While doing my internship in Washington, DC, I saw an add about the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and decided I had to go. And of course, the whole point is going in costume, so I had to make a costume. And I didn’t want to go in costume by myself, so I persuaded my at-the-time roommate that she needed to come with me, and let me make her a costume as well.
And so, I made two costumes, completely by hand (as I didn’t have a machine with me in DC), in two weeks. That was the first and only time in my life I’ve ever gotten blisters on my fingertips from sewing. I sewed for probably 5-6 hours each night and most of the weekends. I even stayed up all night finishing the night before we went. This project, was perhaps overly ambitious to do without a sewing machine in such a limited time frame, but it was a lot of fun.
I drew my inspiration primarily from a website called The Very Merry Seamstress (http://www.verymerryseamstress.com/catalog.htm). They sell a variety of faire and reproduction clothing. I particularly liked their Merchant class Renaissance gowns, and ended up making something very similar to these. They consist of a blouse with poufy sleeves, a full skirt, a laced bodice, and arm bracers. I also added a shawl and hat to mine. The details of the arm bracers and hat really make the ensemble pop, in my opinion.
I took two different routes on fabric. For my costume, I went to an amazing fabric store in the DC area called G Street Fabrics. I got my fabric primarily from the remnants table, but still paid a lot of money for it. Madeline’s costume came later, and I ended up salvaging fabric from some thrift store finds. The skirt was made of two curtains, the shirt from a pair of king-sized pillow cases, and the bodice and arm bracers from placemats. Fabric from the whole costume cost just over $17. Color choices were probably a little more limited that I would have liked, but I thought it turned out well. Most fabric stores these days carry such cheep, thin fabric. Thrift stores are a good way to stretch your budget, while still finding some good, well-made fabric. And, it’s like recycling!
I didn’t get any in-progress pictures from this project. No patterns were used. The bodices are boned, mine with spring steel, and Madeline’s with plastic boning, because I ran out of the steel, plus she’s small and the plastic worked okay with her. It was a bit of a learning project. My bodice ended up being a bit too big, and I didn’t have time to take it in. Also, a word to the wise, setting grommets takes longer than you think it will; leave extra time. My landlady probably thought I was crazy, hammering away in her basement all day. And it did take almost an entire Saturday. In the future, I might wear the skirt over a hoop-petticoat and add a bumroll to get the fullness in the skirt I was looking for. All in all, I think this was one of my better projects. In the future, I’d like to go up a class level and try a Tudor nobility gown.
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