A 16th century Italian Camicia with Lace

I have been in need of more camicia for a while now. I had four or five at one point but am down to two, and have a definite favorite of those two.  At Midwinter A&S, I got caught in the rain and the cherry colored silk facing on my Turkish robe bled on that one and, sadly, the stains didn't come all the way out..  And Gulf Wars is fast approaching.

A couple of camicia isn't an ambitious goal for Gulf Wars.  Really, it's not.  Unless you are me, that is.

My favorite camicia was made from Margo Anderson's Italian Ladies Underpinnings set. It was the second one I made and the way it's cut out, it was perfect for adding lace insertion. Right as I was getting ready to cut out camicia, the Elizabethan Costume group on Facebook was abuzz with a new Etsy store: DSA Threads who was selling machine embroidered lace in patterns straight from 16th c. modelbuchs.

My cutting table supervisors: Charlie (standing) and Lafayette (sitting)

I have been in love with the extant camicia with embroidery and lace since the first time I opened PoF 4 and have always had an especial crush on this one.

16th c. camicia

Civic Museum, Milan

photo from Ricci's Old Italian Lace

http://realmofvenus.renaissanceitaly.net/workbox/extcam5.htm

So visions of a camicia with lace from DSA Threads danced in my head.  But even at the ~$9/yard she calculates it at (which is, frankly, a bargain for a documentable pattern on the lace) 4 40" lengths for insertion in the body panels and 6  28" lengths for vertical insertion down the lengths of the sleeves was just over 9 yards of lace. I had enough other things I needed for Gulf Wars that spending $100 on lace didn't seem like the most responsible thing to do right now. (But I fully expect I will do so at a later date!)

I do, however, have an antique lace addiction. There was a  revival of 16th c. needle arts like needle lace, drawn work, and Assisi embroidery in the early part of the 20th century so, if you know what to look for, eBay, Etsy and the buy/sell groups on Facebook are a surprisingly good resource -if you don't need it on a deadline. 

For the past couple of years, I have been watching and buying antique lace, dreaming of partlets and aprons and lacy camicia.  I love the thought of needlelace but I am distracted by so many rabbit holes on a daily basis that I never get more than an inch or so (and my detached buttonhole stitch isn't going to win any blue ribbons. It would, I know, get better with practice, but see above comment about distractions.) And bobbin lace is faster, but with 5 cats in the house, it's got its own set of problems. 

A little digging turned up a little over 10 yards of a bobbin lace that might not be documentable to a specific modelbuch but it didn't have a glaringly modern look to it and I had enough (or so I thought)

Full disclosure:  this is antique lace I purchased.  I did not make it

My promise to myself was that I would do all the insertion by machine.  I thought better of that briefly, but the time involved in hemming and whip stitching the lace to a single panel showed me that if I had any hope of wearing this at Gulf Wars, machine work it was going to need to be.

The camicia pattern has a front, 2 side fronts, a back, 2 side backs, 2 sides and sleeves.  And, if I was doing insertion on the sleeves, 4 panels for each sleeve.  Even machine sewing, that was a lot of tiny hems and even though I had found 5 seasons of Law and Order UK on amazon, I was glad when that stage was done. The zig-zagging the lace to each hemmed panel was equally tedious.  This part broke my heart a little.  It would have looked soooo much nicer done by hand.  But needs must and on I went.

I started the insertion on the sleeves and quickly realized I'd miscalculated.  I really wanted 4 insertions on the sleeve, which added 56" to the amount I needed.  This miscalculation was compounded by realizing that I needed a minimum of 2 more insertions (ideally 4) for the body. I solved that by splitting the center front panel, adding an insertion there and just doing 3  front insertions and just felling the seams of the other body seams. This meant undoing quite a few of the hems.  Which, of course, took longer because they'd been machine sewn.

I broke my machine sewing rule putting the underarm gussets in. I have never in my life been able to get a gusset in on a machine without puckering.  Hand sewing, it's easy peasy.  So hand sewing it was for this part.

I also broke my machine sewing rule when it came time to gather the neckline. No. 10 perle cotton  and a tapestry needle will be so much easier to gather, I thought, machine gathers inevitably break.  So another episode or two of Law and Order UK and I had hand-gathered the neckline.  Except that I tried it on and darned if the perle cotton didn't break on me.   

At this point, I thought I wanted a square neckline, so I had the bright idea of gathering the front, back and shoulder seams separately to make them easier to manipulate.  So back to more Law and Order and hand gathering.  The reality of 4 gathering threads actually made things exponentially difficult, not easier and after way too much fussing, I gave up on the square neckline.  Some future camicia will have a square neckline -but not this one!

Despite the construction hurdles, it was going so well that I decided to add some gorgeous antique needle lace that would be perfect around the neckline.  So I spent last night with the first couple of episodes of Discovery of Witches and hand-stitched the lace around the neckline.  I had maybe 6-8" to spare and I am still trying to work up the nerve to cut the excess off.

So overall, I am pretty pleased with the end product.  Future camicia may have square necklines and be done entirely by hand, but for an extra camicia for Gulf Wars this year, it will do admirably.

Cost: $0   everything was from the stash

Time Spent: a couple hours most nights since February 10 and most of yesterday. So far too long for making an undergarment

First Worn:  Gulf Wars hopefully

The irony is that while I made it to wear with my Turkish Robe, this is all of the camicia that shows.  Guess I will be moving an Italian gown up on the endless list of projects I want to do. But I'll worry about that after Gulf Wars.