Lia de Thornegge's New Red Dress

My third dress turned out to be a fabulous red dress. Yes the fabric does look rather modern but I love the trim and in a candle-lit setting or around campfires it isn't really noticeable.

Making myself a new dress was made quite easy when Mark had yards and yards of a sparkly, stretchy red fabric and Kerry agreed to let me use her sewing machine and expertise in the making of it.
What I really needed at this point for my third dress was a practical working dress. Unfortunately this fabric does not lend itself to practicality. Nor would Kerry agree to help me make anything but a fabulous court dress out of it, so I went with the court style Norman dress:

Gathered bodice, rucked up with the help of side lacing.
"Angel-wing" sleeves attached to the body of the dress with the seam hidden by trim.
Designed to be worn with an underdress whose sleeves are overlong and rucked on forearms.
Neckline cut in a slit for simplicity showing the underdress and its neckline.
Full skirt

This is the same type as my blue dress, except that the blue one doesn't have the rucked bodice, nor the trim on the sleeves. The neckline is also different, but they did differ, probably; there's not much remaining clothes from this period of history. This is a gorgeous dress, nevertheless there are several points on it that I am not entirely happy with, and for my next dress in this style I need to consider:
Some of the nifty things in this dress is how we folded the fabric in quarters and cut the basic body shape out from that. Then

More ease in the bodice area for more rucking pleats.
The lacing should start under the bust not directly at the join between sleeve and bodice.
The slit neckline needs to be longer to show off more of the underdress.
Lacing should be upward from the bottom of the lacing loops (?)
The angel-wings on the sleeves need to be deeper, longer.
The trim needs to be attached higher up, around the bicep as opposed to the elbow.

February 18, 2007: Decomissioned - This dress is now gone from my wardrobe - the fabric bled colour horribly and ruined a chemise. It was also too hot to wear comfortably.