Sunday, July 10, 2011

Adventures in Pinking - Renaissance Style

Clarice Ridolfi Altoviti 1550-1555 by Cristofano dell'Altissimo in the Galleria Palatina in Florence.  Her bodice and sleeves are pinked in an interesting pattern that I am trying to re-create.  After fitting myself for a bodice, I traced a cutting design on my pattern piece.  For the first draft, I made each column of cuts shown between the trim the same size.  It just did not look right!  So the second time around I made the columns taper from the top of the bodice towards the waist.  After zooming in on the portrait, I concluded that the small group of 4 cuts were made like a plus sign (+) a horizontal and a vertical and the fabric curled out.  On my sample, my fabric did not curl at all!  So, to approximate the look, I cut a square shape on the diagonal.  I used several different sizes of exacto knives though my paper pattern, the fabric, onto the back of my cutting mat.
I discovered that to make the long diagonal cuts look more like the portrait, I needed to do a little hand cutting.  First I folded the cut edges of long slashes together lengthwise, then folded it again so all cut edges met and starting at the center trimmed a little off starting at the center tapering to nothing at the ends of the slash.
The composite shows steps to cutting the slashes into "football" shapes - fold, fold, cut.  there are two rows shown - one with only the slashing and the bottom most with the additional hand cutting.  Every cut is then treated with a fray guard.

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