Sempstress

This is a smart little cap for characters in the middle class and beyond. It can be work alone, over a simple coif, or for women, over a caul.  Again, ladies (especially of higher rank) will want to make this cap a little smaller so that it sits on the hair rather than the head. It looks much more dainty that way.

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Ivanovich is a magician
who has worked the Bristol Faire on and off (and, hopefully, will be back on
again next year — he does a fantastic show). He’s also a good friend, and was
significantly more of a joy to work with than I was through the process of designing
and making his coat. ;)

The coat is based on 18th century russian costume, as sixteenth
century russian costume is a) largely undocumented, b) weird, and c) highly
impractical in the general region of the midwest 9 out of 12 months. Bristol
does not fall during the three months for which it is reasonable. There is a
name for the garment herein referred to as "the coat", but it’s in
russian, which I can’t pronounce, and I can’t remember it anyway. The coat is
made of brushed cotton, lined withgrey cotton twill, and guarded in black felted
wool to give it a little body. (This worked too well, a situation which I’m
still hoping to resolve.)

This was a commissioned costume for a very nice fellow who
is playing Robert Cecil, the incredibly cranky hunchback. The costume was a
challenge on a couple of levels. The most obvious is that the actor wanted to
actually have a hunchback, which means that I got to make, and draft all my
patterns around, a prosthesis (ie, “oddly shaped little shoulder pillow”). That
wasn’t so much of a problem with the weskit (the red bit that you barely see
behind the black slashed doublet), but it was a royal pain in the patoot for
the doublet. See, the doublet has very long vertical slashes across the chest
and back. If you’re machining something like that, it’s easiest to make up a
bunch of separate panes and attach them to each other where they are supposed
to be attached. There are three slashes on either side of the chest and back,
making for a total of 15 pieces on the body of the doublet. Each of these pieces
is lined, which means they are all sewn right side to right side with their
linings, then turned. The right and left sides of the doublet are completely
different shapes and somewhat different sizes. And I *cannot* tell left from
right to save my life. (Honestly. I have to take my hands off the wheel and
do the “Left makes an L” think to follow directions while driving.) Needless
to say, the doublet involved about 15 nervous breakdowns and a lot of double
checking. I was doing very well until I suddenly realized that I had done an
entire set of panes backwards, started ripping things out, then realized that
that was the *back* section of the doublet and backwards was, technically, correct.
I really have to get a handle on that left and right thing…..

The costume consists of a weskit (semi-boned underdoublet)
in dark red wool crepe, the doublet, which is black wool pique trimmed with
matte silver soutache, sleeves, which are made of black fine wool and edged
with silver cord, venetians, which are of the same wool as the sleeves and have
a stripe of black velvet edged in red velveteen running down each side (the
stripe on the right conceals a pocket), and a nearly full circle, knee length
black velvet surcoat with a red velveteen turnback edged with matt silver braid.
There was a surprisingly large amount of handwork on this costume – the edges
of the weskit are neatened by hand, the doublet hem was completed by hand and
several panes in the doublet had to be edged by hand, the cording on the sleeves
had to be attached by hand, and of course, armscyes are almost always done by
hand (this was no exception) and the hook and eye tape on the weskit and doublet
was secured to the front edges of the respective garments by hand. There’s also
a hat and one of those silly nightcap looking coif thingies that go with this
costume, but I was a doofus and did not bring them to the dress rehearsal where
these pictures were taken. I’ll get more pictures with those later.

At the end of the 2005 faire season, Bristol announced to it’s
cast/crew/the rest of us schmucks that the theme for 2006 would be "nautical….
Be prepared for a surprise!" Well, gosh darn it all if the decision wasn’t
made to add a pack of pirates, replete with a very cute (if kinda quiet) Grace
O’Malley, to the cast that already includes a fleet of fairies and Robin Hood
with assorted Merry Men. Pirates. *Pirates* Consider my timbers duly shivered.
It was a dark period for this little costumer, and I took a few months to go
through the official stages of grief over a personal betrayal – anger, denial,
anger, outrage, anger, depression, anger, hysterical laughter, anger, careful
consideration of the situation, anger, re-adjustment of personal expectations,
annoyance, planning, slight pissiness, plotting, vague glee, deciding that this
could totally work for my personal benefit, and acceptance. (If you just read
that, and you’re not at all italian, you’re probably thinking that I have a
hell of a temper. Ok, so you’re right. But if you grew up with my mother, you’d
know that staying angry is good, because it gives you the energy to plot and
do something constructive with a situation. ;) It’s not evil…. It’s pragmatic.)

So my dreams of belonging to a historically accurate faire suffered
the mental equivalent of a viking raid, mongol invasion, and roman rulership.
No biggie.

From the all that came a new way of looking at the faire situation
— one that included cool, easy to move in costumes for hot days, costumes that
don’t need full corsets, corked drinking vessels so I don’t spill my wine, er,
water when I trot off to something, reversible peasant costumes so I don’t have
to pack two costumes…. I kinda liked all those ideas. I was happy with them.
I wanted to share them with people. I wanted to embrace the new freedom and
get everyone into it, and encourage people to make the best non-elizabethan
costumes they could make. Heh. And the Faire let me, which is pretty amazing.
So 2006 was the first year of the Friends of Faire Costume Contests — a set
of one-day costume contests for non-Elizabethan costumes. We did one for pirates,
one for barbarians, and one for fairies. It was great. It was a hoot. We had
the best MCs in the history of *EVER* for it (the Fairy Godmothers of Bristol),
our contestants were totally cool and wanted to play with the MCs (well, ok,
several of the barbarians wanted to roast the MCs, but that was a simple misunderstanding
about whether or not fairies were Good Eats), and the shows got a large and,
ultimately, totally entertained audience.

Of course, any self-respecting costumer with a costume contest
to run needs costumes to go with the theme, right? ;) You knew there was an
excuse to get more costumes out of this somehow…. So I needed a pirate costume.
And even though I may think that a certain movie pirate is hotter than the inside
of my corset in august, I didn’t want to look like another temporally displaced
Caribbean pirate. I looked around at the (few) period images of lower end nautical
types I could find. I did a little reading. I came to the conclusion that pirates
of most ages wore about what their people would wear, only dirtier, and periodically
replaced worn garments with, well, whatever they found on others. There was
no Pirate Mall, selling the newest Pirate Fashion. Go fig. That was a totally
unhelpful bit of research. So I busted out my handy-dandy Vecellio book, and
looked for period female costumes with a general "pirateyness" to
them. I settled on the Peasant Woman of Gaeta, for a couple reasons. First off,
Gaeta is a port town on the western coast of Italy, round abouts the middle.
Part of my family is from round abouts that region. (Yes, I’m seriously playing
fast and loose with the geography here.) Secondly, I really like the little
coat she’s wearing. It’s close enough to the lines we’re used to seeing in movies
and associating with pirates — the collar is close to the 17th/18th century
lines we’re used to seeing in pirate vests, you get the bit of shirt at the
top (because pirates always have a bit of whatever anyone else would consider
an underthing showing, or are shown devoid of normal underthings…. I think
the idea is to show that they don’t follow normal rules of decency, but the
idea is sort of lost in a society that’s come to associate that "look,
here’s my undies" with sexy, instead of skanky.) I changed out the long
sleeves for the short, split sleeve seen in several of Vecellio’s Venetian woodcuts.
The trim pattern is a deliberate nod towards the accepted "movie pirate"
school of costume.

The shirt is simply an old linen one that I had lying around,
that had too many small tears to work with a good costume. It’s worn over a
very light weight corset. I’d meant to make a lightly boned bodice to go between
the coat and the shirt, but I never quite got there. The pants are a set of
very wide legged, striped one-hour wonders. (Cut two lengths of fabric to length
of pants. With layers together, cut something vaguely crotch shaped out of the
center. Sew crotch. Sew side seams on legs. Use hooks and eyes to make two really
big pleats in front, to a) make pants fit and b) give you a way in and out of
the darn things. Viola. If you’re me, you go back and make all those into french
seams.) I actually wore a heavy red skirt over the pants most of the time, but
the darn thing kept getting in my way. In frustration, midway through the season,
I tore it straight up the back seam, so it was open fore and aft. If you’re
supposed to be portraying a rather rough character who has to get around in
a hurry without a fuss (like, you have to keep jumping over benches, etc), it’s
a solution that totally works, and still looks like a decent skirt when you’re
standing still. My hair is braided and tied up and back with a braided belt
I got on clearance at Target, and I’m wearing a pile of necklaces my friend
Lynn and I made earlier in the day.

The really faboo little ceramic jug came from a potter at the
St. Louis ren fest, and is fabulous. First off, if you’re carrying a little
jug like that, people automatically assume you’re half sloshed at all times,
so you can act a total nut and people think it’s hilarious. Second off, ceramic
happens to keep things cold, and the cork on the jug keeps them in. And, sure,
the jug holds roughly roughly 2/3rds of a bottle of wine, but it also holds
half a large jug of Smart Water (the stuff with electrolytes but no sugar).
Between the two, I’m a happy girl. Oh, right, and if I really want to, I can
wear a proper bra with this, and no one is the wiser…. ;) Teehee. I feel like
such a naughty girl for that…..

My sweetie is involved with a faire Playtron group called The
Outlanders. They wanted to get together a group "look", and at some
point the idea that Dominic was (and still is) dating a seamstress came up.
After some talking and going back and forth on design possibilities (and vocabulary
— medieval is just not my period of expertise), we settled on doing the surcoats
in Ultrasuede and linen. Now, I know that a lot of people out there are really
opposed to faux-leathers for costuming purposes, but there are some serious
advantages. For one thing, unlike natural cows, Ultrasuede comes in a predictable
width and shape. There are no thin areas to work around. You can chuck it into
the wash. It never needs to be oiled. The colors are predictable and lightfast.
Did I mention the part about being able to chuck it into the wash? I do snuggle
up to one of these guys. Odor eradication is a serious consideration. ;)

All the fancy-pants insignia stuff if dome with reverse applique,
exposing a linen lining. Here’s a lesson worth learning from someone else’s
experience: always ask to see all the designs first. And insist that
you have the right to negotiate them. After this first batch of coats, I informed
everyone else in the group who wants one (yes, there are more coming) that there
would be an additional charge for heraldic beasts and arachnids. *grumble* Seriously.
Take a look at the pic on the far right. Sewing them was a challenge, but the
real hard part turned out to be cutting the darn things out without cutting
the backing. This turned out to be a serious foul language project. Since a
lot of my sewing time was gobbled up by hospital visits while I was trying to
get them done, my mother offered to help. I think she thought I was just pissing
about how annoying something so apparently simple could be. She learned, though.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard some of those words come out of my mother’s mouth
before…. They turned out well, though.

There were four surcoats in the original order. The fellow to
whom the scorpion belongs wasn’t there when I took the group shots. Hopefully,
I’ll have a picture of his soon. And there will be more coming, with pictures
to follow. And yes, at least one of those has a heraldic creature. :(

Let me preface this one by saying that the character name is
Not My Fault(tm). I can’t remember the long version that he rattles off so fast
that the words distort as they pass the sound barrier. Seriously. Brian
is one of my magician friends (a statement that leaves me wondering when my
life got to a point that I have "magician friends" — that doesn’t
seem quite normal. Then again, a woman who lives with three cats and has been
known to sew for thirty hours straight probably shouldn’t quibble about normalcy.)
He does shows and street performances out at the Maryland Ren Faire, which I
hear actually *pays* its employees and performers. Brian wanted a moorish costume,
and he was impressed with some work I did for another magician, so I got the
honor of making this a reality. Now, I knew about it last year. I had a design
last year. What I didn’t have was Brian available for a fitting, until about
two weeks before he needed the darn thing. (To complicate matters, the mathematical
genius over here managed to sneak an extra week in between the first week of
august, and the third — I thought I had three weeks, so I didn’t start immediately.
A friend eventually straightened me out on that one, and panic ensued.)

So, basically, the vest-thing was made in a week and a half,
and overnighted on a thursday with good faith that it would, in fact, arrive
overnight. It’s made from a wool crepe that’s been slightly felted. The trim
is made up on separate strips of crepe, then applied as an edge finishing and
trim all in one. The trim is two overlayed knotwork patterns, and yes, they’re
real knotwork — the trims are twisted together throughout the patterns. The
base pattern is made from green gimp, and the upper pattern is made from a gold
trim with silver tinsel in it, and continues around the entire thing. There’s
a green sash that’s supposed to go with it, but due to the insanity that is
distance fitting, it needs to be remade.

I’ve been promised better photos, she says, in her incredibly
subtle way…..