3 Ways to Hand Sew Eyelets from Middle Ages and Renaissance

Hello Beautiful Humans!

This week's video is a electronic gift to one of my friend's who recently had a birthday and asked me for a video tutorial a year ago on how I incorporate rings into my eyelets to reinforce my 16th century gowns.

To give you some historical context, in the second half of the 15th century having elaborate lacing rings for your gown was very popular in Florence. By the 16th century the fashion had disappeared, but the fitted bodices of gowns continued. When Elenora di Toledo was burred, her funeral dress had small brass rings sewn into her eyelets. Exact sizing and details on this dress can be found in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 3. It makes since that over a 100 year period the rings would have transformed from a practical focal point into a discrete reinforcement method.

I usually get my rings for lacing, awls, and other tools from www.renaissancefabrics.net
You can also find awls, thread, chalk, etc at your local sewing store.
This video was not sponsored by any of the companies mentioned.

This video will walk you through 3 different ways to sew in eyelets. The skills from each style will build on the previous style until you are finally making the ring enforced eyelets at the end. I love using these rings for any of my self supporting dresses. I've also found I don't need boning along my lacing strips, if I have reinforced the eyelets with rings already. Have you tried adding rings to your eyelets before? I would love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

Thank you to my friends in the Society for Creative Anachronism for your patience while I looked at all of the new shiny projects. While I do participate with the SCA, I do not speak for them as a whole. Please check out www.sca.org to find out more. #mysca
Happy Birthday my friend! I am excited to see your new dress with reinforced eyelets when we are back at in person events.

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Bisou Bisou,
Maridith

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All Music was Provided by the YouTube creator studio.
Video edited with Animotica.
Filmed with Cannon M50.