15th century kirtle blue wool kirtle, take one.

At Twelfth Night 2015 which was the the 6th event I've been to since I came back stateside in 2011, I discovered that I'd gained so much weight none of my German dresses fit (patterned at 40 pounds less than current weight) and my 1550s Dutch dress was a little snug too (patterned around 20 pounds less than current weight).

Because I knew I wanted to go to the West Coast Culinary Symposium 2015 I needed to make something so I hoped that I maybe still had my 15th century Flemish kirtle pattern made at the exact same weight I am now, in 2006. And I found it! It needed a little bit of adjusting due to a difference in how my weight is carried. A friend who was helping me adjust the fit thought I needed to add about an inch to the waist length, so I did. 

I decided to use a fairly light weight blue wool I had purchased at Mill End Fabrics in spring 2014 for $8 a yard. I had futzed around with a trapezoidal skirt shape with my 16th century Dutch market stuff (2009) and decided to do a more extreme version with this gown after seeing this A&S entry documentation I found via random googling and link clicking. If you're not down with clicking the links, basically a late 14th century set of skirt panels with a trapezoidal shape were found in London. 

I cut out my fabric and sewed the lacing rings in  and laced that sucker up to find that the waist was too long. I think that it can be a pretty common occurrence on larger people with dat hip and butt shelf and on many modern garments, the waist is a lot lower than what it was historically. My husband wears his jeans about 3" below his belly button and that is not where his waist is on his Venetian hose. 

Anyway, I don't have photos of it on me but I raised the waist and things are much improved. I'll also have to take these lacing rings off and reset them to be truly hiding because I think they are just a little too close to the edge of the bodice and it's causing too much of my shirt to appear and that bothers me. 

Here's a before of how the rings are set on one side. You can see some crept around a bit more than others.

But hey, there's at least proof of plackets in at least one 15th century German allegorical triptych, the Starck Triptych. Dated 1480/1490 by the National Gallery of Art, if you zoom in to the left panel and the woman in the red dress you can see what I'm talking about. 

If you're like "EH A LINK I AIN'T ABOUT TO CLICK NO LINK" here's an image capture.