Looking at the skirt in the painting, my first plan was to make a nice circle skirt with no pleats at the waistline. I cut a couple skirt length chunks of the linen, cut each of those up into four gores, French seamed it all together (on the machine!) and slapped it onto the bodice. I ended up with a few small pleats in the back, but I figured that would be fine.
It was not enough skirt. Nowhere near enough. Not much hem, didn’t fit well at the waist, and altogether terrible. I undid the waist seam and the center front seam (no French seam there, since it was two selvedge edges), cut another length of linen, divided into two mostly-rectangular trapezoids, and added it into the front of the skirt. I reattached it to the waist so the new section was pleated into the front half of the bodice, and the original gored part of the skirt all went in the back. I haven’t gotten a chance to try it on her yet, but it should fit just fine.
Can I justify the pleats? There are some pleats in the back of kirtles depicted by van der Weyden (like this one), and pleating all the way around the waist in this fairly contemporary painting by Hugo van der Goes. It’s not the ideal solution, but I think it’ll be sufficient.
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