Pattern for a pair of Elizabethan farthingale sleeves

• Made exclusively by The Tudor Tailor

Sewing pattern for a pair of hooped sleeve supports or farthingale sleeves appropriate for late 16th and early 17th century impressions. With full instructions for choosing materials, sizing and constructing garments - perfect for reenactors.

The Tudor Tailor’s pattern and instructions were drafted directly from the study of an original example probably dating from the 1590s or very early 1600s. It was recently discovered among the historical garments of the family who lived at Wollaton Hall, near Nottingham.

Farthingale sleeves are first mentioned in England in the wardrobe accounts of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1580s where they are described as being made from fustian ‘bented’ or stiffened with whalebone. The extant sleeve is made in similar materials to those described in the royal accounts. The hooped supports created a foundation for gown sleeves which had become increasingly full during the Elizabethan era. The fashion for them moved rapidly through society. Only four years after their first mention in royal wardrobe accounts, farthingale sleeves start to make an appearance in the household accounts and personal correspondence of ordinary gentlewomen.

Farthingale sleeves are also depicted on several effigies sculpted in the 1590s and early 1600s such as that of Anne Steward (née Shouldham) on a family monument (1603) in Holy Trinity Church, Marham, Norfolk. They had become a feature of lowly women’s dress by the early 17th century. In 1611, the Worshipful Company of Grocers decreed that ‘maid-servants and women-servants’ should not wear any ‘sleeves of wire, whalebone or with any other stiffening’. 

The extant support has a matching oversleeve of printed silk satin. It is also stiffened but with one single support at the shoulder. The farthingale sleeve gives it the characteristic hooped profile seen in portraits and on effigies of the era.

Our synthetic whalebone is an excellent modern equivalent to the kind of boning that would have been used in farthingale sleeves in the Tudor era.

These farthingale sleeves are the ideal underpinning for our Late Elizabethan lady's gown. The gown would also be worn with a French 'drum' style farthingale by Elizabethan ladies. 

The pattern is suitable for making a pair of farthingale sleeves for a man or a woman. The pattern may also be altered for a child.

Note, photos of actual garments are examples only – no garments are included with this product.