The Vermeer Saya: A Nod to Judaism In Medieval Iberia
Project Summary: The Vermeer Saya
Materials:
4 yards Mustard Cotton/Linen
1/2 yard Cotton Duck Canvas from stash
1/2 yard White Linen, 3.5 oz, from stash
Black Cotton Twill Tape
Lacing rings
Brass Aglet
Approximately 4.5 yards of 3” wide strips of Moroccan Blue Linen,
Duration: Roughly 63.5 hours over 19 days.
Materials cost: roughly $78
First event: Storvik Novice/Highland Foorde Investiture, April 2024.
It’s been a minute since I wrote up just a specific project as a blog post but this saya felt like a good candidate since I tried a few new things with it.
Design Process
The intent of this saya was to be a 15th Century appropriate saya that was made of a sufficiently light fabric for summer wear. I also needed to finally get around to creating my standard/go to 15th Century saya pattern. I’ve made a handful of these over the last couple years (the Tan Saya, the Woman in the Yellow Dress Saya, the Domingo Ram Saya, the Black Saya) and all of them had things I liked about them and things I didn’t like so much about them. Having four unique experiences and the learning that went with it felt like enough to attempt to try to combine the best parts of each of them to hopefully come up with a pattern I love. To do this, I sat down and thought about the elements of each of those experiences I wanted to keep and what didn’t work. From there, I overlaid each pattern onto a piece of brown paper and lined out those “keep” elements from each. The resultant pattern then was used to cut the bodice for this saya to see how that went. All things considered, it went pretty well! The only major area of improvement on that fit is in the armscyes, which needed to be raised and shortened by a bit. Once that flaw was identified, I was able to adapt the new pattern and now I can say I’m reasonably pleased with my go to pattern for my default garment!
The fabric choices for the saya.
For colors, I wanted to stick with the “Jewish” color theme I’ve discussed in the past. Finding visual depictions of Jewish women in 15th century Spain is incredibly challenging. They exist, but much of their dress and appearance is colored by the need to assimilate into the dominant paradigm of Christian Spain. One piece of useful information we can use for some of this is sumptuary laws- Jews at the time were often required to wear identifying pieces of clothing, often in the color honey/gold. This particular association is neither a new, nor an exclusively period phenomenon and it’s important to acknowledge in this that the reclamation of these identifiers does have implications for the generational trauma it brings up in many Jewish folks. Nevertheless, I wanted to make a garment that allows me to both look and feel Jewish in the SCA, so I chose to lean into that honey/gold color.
But I still wanted to give it some amount of pop. Unlike some of the exemplars from the 16th century, most of the ornamentation on sayas that I have observed in the 15th century appears in the form of contrasting bands on the bottom hem and sometimes also at the neckline. Otherwise, design elements are often heavily dependent on the design in the fabric itself. In keeping with this trend, I kept the contrasting element on this skirt fairly simple- a blue band along the hem, about 2” wide, with a strip of black twill tape. This use of twill tape is another anachronistic choice but it was an intentional one. The yellow cotton blend fabric is very light and I wanted to use the heavier twill tape to give some additional structure and a tiny bit of weight to the hem. When I realized I had sufficient extra blue trim to do it, I also decided to add a facing to the neckline as well, for visual balance. I think it’ll look so great with my equally bright blue apprentice belt. Color wise, I had some extra of the Moroccan blue linen from my vaguely Andalusian and I thought the colors would go great together. I’m really happy with how this color combo turned out and the inclusion of the blue is another great call out to the Jewish color traditions I mentioned. While blue and white are the most commonly associated colors in many Jewish color palettes, blue and gold also are prevalent.
Both Elvira and Evan pointed out that the colors I chose are very reminiscent of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and now I can’t un-see it so I’m affectionately calling this one the Vermeer Saya from now on.
Construction Process
I decided to treat this project as an opportunity to test out a few new techniques that I’ve been noodling in my head. I did a timesheet for this project, which can be found here.
Some of the new techniques I tried were:
Lacing rings. When making the gonete, I at one point was considering lacing rings an option. After some of the feedback I got at KASF, I wanted to give them a try on a lower stakes project first. I’m currently only using them at the opening to, ya know, lace the dress, but I do also have a theory about using them for more hidden lacing options for tie on sleeves. That’s not where I want to go with this particular saya, but it’s definitely a thought for a next one. Using lacing rings just on the bodice area did require the use of a modesty panel in the skirt, so it proved a good opportunity to experiment with that as well.
I really wanted to include the skirt pattern from the vasquiña. I love how it fits so much but I also love how it drapes. However, the base pattern is meant to be a stand-alone skirt, not attached to a bodice. This project gave me a great opportunity to give that a try. I also decided to use the pleating layout from the vasquiña here. Normally on my sayas the skirts are gathered all the way around. For this one, I wanted to try pleating it like the vasquiña, with a smoother area in the front too.
Similar to the hurdles with the vasquiña, the first thing to try to overcome is the width difference in fabric between mine and Alcega’s fabric. I stuck with the current Alcega pattern from the vasquiña as well- we’ll save more Alcega patterns for a different project. That meant that I was adapting his 22” wide fabric layout to 43” wide fabric. It’s not quite as much of a disparity as with the 66” wide fabric for the vasquiña, but it’s still considerable. This put the skirt at 133” inches wide at the hem.The big challenge in using this skirt with this fabric actually ended up being the width of the waistline. It took quite a bit of fiddling to get the pleats to lay where I wanted them. I’m very hopeful that with my new dress form (shown to the right), this will be much easier in the future.
While I love how this skirt turned out, I think using this technique would have been more successful with a wider fabric or a slightly different layout to the skirt itself. There was some real awkwardness in getting the symmetry I wanted given that the front and back pieces of the skirt are not of equal width at the waist, and while the final result is quite pleasing, I think there’s better methods to doing it.
Short sleeves. One of the original pieces of art that inspired the Tan Saya and my first forays into Spain is Juan de Flandes’s Christ and the Canaanite Woman. The woman in question wears a brown/tan saya with short sleeves. I have not yet attempted the short sleeves seen on this dress with a side opening (not seen on the Juan de Flandes dress, but also the front isn’t seen either so we can’t entirely be sure).
To pattern these sleeves, I used the knowledge of the SCA Ancestors, aka I somehow managed to absorb sleeve drafting by osmosis from my amazing Peer, Beatriz. The pattern was drawn out on paper to hit the armscye length, the width of my flexed bicep, and intended length. It ended up a little bit too long for this 15th century saya but the perfect length for a short sleeved 14th century saya, so I’m calling it a win. This was a big step as well in preparation for doing my next dress project, which is a 14th century long sleeved saya. The armscye eased in absolutely perfectly on both sides on the first try, which is nothing short of a true miracle.
The other thing this meant was finally figuring out how to do a sleeve on the open lacing side. Ultimately, I ended up finishing the edges of the sleeve while flat and then whip stitched them together to form the closure on the seam. I left about 4 inches open at the top as well to account for the opening and donning/doffing of the dress when unlaced. I tried this same technique on the Woman in the Yellow Dress Saya but was concerned how it would translate on a more fitted sleeve than the extremely full one there but it seems to have worked out fine.
I also tried a different method for finishing seams on the bodice. I’ve previously tried to flat fell or enclose seam attachments for the skirt and sleeves into the bodice construction itself. I haven’t felt super happy with either of these options, as they end up super bulky and absolutely unwieldy to actually do.. The Woman in the Yellow Dress Saya is the closest to what I would want to do, with its finished edge that is whipped onto the bodice at another finished edge. The skirt on this saya is only a single layer though, so I would have had to either roll or fold the top hem, which I believed would have made pleating more challenging. So my solution was to use the same black twill tape to protect those seams. It made finishing the attachments go much more quickly and I think it looks super neat and tidy.
Process Photos
Next Opportunities
This saya project turned out pretty much exactly as I needed it to. It was a low stakes re-entry into doing A&S for no specific purpose except to learn some stuff and to improve my overall technique, and I think I really needed that after Pentathlon. This is part of a larger plan to make sure I have enough clothes for Pennsic and to finally get past the “I own exactly two dresses I can wear places” thing I’ve been stuck in for the last couple years. I really enjoyed making it and I’m really looking forward to wearing it around.
The next chances I’ll have to use the things I’ve learned from this project are a few fold.
The sleeves will be used on my next saya, a long sleeved 14th century saya. I’ll need to adjust them slightly for the armscyes but they should be easy enough to extend the length I want to make them.
The bodice pattern will be used on a green linen 15th century saya that will probably be a May project. I’ll also be using the remaining Moroccan blue linen trim on this project.
The lacing ring learning is destined for an upcoming gonete, as both an experimental closure as well as a potential for hidden sleeve attachment points for removable long sleeves.
