I spent a few hours this weekend with an old pair of shoes that I don't wear anymore and some shoe glue, trying to make some shoes that would go with my Elizabethan gown. They came out looking a little too much like velvet house shoes for my taste. I wanted some slip-on court shoes with a very low heel. I probably should have opted for something more like Mary Jane's. But here are the before and after pictures: I just glued a strip of the velvet around the back of the heel, then glued a piece of velvet covered vinyl across the top. Then sewed on the pearls, because they looked too much like velvet house shoes. They still look like velvet house shoes with pearls sewn onto them.
I also made a pair of linen hose from the instructions found on this page: (http://www.faucet.net/costume/research/hose.html). Though mine came out a bit rougher than these. They're very comfortable- no seams going across the bottom of your foot. Though with this pattern, you do have to be very careful to keep track of which is the left hose and which is the right. Otherwise they feel kind of funny. And I didn't take the time to iron my linen before I started, so my hose are all wrinkle-y. They come to right below my knee, and the ribbon around the top is to keep them from sliding down, as elastic didn't so much exist at the time.
I also finished my new forepart and sleeves last week. These are a gray-silver color with burgundy dots at the intersections of a diamond pattern. I like this color a lot better than the green. However, I don't have my trim on yet, and I'm not sure the silver-gray will look good with the gold-edged and beaded trim. We'll see. (I also have some gold-ish fabric for another set of forepart and sleeves, but I have bigger plans for that, in the form of hanging sleeves, and I haven't got those made up yet. As it will also require another smock or some sort of white undersleeves.)
Also, one of the reasons I haven't been working on this project as much in the last couple of weeks is that I had another project going on:
A few of the people I met while volunteering with the community theater were kind enough to let me dress them up and go to the Big Bear Ren Faire with me. Their three costumes were done in a week with fabric from my closet fabric stash (with significant help from the costumees in sewing and setting all those grommets) - mine is the same one that I wore to the Maryland Ren Faire last year. I was very pleased with how they turned out. Not a terribly historically accurate style, but it goes together well and quickly.
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