Sixteenth Century Kaftan Sleeves

While I was cleaning up the sewing room a few weeks ago, I came across the pile of kaftan sleeves that had been in Time Out since last year. When I cut out a kaftan, I usually cut it with short sleeves with the archer's curve in the front and then cut a separate long sleeve that can be worn with the kaftan or mixed and matched with other kaftans.

This is based on several extant sets of kaftan + detachable sleeves in the same fabric as the kaftan and extant sets of sleeves that have no extant kaftan.

child's kaftan with matching sleeves

second quarter of the 16th century

Topkapi Sarayi Museum, Istanbul

TSM 13/1015 & 13/927

photo credit www.kostym.cz

Sleeves

16th century

Topkapi Sarayi Museum, Istanbul

TSM 13/1945

photo from: A la cour du Grand Turc

kaftan with matching sleeves

c. 1550

Topkapi Sarayi Museum, Istanbul

TSM 13/100

photo from: A la cour du Grand Turc

Very late in the 16th century/early in the 17th century, you also see some illustrations of sleeves that were clearly of a different fabric than either the outer kaftan or the inner garment. Sleeves contrasting with the outer kaftan but clearly matching the under kaftan are most commonly seen in Ottoman miniatures.

Kiz, an unmarried Girl

Habits of the Grand Signor's Court

1620

British Museum 1928,0323,0.46.103

photo credit: British Museum

excerpt of folio 14.b

Album of the World Emperor

c. 1610

Topkapi Sarayi Museum, Istanbul

Bagdat 408

photo from: The Album of the World Emperor

However, because I live in the Deep South where it is Too. Darned. Hot. much of the year, the sleeves never seem to get finished. So, last summer while Jay was at Lord Baltimore's Challenge, I set down to binge-watch Netflix and finish off 4 pairs of sleeves with silk facings and topstitching. I got through 2 pairs and was working on the third when I took a look at the sleeve and thought: "something is definitely wonky here"

I have no idea what I was thinking when I cut them out, but they all needed to be shortened and sized down. My hypothesis is that I cut the first pair incorrectly, noted the sleeve measurements down in my pattern journal, and because I never finished off the first pair, proceeded to look at my journal and repeat the error three more times.

What was I thinking?!?

Infuriated at wasting the better part of 2 days hand-sewing, I tossed the whole pile into the Time Out bin and forgot about them until a few weeks ago. Since I didn't have any pressing projects, I decided to finish them once and for all.

The red/turquoise and the black/white sleeves are to kaftans that are already finished. The blue/red & teal/beige sleeves are from kaftan that I started for Gulf Wars 2019 and never got around to finishing. Guess I know what my next projects are. :)

 photobomb: Lafayette

My standard method for kaftan sleeves is unlined

but faced on both ends with silk

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Fetvaci, Emine. The Album of the World Emperor: Cross-Cultural Collecting and the Art of Album-Making in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul. Princeton University Press, 2019.

Maury, Charlotte ed. Al la cour du Grand Turc: Caftans du Palais de Topkapi, Louvre Editions, 2010.