Many thanks to the fabulous Stephanie and her sweet baboo for the pictures. I'm sure I *should* have some of my own, but I don't.
I started a diary for this dress forever ago. I promised to explain the agressious visual pun I was committing. I'll start there: It's a slightly pretensions middle class gown, in brown, accented with mustard yellow and dill pickle green. Like a hamburger. I'm a ham-burghess. Har. Har har har.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way.... I really did plan to diary this. I did. Then I put it off, because I'm a shlump like that, and the underthings were totally misbehaving. (Ok, technically, my own flesh was the underthing that was misbehaving. It happens to the best, and the rest of us as well.) Then there was this thing, where a couple of crazy brits and my good friend sarah were coming out to Bristol, and I swear, I Didn't Have A Thing TO Wear (tm). So I had to finish a dress in a big gosh darned hurry, and I decided that I'd have the best chance finishing the dress that was already begun. (That was hard for me, since the dress had been started a year before and I was officially Bored With It (tm). It was a heavily trade-marked moment.) So, the day before I was supposed to meet them all up at bristol, I got off my butt and started sewing. (No, I'm not exaggerating.) I made the kirtle. I have no pictures of that to put up yet, honestly, y'all should be happy enough that I'm finally writing for the site again, so let's not pick knits. ;) I'll pull it out of storage at some point and get pictures. (Silver lining moment: while I'm awful at remembering to take pictures, I'm going to marry a man who is infinitely fascinated by taking pictures of me doing sewing and crafty things. Honest. I have the guy all picked out, and all we need to do is find a house. Then I'll be able to bombard the world with pictures of sewing! BwaHAHAHAHA! Oh, um, right, ok, forgot the topic again....) It's a back closing kirtle, which I almost never do because I'm obsessed with being able to dress myself. It has trim across and down the front, and around the skirt. It was a cheater jobby with ribbon and flanged cord, but at least I didn't stoop to fabric glue this time. (And I wonder why people don't always take me seriously as a historical costumer? Oy.) Overall, it looks just like a kirtle because it *is* just like a kirtle.
The overdress is a little more impressive, because it's hard not to impress when you throw 5 yards of velveteen at something. I wanted a paned doublet, sleeves, and a matching skirt. Ironically, there are no sleeves present in the pictures because I finally got my FREAKING FABULOUS SHIRT from Blackwerx, and it would have been a sin to cover the arms. It's totally fab. Look at the pictures. See all the grapes? The folks who run the business are friends and know what inspires me. ;)
The doublet was an experiment. I mean, hey, if you're trying to impress people you've never met before, why not throw caution to the wind and try experimental techniques the night before you need the costume? What could possibly go wrong? Er... Ok, well, this time, fairly little actually did. I was playing with the idea of panes as really gigantic button-holes, instead of the normal ludicrously complicated pattern-made-of-many-little-strips method. I mean, when you look at panes on the chest area of doublets in Arnold, you seldom see a seam beneath them. That's because there are things that you can do with hand sewing that you just plain can't do on a machine, but basically, *basically*, distilled to it's absolute essence, it's a freakin' button hole. So that's what I did. And that basically worked. I realized very quickly that this was yet another occasion in life where a little sew-in interfacing would have been a good idea, but I didn't have any (read: I had no idea where mine was), so I went along without it. The interfacing would have stiffened up the panes a little and given them more body, and I think the overall effect would have been nicer. Eh, live and learn, right? Right. And that's all that.
Apologies for the slightly dopey look on my face. For myriad reasons, when I'm at faire I tend to drink. When I'm visiting a faire other than bristol, I tend to drink more. And when I'm there with my sweetie and his friends, well, ok, shnockered about begins to cover it. So if you ever meet me at some random faire, and I seem a little, well, you know, it's probably because I am. These really are the only vacations I get.
