, even if it wasn't ever put into practice.

The heraldic trim at the bottom of the dress is the Northshield populace badge. The NS compass rose trim is available through Calontir Trim; I also have his Laurel trim, and had initially thought to put it on this dress. Instead, I decided to border the NS trim with dual bands of yellow ribbon, completing the look of the NS populace badge: sable, a compass rose argent, a bordure Or.

 

The charges bonded to the silk. Two of the feathers have been cut out and sit to the left.

I made the appliqué in the same way I made the eagle appliqué for the "Wonder Woman" cotehardie; however, this was more complex. The material frays more easily that the gold used for the eagle appliqué, and this is a three-layer appliqué rather than a two-layer. The gryphon and feathers are bonded to the shield, and the shield is bonded to the dress. Note the gryphon is reversed, here: when making appliqués, remember to flip your elements. You are working backwards in the creation so that everything will appear forwards when completed.

 

Because the silk frays, this appliqué will have to be stitched down. However, the brand of heat bonding that I used is apparently a heavy duty one; it made a machine application impossible, and the three layers of bonded material are extremely difficult to pierce with a hand needle, so it is going to take me some time to complete this by hand. I thought I would couch down a thin cord, plenty period, and also simpler than All. That. Satin. Stitch. I must remember the suggestion that my dependant-brother, Ivan, gave me: pass the needle up through the shield and down through the feather or gryphon. This will help control the additional fraying that may take place while couching the cord.

 

Other tips for next time: satin stitch the appliqué elements BEFORE attaching the shield to the dress (which, I confess, I thought about but was in too much a hurry to do), and use a lighter bonding material. I used that provided by my Lord, and his is apparently industrial strength.  

For this outfit to be complete, I need to:

 

  1. Make the yellow underdress. I have decided that I will make a basic, lightweight underdress and then cover those sections that will be visible with the dupioni silk. The local fabric store no longer has that color available, but, of course, I don't want to pay their price for a lot of silk that won't be seen. The underdress will open from the sides. I am currently debating whether I should use some of my heavy tan linen/rayon for the unseen parts of the underdress. Advantage: it's a nice linen blend and it's already in my stash. Disadvantage: it's warm and sometimes irritates my skin. The best solution would be to make a light underdress and a heavy underdress, but I don't have enough dupioni left.
  2. Finish the appliqué. I would love to make lucet cord for the cording, but I don't want to wait two years before I wear this dress again.
  3. Make a belt with my motto upon it. Best would be one of those leather belts with the pewter letters fastened thereto, but embroidery or paint might suffice until I can afford to have one made. No matter what, get a belt with a buckle, not a ring. There are no ringed belts fastened with squire's knots on any of the ladies I looked at in designing this dress, no matter where their heraldic arms were in the picture.

 

 


**This is likely the last time I will make a cotehardie from this pattern, unless it is made with a very firm or very stretchy material. It may not be obvious from the picture, but I have a large bust, and when made with a stretchless, light material, the dress either will not close in the back (over a modern bra) or is too strained to support my breasts (even when worn with a supportive underdress rather than modern undergarments). It's a shame, because I really, really like this pattern, but not so much that I'm going to ruin hundreds of dollars worth of materials and labor to get a perfectly period silhouette. I have purchased McCall's patterns numbered M4490 and M4491 to bash together a pattern for a princess seamed cotehardie. It has been my experience with both of the period patterns that I have tried that the dress cannot be fitted in a way that accommodates the difference between my bust and waist. I know that large breasted women existed in period, so it's got to be the combination between the nature of commercial patterns and my ability to adjust the dresses. As I do not have this same problem when adjusting a princess-seamed dress, I'm going to have to revert to using them until I can get a pattern made specifically for my body. That will be a while.

 

I am not wild about the products of the McCall's pattern company, but at $0.99 US for each pattern, it seemed worth a try. I will make the underdress for this outfit from the two bashed patterns and update this article when that is complete, including commentary on these patterns.

 Update, 3 February 2008

The first underdress was finished some while ago. It's view A of McCall's M4491, with the neckline modified to suit Miguel-san's preference, no back or side opening, underarm flaps to protect the overdress, and the train cut off. I made it to a size that would allow me to treat it as a slip-on dress; it's a very lightweight yellow cotton.  In the end, I did not put silk coverage over the back and the visible neckline.

Here's why. I'd like to make a second underdress, this one with a more Early Tudor look to it. Miguel-san loves to see the rackage on display, but I'd like to be able to wear this dress while in persona. This neckline will never pass for 1495-1510. A more modest, square-necked underdress will do a decent job of rectifying the neckline issue. It's also possible that I may simply make a placket that can be detached to create the square neckline; I have not decided yet. In either event, I'll need the silk for the Tudor placket/second underdress. I will also be making a set of detachable fur cuffs to finish the Early Tudor look.

The appliqué is finally finished.

All the borders have been covered. There is silk embroidery floss couched on the sillohouttes of the gryphon and the feathers. You can see the silk couching in various stages by looking at a series of photos taken while in progress:  one two three.

I made a twist cord from cotton crochet cord for the shield border. Twist cords are very easy to make; my friend Ghita taught me to make them in about 30 seconds. Reasonable instructions for this process can be found here; the only thing I would note is that if you are trying to make a cord that will be a finished length shorter than you, you can circumvent a couple of problems by holding the middle of the cord with your toe and twisting one half of the cord to the right and one half of the cord to your left. When you remove your foot from the middle, the cord will wind on itself as described. A closer view of the appliqué can be seen here, but be warned that it's a bit blurry.

I've thought about doing some detailing to the appliqué, but have decided against it. The appliqué itself is heavy enough to alter the movement of the silk dress; more detailing will just increase that issue. Last, as far as the structure of the black dress goes, I'm thinking of moving the opening from the back of the dress to the side. That, however, is one of those "maybe, maybe not" things that likely will never happen unless the back of the dress gives out and is forever gone.


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