I’m at the point with my research to feel confident to give myself a break but I’m so behind in getting my North Rhine gear finished including some alterations. I’m deciding which frock to give tube sleeves and which to leave open. I think I could convert my startling orange to a shorter kirtle and make tube sleeves to my red linen.

These later costume albums might overstate brightness but it would make a fabulous version of this:

I just love the orange tube sleeves as they remind me of the tube sleeves worn by a figure in two of Leyden’s paintings:

Playing chess:

Watching fortune telling.

They do appear all over tapestries, longer usually. And oh they are so beautiful.

And there is this sculpture of Saint Cecelia with the same tube sleeves- her left arm goes through the cut, her right arm through the wrist.

So much for lowlands, what about the North Rhine.

I cheated a bit in including Anna Tom Ring as she was further into Westphalia.

And the stained glass might have been restored. So much stained glass was dispersed when the French invaded. It’s good that it was all sold off rather than be destroyed but what a reality. Sadly the lack of understanding of North Rhine culture and dress means a lot of restoration inserted Flemish or German details that now wind up informing what we think of dress of the region.

And all of this of course comes back to my timeline being uploaded to wikipedia. It’s a kind of archive of my site that might survive me, and as there is full credit it’s not like researchers who need to date or fix a restoration can really easily find the timeline.

Anyway. I need to fix all my accessories and get photos. I really want to record my modular linen layers as they are based on extant items, and they make life so much easier in terms of comfort and ability to wash different layers differently.