Pre-caffeine epiphany...

I had a flash of insight this morning, and I haven't even finished my tea yet! This particular thought may seem obvious to some of you, but it's been bugging me for a while.

OK, so.. the May Calendar of the Tres Riches Heures, specifically the chick in green in the front (you can click for a bigger, though fuzzy, pic). ---> 

Her sleeves have been bugging me for ages - mostly because every time I looked at them I saw two large, draped sleeves, which *Did Not Make Sense*. As the way I see it, if both the green sleeve and the blue sleeve were open, then she'd need another tight sleeve underneath (as I've never seen an image of a woman - or a man for that matter -wearing open sleeves over bare arms). This of course would mean she was wearing three dresses, which I personally don't want to do and thought was a bit odd, OR it could mean she was wearing some sort of false sleeve as the middle layer - that sounded overcomplicated and unlikely. So I pondered and pondered and pondered some more, and never came up with an explanation.

Until this morning. tashadandelion mentioned sleeve layering on stitchwhich's journal in a completely unrelated discussion, and I realized "oh! she's written a paper on that, I should email her and ask her about it". So I started writing, which involved staring at the picture a bit more so I could describe what I see, and then I realize....

It's not an open sleeve.

I've been torturing myself all this time for no reason. It's a large cuff on the end of a tight sleeve, just like the blue chick in the back is wearing (the white dagged bit at her wrist). I've even made those before. (They're fun, though are VERY impractical for daily life - they're much harder to get to stay out of your way than large open sleeves).  And I've seen these in other sources too, so it's perfectly plausible (unlike, say, the false-sleeve idea...) It even looks fairly reasonable as a solution to the chick-in-black in April's red-and-gold sleeves. Now, I just have to figure out a better way to cut these - the previous ones I did were a large oval, with a wrist hole cut slightly off center, attached to the wrist seam of an otherwise normal dress. I don't think the drape was quite right...