Project Specs:

• Fabric: 5.3 oz Allure Softened Linen from Fabrics-Store.com and Cassimere wool from Burnley and Trowbridge in Blue

• Yardage: 4 yards of the linen and 1/2 yard of the wool.

• First event: Skewered! 3

Edit September 5: Well, my washer has claimed another victim. Unfortunately in its first wash, this dress got wrapped around the agitator, torn through and all of the seams (which I will admit to being too lazy to finish) gave way. So this saya got its one day in the sun, and that’s totally ok.

I have wanted to explore making another dress without a waist seam for a little while, especially since the Green/Red Dress died a gruesome death in the washer. I also happened to have some extra fabrics that had been meant for different projects, but for one reason or another did not get made into those projects, and so one thing led to another and we have this dress. My first fabric choice, the fashion fabric was at one point destined for the dress that the Green Saya was supposed to be a prototype for. When I decided I loved the green and didn’t need to make a second version, this would-be lining fabric lost its purpose. The wool was destined to become another saya with a waist seam, much like the Tan Saya. However, it had the misfortune of being the first fabric I washed in my new washer after my move, and was fulled beyond remedy and could not be used as a fashion fabric as I had intended. So, while wool on the inside and linen on the outside is absolutely not historically accurate, that’s what I decided to do with these two purposeless pieces.

This dress started off as a fairly simple project, but triggered a realization for both Bea and myself that I’m still processing. One week during April, Bea and I happened to both have a day off any decided to use it to go to the National Gallery of Art’s library to check out some costuming resources otherwise inaccessible to us. One of these resources included Carmen Bernis’s complete collection of works. Now, I believe I have said before that I speak Spanish, but not having access to many of the works in Spanish, I use Ruth Matilda Anderson’s translation/compilation of Bernis’s work as my primary source. Anderson specifically says that a brial is a structural garment without a waist seam. On this field trip, Bea and I discovered that Bernis specifically uses the word “holgados” when referring to the brial. Why does this matter? Because “holgados” means baggy. A brial, per Bernis, could not be a structural garment, because it was too baggy to actually be supportive of the bust. So, if this isn’t a brial, what is it? And also, what is a brial, if not this?

Closer inspection of the images and text in Bernis have lead us to believe that a brial is actually a form of outer-dress, going over and covering the saya. Several images of briales (on VERY close inspection) show them to be worn as a layer of an outfit, not necessarily as its foundation. They still have a variety of sleeve set ups and openings, but fundamentally, briales are not structural wear. Taking this into account, we now believe that this piece of clothing, despite not having a waist seam, is still considered a saya.

This dress is patterned using a basic 14th C cotehardie pattern in a slightly larger size than necessary, then draped and taken in to fit my measurements. What I should have done was use a previous saya’s top pieces to structure this garment first. There were a couple of fit things that I really wanted to accomplish but mainly that this garment was meant to be a little different than my usual garb. The skirt is fuller and a little longer than usual. Normally, for my somewhat working class clothing I keep my skirts cut right at or slightly above my ankles for ease of movement. This saya falls below that, intentionally. I think that additional length works really well for this piece, especially since it isn’t fully lined.

The most challenging part of this dress was by far its gores. For some reason, the back gore on the linen outer fabric ended up several inches higher than all the others. I had to pull seams and fix this twice, which was really frustrating. I also have to admit that while the flow of the dress is nice, I honestly feel more secure and comfortable in my dresses with a waist seam. Thankfully, since we’ve just established that there is now a flowy outerwear piece I can explore, I don’t think it’s out of the realm of expectation to still keep some flowy textures in my SCA wardrobe.

I am certainly out of practice on fitting bodices for this style too, which might just mean I need to make more, but also just that I think I do need to ultimately go back to basics and create a new body block. I think that’s been a regular theme of my more fitted garments recently and I do have the spare fabric to do it with.

What ended up saving this dress for me was, of course, Bea. While I was fussing over the drape and weird folds and weird fitting of the gores, Bea in her wisdom was brave enough to cut the skirt of the wool off the dress and leave the skirt of the linen unlined. It helped smooth over the concerns I had about the fit, and all of a sudden it became this lightweight comfy addition to my wardrobe that doesn’t have anything like that already. And so, instead of calling it the Stamped Saya as originally planned, so was born the Summer Saya.

Overall, I have to say I don’t prefer this style of saya. Both in making it (gores are stupid and evil and this is 100% not just my own incompetence speaking) and wearing it, I just prefer my sayas with a waist seam. I will still wear this dress around, but it’s definitely not a favorite of mine for fit. That said, the color turned out just as beautiful as I had hoped so that’s really something. Ultimately, because it did not bring me the joy I wanted it to, I decided not to follow my original plan to fabric stamp it. Which surprised even me. I kind of just wanted it done and over with by the time I got to the end. I may someday dress it up with some of the leftover trim from the Green Saya, but time will tell.