I have a goal of competing in the Pentathlon for next year's regional A&S competition. As part of this goal I plan on approaching my research and documentation much differently. At this past competition I found myself scrambling and stressing over the creation of my documentation. While I started researching a new outfit to work on I came across a website sponsoring a costume challenge. I now plan on doing a complete skin out Italian suit of clothes. This project was inspired by the costume challenge sponsored by The Realm of Venus website. The challenge was called "The Italian Renaissance Costuming Challenge". The challenge was to create a complete late Italian Renaissance outfit of any social class and based on the period 1480 - 1610 from the skin out, including an accessory, in four months (or less).
One of the many portions of this outfit will involve hand stitched leather gloves. I'll post more about the research (maybe) later. I have a handful of portraits that I've found and I plan on making a pair of gloves which are appropriate for an Italian gentleman who lived between 1520-1540.
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| Glove pattern drafted |
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| Mockup made of scrap felt. (Left over from my daughters poodle skirt) |
Here is some of the stash of leather I collected from Salvation Army. Still not sure I like any of the options. Although the source of leather is really cheap, I don't really know if any of the options will fit my design. I tried mocking up a thumb out of each of the leather options. I like the weight and feel for the rust brown leather, but I don't much care for the color. I like the color of the light brown leather which came from a leather fringed poncho. I don't much care for the weight of the leather. It is much thicker and is a split leather. It is a soft suede on both side, but due to the thickness it doesn't really match the look of the gloves that I've been seeing in portraits. I like the look and feel of the black leather, but unfortunately none of the portraits from the time period I've been looking at have black gloves. I think I'm destined to take a trip to Tandy and buy some new leather.
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| Leather Poncho |
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| Salvation Army Coats |
I continued making the gloves from the poncho leather. I think I still like the gloves, just not for this overall outfit. They would not likely be dress gloves, but would be appropriate as riding gloves or work gloves. I think I'll make the glove up completely just to make sure the pattern will work. That way when I buy new leather from Tandy I won't have any doubts about the pattern.
Here are some of the mockups I started testing with.
Here is the poncho leather glove in progress.
