The fact that I haven't finished the eyelets for my red dress has been preying on my mind, but I wanted to do it correctly, and this meant a little bit of research.

I'd designed the dress to have straight seams, following the c. 1395 Kent funeral brass of Lady Cobham, but the funeral effigy of the Countess of Warwick, dated c. 1370-1375, is a little bit closer to the date from a number of the other elements of the dress, which broadly date from 1325-1365. I'm under the impression that a lot of the mid-14th-century dress interpretations out there are Warwick-based--and I tend to prefer less widely-disseminated interpretations of dress (see my latest 10th-cen West Norse outfit!)--but I have a good photo of the effigy and can't complain too much, I suppose.

Catherine Beauchamp's dress is spiral-laced, with the same number of holes per side (26 visible per, but her arm is in the way of some). The bottom-most and top-most pairs of eyelets are parallel, while the rest of the eyelets are staggered evenly up the front closure. I think I'll be sewing the eyelets in the manner described in Crowfoot et al.'s Textiles and Clothing, offset about a cm apart though I've never been exactingly precise in my other spaced closures.

Any suggestions on how best to know what size to make the eyelets, though?

(Note to self: this is starting to look an awful lot like the dress on the effigy of Philippa of Hainult. Maybe attempt the headdress, too?)

For a couple of years now, I've been reading about historical cookery, and have slowly been experimenting with the trickier aspects of anachronistic cuisine. "Raised" pies, not necessarily requiring a separate dish for structural integrity, have been one of my fears, but today's success seems to have laid that fear to rest.

( Method under the cut )