In Which There Is Inner Turmoil

this would be a metaphor

In the wake of my Hey Kids Let's Put On A Class commitment, I set aside the day for starting work on it--partially because wouldn't it be so novel if I got something done before the last minute for a change, but chiefly because sometimes these things evolve a little under the handling and I wanted to make sure that the description in the Pennsic classes handbook will actually reflect what is going to come out of my piehole.  

I anticipated that there would be some amount of brain bees in the course of this; my process, insofar as I have one, usually looks not unlike this:

1. X=0
2. Suck up vast quantities of information
3. Attempt to distill this down into something the mind can encompass.  
4. Freak out
5. X=X+1
6. IF X<2 GOTO 3; ELSE GOTO 7
7. Profit!

I did not expect the freakout phase to happen quite this quickly.  Let me see if I can capture it adequately for the edifications of Future Me as well as other benighted pilgrims on the Path--

As I may have mentioned previously, I made my dashing consort a black linen suit (i.e., doublet and Venetian hose) for last Pennsic.  I was killing several birds with one stone in this project; first, the linen was good quality but I got it for a relative song, so--this being my first effort in the technology--if I made a complete fuckup of it I hadn't wasted expensive material; second, being linen inside and out, it should be quite light and comfortable even in hot weather; and third, since it hasn't any interlining, it would be machine-washable, so he could grub around in it for camp work (or even just the sweat of day-to-day hot Pennsic) and that would be OK.  And indeed, this is the kernel of idea that has germinated into this class plan. 

So, what is problem?  Problem was that the feedback my dashing consort expressed was:

• he was still awfully warm when wearing it
• he felt a little uncomfortable with how the shirt was bunched under the doublet
• he felt rather insecure, like his pants would fall down
• ...which we fixed by lacing the Venetians to the doublet, like they're supposed to be, BUT...
• then, every time he lifted his arms more than halfway, he felt like the doublet was going to rip from the hose.

Which is fine; it was a first effort and mistakes were likely to have been made; but I wanted to try and puzzle them out to know what I should make as an exemplar for this class.  Is the shirt too generous in its fabric?  Did I cut the doublet wrong, or the Venetians, or both?  And so forth.  

This is after having him move around
a bunch. There are clues here for the
observant consulting detective.

One of the elements strongly in my mind at present comes from a recent thread on the Elizabethan Costume FB group, which dovetailed in with both my 19th century project and my previous pants rant; the question of natural vs. modern waist.  Here's a link to the full thread, which I think you can view without being a group member; but if you can't, or if it's TL;DR, the takeaway is that for most of the Period of Pants (and indeed, up until sometime in the 1960s), gents' trousers sat at the natural waist or close to it; not at all where you see them today.  (And I had this flagged as a "gotcha" to mention in the class.)  But it made me wonder: is this where I screwed up on the linen suit?  So, I had Himself put it on, and I did my best to make a critical analysis of the situation.

First I got mentally stuck on the shirt.  That is a lot of fabric.  Too much fabric?  I could take some out of the sides.  And the side slits should prob'ly be further up to his hips, so he has full range of motion, so the torso could be more snug.  I nodded, satisfied that I had solved the problem--and then realized that would make the sleeves way too short.  Maybe I could release some of the fabric from the neck gathers?  Maybe the neck shouldn't be gathered at all?  But it has to be gathered.  Back and forth and back and forth...

I left that for a bit and had him put on the suit, lacing just a couple of points for convenience.  It looks right, they're meeting--but that's too low?  It's on his hips?  That's not right!  Pull them up?  Now it's bisecting his special place!  What if I do this?  What about that?  Where did I really fit it to?   How could I be this wrong?  

The last straw was going back to the Tudor Tailor pattern I used, and trying to parse out between it and the example images where I went off the rails.  Now, there aren't, unfortunately, any images of a gent wearing just his shirt & Venetians or trunk hose, so it was hard to tell; but I got it in my head, based on the fully-dressed photos, that they had cut the hose to the modern waist, not the natural waist.  I can't tell you why this, in particular, was the cause of my soul being crushed into the approximate dimensions of a small six-sided die, but so it was.

here's me

At this point there was nothing for it but a crying jag, in which were barely-perceptible self-excoriations about my incompetence and failures and how much better at all this I should be by this point in my career.  This was nobly borne by Himself, who made every possible effort to reassure and support me; finally I pulled out of the nosedive, gritted my teeth, and started to work the problem.

First, I found his natural waist.  Then I had him put on the Venetians, sans shirt, for better visibility.  I had him hold them up at the highest point where it was not impacting his marital prospects, and compared.  OK!  It's a tad lower than his natural waist, but only about a half inch; that's within acceptable tolerances.  Now, the doublet: the lacing strip still meets up with the waistband of the Venetians (if somewhat unevenly front-to-back); this is a result!  Standing still, he said there was no discomfort!  Therefore: why problem?

Um, no.

Ignoring the hose for the moment, I had him move around, stretch his arms above his head, bend over and back, and so on.  This caused the doublet to move halfway up his chest and the sleeve to move halfway up his lower arm.  Clearly, though the shirt may not be perfect, it's not the primary trouble spot.  No: the problem here is that I've made a doublet of a fashionable cut out of a (relatively) base material.  Much like you wouldn't chop wood in a bespoke suit (particularly in the too-tight way they like 'em these days), you would not be particularly physically active in a doublet fitted this closely.  

I cannot properly express the unbounded relief I felt from this realization.  I didn't do anything (too) wrong; I had faithfully interpreted the pattern I was working from (and the pattern was what it ought to have been), I had simply not understood its ramifications.  The path forward is clear: I will put some shiny trim on this suit, and treat it as a dressy outfit, but of a very summer weight (like for opening ceremonies, or if we actually have to go to royal court, *gurk*); and I will cut him a much more loose and generously-fitting workaday doublet that will be appropriate for bending and lifting and all.

I still need a better understanding of the elements that go into permitting or restricting range of motion.  It's moments like this that make me think I really should go take a couple of the basic FIT courses, as I'm pretty sure I'd learn it better in a class environment than by trying to read up on it.

and then I saw Judi Dench in a doublet and paned hose and they were set to her natural waist and everything will always be OK.