The Girdle

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The Girdle, Billiment & Carcanet

11-14-04: OK, I finished up the last couple of things I wanted to do for the jewelry today. I completed the pendant for the billiment, I think it looks pretty spiffy! The pearls on that are actual freshwater pearls pinned with pearl-headed pins that I clipped a bit shorter for the setting. I added a large pearl drop at the bottom of the girdle as well. It turns out, I have two sizes of the bird egg pearls, 1" and 1 1/2". I didn't even realize. So I put one of the 1 1/2" ones on the girdle, held two 1"-ers for earrings, and gave the rest of those to the wig lady. I'll have more on that later on the hair page. It turned out that the bird egg pearls are only top drilled, so I had to drill these three the rest of the way through for the headpins, but it was no problem with Todd's DeWalt. I clipped off one of the eyes at the bottom of the girdle, and bent the remaining one to be more centered, and attached the pearl drop there. I put the earrings on simple wire hangers from Michael's. Here's a final shot of the completed jewelry as well.

11-7-04: I don't have shots on a fitting yet, but I wanted to put up the pictures of the pieces I have linked together so far. I am just in heaven. I threw a piece of velvet over the Nuremberg form I have here, and pinned the pieces in approximate place, then draped on the pearls for good measure. I think I'll leave the form up like this for a while to start getting me in the right frame of mind to be QE1. I decided to go with drop pearls from the carcanet for now, and I will do a gem pendant for the billiment, so that's why the center gem setting on the billiment is one of the ones with the third set of eyes. I pinned an extra gem setting in place below the center for now to see how it looked, I haven't made up any oversize gem settings yet. The girdle as I show it is placed much lower than it will appear on the actual gown, that bodice is incredibly short-waisted. I realized as I strung the links together that the join at the bottom of the girdle wasn't going to work out as I had originally planned, so I worked out the solution you see in the first girdle detail picture. I think it looks all right. When I looked back over the artwork, I noticed that there was always something funky happening there at that join, so I guess it was a problem for them, too. Cool. I'm thinking right now that the pendant for the girdle is going to be one of those giant pearls, and I have one temporarily wired in place to see the effect. I wish I had the nerve to wear these as earrings, the size is actually slightly smaller than what QE1 wore...

11-3-04 later: Well, I got more done today than I thought I would! I need to let the gem cement finish drying before I go further, but here's a picture of all the finished links, laid out in pearl and color order. In the lower right corner are the two larger emerald stones I have chosen for the pendants, with some smaller gem accent ideas laid around them. I went ahead and checked that my 4mm jump rings are going to work for linking the thicker eyelet diameters that came from Greenberg and Hammer. I'm pretty excited about how these look.

11-3-04: This is the one area where I feel bad about how bogged down I have been. Anyway, I sat down this weekend and today and finally finished all the settings. I'll glue in the stones and pearls, and start stringing them together this week. I hope to have them ready for the main gown fitting that SG has planned for this weekend, so I can pin the final lengths down. I'm thinking I'll be going with the red and green squares, those colors just stand out so well, I can't resist. I just need to select my final stones for the oversize pendants that I still need to make, so I can make sure that my colors will match enough. On two of the gem cartouches, I put in a third set of the eyelets to handle the connection to the pendants. I'll be adding some pearl drops to the pendants as well.

9-19-04: I stayed up late last night and got the first firing of the gem cartouches done. Say it with me folks, tee-dee-us! I am so glad that part is done, and I'm kind of glad the dress eyes aren't here yet, I think I need a break from these things. Oh, and SG and I re-measured the estimated girdle length, I think I might be making about 10 extra inches of settings. Maybe I'll have a billiment after all.

9-17-04: OK, I am pretty darn excited about how cool my links are coming out. I just completed my first test gem cartouche, and I think it looks pretty awesome! What do you think? I even linked the first two below with the 4 mm jump rings that I got on eBay, so even that part is going to work how I hoped. I'm really pleased with how much pop the gem gets from the entire setting being painted gold, I have in effect foiled the gem, I guess. I haven't yet made any final gem color choices, so this one isn't glued in yet. I think I will be sticking with this 12 mm gem size, though the 10 mm size will also fit in this setting without any noticeable difference.

I took some pictures of the process I used for those that are interested, and of course, I'm obsessed with putting up that kind of detail, so here we go! For starters, all my polymer clay bases are out of black clay. I read in several sources that it would look more like typical tarnishing coming through if the gold paint wears off in spots. I decided to build up the cartouches in layers, and I wanted to do it pretty systematically so the finished links would look consistent. For the first layer, I created a cardboard template by tracing one of the gems and adding the four "petals." I cut this out with an exacto blade. Then, after first "conditioning" the clay, I set up some rolling guides. I did this by taping down two popsicle sticks to a piece of wax paper wide enough for my template to fit in the center space. I then rolled the clay flat between the sticks with a glue brush handle, so it's a nice and even flat layer. I tried to keep it pretty smooth, but you can probably see some striations in the picture to the left. I then cut out my template shape using the point of a seam ripper, so I wouldn't cut through the wax paper underneath. I then cut out a little square layer to fit on top at the center of the petals. I needed all the layers to be thick enough over all to support the thickness of the gems, too. Now I was ready to shape the gem setting itself. I started by smooshing one of the gems as far down as I could, right at the center, pressing the two layers to together pretty effectively. The gem sure doesn't look like much against the black clay, huh? Now I'm ready to shape around the setting and inside the petal edges. I'm using this burnishing/sculpting tool that SG lent me when I was over there last weekend, it sure has been handy. Then I carefully pried out the gem, and fired it. I actually made two of these settings, and baked one leaving the gemstone in, because I wanted to see if the stone could take it, which of course it could. Since I have to paint the whole setting gold, though, there really isn't any advantage to leaving the stones in for baking, but it's nice to know I can if I ever have to. Now I was ready to add the linking eyes. I finger pressed out a little flat sausage that was about the same dimension as the length of the setting, and pressed two dress eyes into the ends, with the two sew-down holes facing out. I have this idea that the links will be more stable on the gown if they join each other in two spots rather than just one, I'm hoping this will stop the finished chain from twisting around itself when I walk around. I pressed the sausage to the back of the setting, and smoothed the join down pretty good, then fired the piece again. I thought about doing a whole "petaled" layer for the eyes, but frankly, I just don't feel like cutting that many of them out, rolling the clay out is a pain. Once the finished link had cooled, I painted it gold with Liquid Leaf's Classic Gold, two layers, front and back. I then gave both sides a shot of Krylon Clear Gloss finish spray, to help keep the gold from rubbing off, especially on my skin for the carcanet. I went ahead and linked the finished setting to one of the cinques to make sure the jump rings were the right size, and got the picture above. I'm so happy with these, they seem really sturdy. Now to crank out 49 more. I'm glad these are a two part firing process, that means I can get the pain part out of the way while I wait for my gross of eyes to come from Greenberg & Hammer. I ran out of eyes after about 15 cinques, so those aren't done yet either. Fortunately, the cinque settings are pretty unscientific, I basically sandwich two eyes between two little pancakes of clay, press a set of pearls into the clay to make a setting impression, and then fire. I painted those with the same gold, and then glued the pearls on with Aleene's Platinum Bond Glass & Bead Adhesive, quite a mouthful, but it was what they had that seemed appropriate at Michael's. I'll use it to glue on the gems to their settings as well. Well, guess I better get back to making more gem settings, I still have a ways to go! Oh, I forgot to mention that two of the gem settings will have a third set of eyes added for the pendant joins of the girdle and the carcanet, must remember to actually do that when I get that far.

9-13-04: While I was at SG's for a fitting, and repairing my Nuremberg fabric, I took the opportunity to lay out some of the gem colors on the two main dress fabrics, so I can decide which color glass gems to use in the girdle settings. The comparisons are here in a little comparison gallery I put together. The gold fabric is the main gown, the rust fabric is the outer fabric on the outer gown. I'll sit on these for a bit to think about which combinations I like best, and in the meantime I can finish the cinque settings up.

9-10-04: Well, it didn't take as long as I thought it would to put together the cinques. I went ahead and wired 50 sets together, now I just need to make the sculpey (polymer clay) bases. I took some pics of the wiring process for you, I'm really pleased with how well they came out. You can barely see the wires at all on the finished cinques. I started by stringing 4 pearls onto some 34 gauge brass wire I have. (I have two spools of it, I think I got from Jo-Anne's a long time ago for these weird bugle bead sculptures I used to make. The label says it's from Fibre-Craft.) Then I twisted the ends on that 4 with a pair of needlenose pliers to get it really snug. I had to be careful not to over-twist, I broke the wire several times doing that, but when it's nice and snug, there's no movement in the pearls. Then I slipped the longer tail of the twisted ends up through the center of the pearls, added the fifth pearl, and fed that end back down to the other tail on the bottom. I twisted those ends with the pliers, too, which drew the top pearl down against the first 4 as far as it would go. Then I cut the extra off and tucked the cut stub up into the cinque. I made 50 of them, they look pretty cool all laid out on my work table, don't you think? I even had 3 pearls left from that first strand I cut apart, it looks like I'll have enough of the same pearls to do a rope as well, yay!

The finished links will be 1", so with these alternating between the gemmed links, I have enough for 100" total, so there should be enough for the carcanet, too. My neck is only 13", so I'll only need 6 or 7 cinques for that.

9-9-04: Part of the attraction I have for the portraits of Queen Elizabeth is the jewelry. I mean, come on! It's so sumptuous and beautiful. Some of the most prominent items of her jewelry that I look for are the jeweled girdles she wears on her gowns, and the often matching carcanets, or chokers, and billiments, the jeweled strands on the hats or along the top edges of her gowns.

For this gown, I want to reproduce a jeweled combination that I see over and over again in portraits of Elizabeth throughout her reign. It shows a combination of "cinques" or "fives" of pearls, alternating with tudor stone settings, I'm calling those "cartouches," in two colors. In the various artworks I have reviewed, I have seen a combination of topaz and rubies, topaz and sapphires, and rubies and sapphires. Here are some detail pics below.

Some carcanets

Some girdles

A billiment

For this gown, I think I want to make a girdle and matching carcanet. I found a couple pictures of Elizabeth with both a carcanet and strands of pearls, including the one from the Ditchley portrait already shown above, which I also want to have (see Miniature page) so that should be OK. It's kind of funny that I worry about what's OK and what's not, it seems like there were all possible combinations of settings!

Saragrace and I used two chain belts that she had to get some idea of what total length I would need for the girdle, and including the center front hanging part that only comes down mid-way, it comes to about 85". We'll double check it for sure at the next fitting. Woo, that's going to be a lot of links, even without the carcanet!

Keeping in mind that I would be constructing these accessories, I've been accumulating some materials for a bit. We picked up two ropes of beautiful glass pearls at a bridal shop in the LA Fashion District while we were there shopping for the fabric, and I've been shopping on eBay for glass jewels to use for the cartouche settings. They have a whole group of vendors who sell faceted glass jewels for stained glass crafters, and they're awesome! I've bought a bunch of various sizes and colors, both foiled and unfoiled, for this gown.

In the pearl picture above, you can see a cinque I have wired together, I think that's the method I'm going to go with to make those, I'll get back to those details when I post the final link assembly process. What I'm playing with is a base of sculpey, using embedded dress eyes as the linking mechanism. I've ordered some 4 mm gold jump rings to join the finished links.