Elizabethan Working Clothes: Drinking From The Firehose

Gerald is also overwhelmed by the source material

I have spent the past week, in between other drama and tasks, accruing even more data (and Chrome tabs), and attempting to capture the portion that will be most helpful to self & audience in a Google Doc*.  At this stage, said doc is a mad combination of explicatory text and bulleted lists, but that's par for this part of the course; I will write out discussion points as I think of them, and the bullet lists are topics to cover when I have them figured out, ahem.   I also bought a bunch of cheapo muslin from Joann's yesterday (since I was out in the burbs anyways) since I figure there will probably be a lot of draping going on, and with a reasonable percentage chance of making a pig's ear of some of it, I don't want to be stopped dead in the middle of a roll for lack of materials.

This is all decent progress, but I'm feeling itchy; I want to stop thinking and start doing.  Conversely, I'm feeling unusual trepidation about starting, because I don't think I have all my ducks in a row yet.  Having been woken up at an ungodly hour for a Sunday anyways (thanks, shrieking children on the street at 6:30am) I took the opportunity offered by some quiet rainy morning time with coffee to graph out my thoughts.  And these are our concerns, Dude:

1. What changes do I need to make to a doublet so that it still looks like the garment we see represented in imagery, but has enough freedom of movement that a man can work a farm in it**?   I don't think that just making it bigger all around is the right answer.
1. Related issue: I'm still not sure how breeches will stay up at most guys' natural waist if they aren't attached to something.  
2. I'll need to line up one of my friends to fit me for my own dress.  I could base it more-or-less off my Florentine gown, but it's a different enough design that I'm going to need help for the last mile, and my peeps are covered in even more bees than I am right now.
3. Do I have the right fabric to use as showcase garments?  Do I have anything even semi-right?  How much should I compromise?  This isn't for professional use, this is to help people who don't know this stuff make OK choices--but shouldn't they have the opportunity to see what the gold standard is?  Should I kill myself (and wallet) trying to get super-period fabrics, like linen canvas and madder-dyed wool, or make do with what my audience is more likely to have access to?
4. How much detail should I include in the class?  I don't want people to drown in it, or be driven off by too much information, but I want it to be a solid and comprehensive platform for them to start from. Where do I draw the line?

Some of these have immediate solutions.  For #1, I'm going overcome my I Don't Want To Be A Bother and ask my expert tailor friends; and I'll also throw on Tudor Monastery Farm (which is a little early for this, but never mind) and see what I can observe.  For #2, I'll cut out a generous muslin bodice draft using the dimensions of my gown and find someone to pin it on me.  For #3, I'll turn out the stash today (stupid rainy day, we were going to go to the botanical garden and look at lilacs) and gather a pile of anything that's Plausible™, and compare it to the source material I have.  And for #4, I will have to come to terms with the fact that I may not get it right for the first iteration.  

Another possible angle is to take it slow with the main garments and work on the smaller and/or better-known technology.  Vide, planned outfits--

For him: shirt (use current one), separate falling collar that can be pinned or basted in, doublet, breeches, stockings (use one of current pair), jerkin possibly, hat

For me: smock***, bodies & petticoat, kirtle probably, stockings, coif, apron

I could work on my smock, coif, and apron; and his falling collar and hat (IT IS CUT OUT FOR FUCK'S SAKE! JUST DO IT!).  It all needs doing and none of it should require outside help.  (I also need to make a metric buttload of points for all his outfits, and I should figure out what my tech is going to be for this oh god aglets & get cracking on them.)

Welp, there's some action items.  On with the motley!

* My modus operandi for documentation is: 1) get all the text down in a Google Doc, for maximum flexibility; 2) import into Word or, better yet, Pages for image addition and manipulation; and then preserve that as the ur-copy and export to PDF which I upload back to Google so I can print it from anywhere.

** This is also a problem I want to attack for the 14th century--what changes do I need to make to a Gothic fitted dress so that it's easy to move in but still holds my bQQbies up?  My blue silk is almost there...but it's cut to the same pattern as my red wool, which fits very differently, and I do not know why.  But I really want a plain dress for kitchen or other scut-work.

*** I haven't made up my mind whether to do a low-cut smock & add a partlet, or a high-collared one and eschew it.  So that's another decision that I should stop putting off.