Drafting a gipó

So, I outlined my search for distinctly Iberian 14th century clothing here (links to Part 1 and Part 2).

I decided to use the hunters from the ceiling of the Alhambra as my models.  Here is a link to a reasonably close shot of three of them.  As I discussed in my prior post, I suspect that these close fitting garments (that many re-enactors would probably call a cotehardie) are probably constructed more like the gipó or jupon.  Since the surviving pourpoint of Charles de Blois is an example of this type of garment, this gives me useful information on actual construction.  The pourpoint actually has a very interesting sleeve construction, which I thought might be fun to try (although I'm still not keen on the number of buttonholes this will take!)

I am greatly indebted to Tasha Kelly, who has lots of information about this style on her blog: La cotte simple.  Her articles saved me from a lot of trial and error.  The Charles de Blois pourpoint uses a construction method called the grand assiette, which involves a very large armhole - there is only a few inches between the center front edge and the armhole seam.

I started with a basic block for my torso.  This is meant to be a closely fitted garment, so I used the minimal amount of wearing ease.  I then extended it down to where I think the hem will be.  I added width down to the level of my hips and then just drew lines straight down from there.  I don't need to worry about having extra fullness at the hem to allow for movement.  There are two reasons: the garment is so short that this won't be much of an issue and the side seams will be left open from just below the hips (as seen in the image above).  I'm estimating 11" below the waist for the hem, but I'll double check this at fitting.  Since I will not be recreating the exaggerated pigeon-chested silhouette of Charles de Blois, I didn't think I would need or want the enlarged armholes to be quite as extreme. So, I drew in a curve 2.5" from the armscye on my front and back pieces.  These are the resulting pieces:

Yes, my center front is straight, not highly curved like Charles' pourpoint. He obviously did more situps than I do.  :-)  

There are several features of Charles' pourpoint that I am not imitating.  The first one is that Charles' pourpoint has a horizontal seam across the back piece (but not the front).  The edges of this seam are both concave, essentially creating a fish-eye dart across the back.  This shaping is necessary to shape to the small of the back and then also accommodate the flare of the buttocks.  However, it is also possible to create this shaping with a vertical center back seam.  This is what I did here, since I've mostly got this shape figured out.  If I had more time to make a preliminary muslin, I might try out the shaping with a horizontal seam.   But, one of the Alhambra hunters has a parti-color jupon, so I think that using a vertical center back seam is totally justified.  

The photo above does not have any seam allowance on the armhole curves, since I expected that the exact shape and position of those seams will require some tweaking at fitting.  When I cut this out, I left a wide allowance on the armholes and the top of the sleeve.  However, I also learned two things when I fitted the body pieces.  The first is that I have an even flatter butt than I thought - I eliminated almost all the shaping at the bottom of the center back.  The second should have been obvious to me if I'd thought about it, but I didn't.

Usually, I draft a basic block with 4" of ease at the chest level.  For a garment with a standard armhole placement, this ease in the body's side seam is needed to allow for arm movement.  However, the grand assiette incorporates the ease needed for movement into the flared upper sleeve.  Because the armhole seam is so far from the shoulder joint, and because the cutting of the sleeve itself creates all the needed wearing ease, that extra fabric on the sides of the body is no longer necessary.  So, I ended up taking out almost all the ease in the side seams.  

In reality, the armhole sleeve needs to pass over, or even closer to the CF than, the most protruding part of the pectorals (what would be the "bust point" on a woman) in order for the sleeve to do all the work of accommodating the shoulder's range of motion.  In fitting, I ended up moving the armhole seams over by an additional 2 - 2 1/2 inches - and they probably could have been even bigger than that.  Live and learn.  

The sleeves that fit into these large armholes are flared by adding triangular gores into slits in the sleeve cap.  In theory, the points of these gores will sit more or less where a normal armhole seam would have.  This will flare out the sleeve top to cover the pectoral muscles and scapular region, to match the shape of the armholes, and still leave a closely fitted tube to encase the upper arm.  Kelly worked out a set of formulas to draft this upper sleeve and figure out the size and placement of the gores.  Her tutorial can be found here and someone created a web form that will do the math for you.  Basically, the upper sleeve is a rectangle, with its lower corners cut off to taper it to the width of the lower bicep just above the elbow.  The extant pourpoint has a vertical seam along the underside of the sleeve, but this seems to be completely straight and was probably done to conserve fabric.  The gores are set in as shown here to create the flared sleeve top (which will cover the pectoral and scapular areas):

diagram from Adrien Harmand's Jeanne d’Arc: Ses costumes, son armure: Essai de reconstitution, 1929

I did make some modifications to Kelly's draft.  She predicated her formulas on the front gore (the one floating above the rest of the sleeve in the diagram above) being a quarter circle.  This is the case in Charles' pourpoint.  But, when I tried drafting it that way, my back gore came out to be slightly over 1 inch wide.  Maybe my chest is smaller relative to my arms?   Maybe Charles de Blois did more bench presses than I do also?  I don't know, but it really didn't seem right for the back gore to be so narrow.  So, assuming that the narrow underarm gore straddles the body's side seam (which it doesn't in Charles' pourpoint, but this assumption made things easier for me) I dealt with the front and back separately.  Matching the lengths along the armhole seam gave me a front gore with about 60 degrees of arc.  Then the back gore was about 6.5" wide and much closer in proportion to the diagram above.  I'll have to test this out in fitting, but it just makes sense that the front gore can't be that much wider than the back one.  

Another feature that I'm not imitating from the Charles de Blois pourpoint is the cuff.  The Alhambra hunters seem to have cuffs that come down at least to the first knuckle of the thumb (metacarpophalangeal joint).  Charles' pourpoint has sleeves that seem to end at the wrist, since they taper to the cuff and in pictures of it they do not seem to have the flare at the cuff.  In order to extend past the wrist, the sleeves must taper to the wrist and then flare out in order to accommodate the size of the hand and movement of the wrist.  

The lower sleeve is relatively simpler to draft than the upper.  Kelly did not put instructions for this on her blog, but she sells a pattern for recreating the Charles de Blois pourpoint.  Her blog implies that she prefers to drape the pattern for the lower sleeve.  But, since I would have had to drape this on myself I figured drafting would be easier.  I will try to write up more detailed instructions on what I did once I can create some clearer images to illustrate it.  However, those with experience in drafting patterns will probably be able to figure out what I did from this photo:

The flare of the cuff can be accommodated in one of two ways.  What won't work is just adding fabric along the seam/button opening.  What you will see if you put your hand down flat on a table is that the shape of the hand flares mostly on the side of the thumb, not on the other side where the button opening is.  Adding fabric on that side will only create an awkward shape that won't sit well on the hand.  One option would be to cut the cuff as a separate piece.  This would be in the shape of an arc, which would create a funnel shape - and there may be a less extreme version of this going on in Charles' pourpoint.  But, the human hand is not shaped like a cone.  And since these sleeves are just full of inset gores, I decided to put one at the wrist also.  You can seen in the photo where I slit the muslin open along the center line to check the length when I fitted this on my forearm.  

Fitting the sleeve was a bit difficult on my own and I had to employ some help from a friend.  She helped me tweak the exact shape and location of the armhole seam.  With further time or experimentation, I might have adjusted the shape or size of the sleeve's gussets.  But, we just adjusted the armhole shape to suit the sleeve top.  

Construction details to follow!