Last year a friend was inquiring if anyone would be willing to take on a commission to make a late Tudor coif. She’d tried but couldn’t get the pattern right and was getting frustrated. Since I love historical headwear, I figured I’d give it a try.
Shockingly, I haven’t made any Tudor garments for myself yet (it’s on the list!) which means I haven’t made a Tudor coif yet!
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The second, larger hood
I was hosting an A&S practice night at my place in March, and decided to make the theme “hats, hoods & headwear”. While not too many people brought out their own examples, there were certainly lots of people working on thematic items which was neat. I also decided to bring out some of my period (or attempts at period!) style hats, and at the last minute decided that this theme meant it was time to start on a Tudor hood as well, something a bit less high-class than the French Hood.
First French Hood, side view
I’ve been thinking of a Tudor -era costume for a while, and like the 1480’s Italian… I’ve started with the headwear! (It’s probably note-worthy that my head is quite a bit bigger than my foam headform… so it looks a bit different on me.)
Although when I started the headwear, I didn’t have a dress designed, I have a number of fabrics I’ve collected for this project, and I imagine a very gothic style… the fabrics are silver/grey, black, blue, and red. Not surprising, these are the same colours I’ve based a lot of my costumes on so far…
When the Tudor Tailor had a bunch of their patterns on sale, I purchased the Hoods pattern (along with a few others). This was unfortunately RIGHT before they completely re-did their Hoods pattern, but I still like the original and wanted to make up a French Hood. (I think the Gabled hoods look neat, but the French Hood is so much more my style, and I think would look more attractive on me (and my wide face).
I cut the pattern pieces for the base and the crescent from two layers of millinery buckram, wired both with millinery wire (using buttonhole twist) and mulled both with thin cotton batting (I don’t have domet/domette, and in the past have used the batting successfully.
I raided my small silks boxes (doesn’t everyone have a stash of small pieces of silk? LOL) and pulled a crisp red (probably habotai in lue of taffeta) silk for the crescent, and a black silk satin for the base. I realize that the base should have probably been lined in linen, but the fit was so nice, that I figured I’d stick with the silk so that it would be kind to my hair (and so that the ends by my cheeks would look nice).
Dawn's Dress Diary 