Ha ha, I actually am making a new 16th century gown soon, but it'll be early Elizabethan, not Tudor. Not that I really have the time to make it, but my old one doesn't fit anymore and I need something to wear to the events my living history group does.

But anyways, on to the portrait. That's a really interesting idea! And one I've never heard before. But you're right, I don't have any idea what else they could be. It would seem kind of odd for them to just be a seam, because why would the artist paint in stitches? And the dots are too far away from each other to be stitches anyways, unless Jane Seymour had a really sloppy dressmaker.

I need to talk to my friend Jeremy about all of this, he is an expert in this period.