Since this is the project currently occupying the most thought (and time) I'll start off with this and work my way backward.
The Barony of Endless Hills is hosting 12th Night on January 12 and Wolfmark has decided to lay down swords, clean up a bit and head out to party. While most of our group either has court garb that's already been made specifically for them or happens to fit into someone else's (more posts on those later), Hols has been left out and needs a dress. Dress she picked?
Princess Elizabeth. Very excited because this is a dress I've wanted to try for a long time now but just couldn't see putting in the effort and time for a dress that wouldn't look right on me. I've never made a tudor before except for a simplicity pattern in my pre-trying to be accurate days, so this is a cool challenge for me. Yeah, and I have a month. But we're not discussing that. Back to the dress.
Raiding the MIL's stash, we found blue cotton velvet which will hopefully be enough for the overgown and sleeves. Last night my brother was diving into my stash and found pale ice blue brocade with tiny ivory maltese crosses, so that'll be the forepart and undersleeves. I'll hopefully find some cream silk for the underdress in Joann's on a trip to Scranton. At some point there will probably have to be a corded underskirt because I can't see this dress looking right without one.
Pattern was ordered from Reconstructing History about a week ago and I also have a local seamstress sending me a copy of the Tudor Tailer pattern in Holly's size so I have a backup. With a month to go, we're not taking chances.
The hardest part of the dress so far has been getting the jewelry components. Tudor jewelry seems to be covered in ouches and so far I've only found one company in all North America that makes them, and I'm not a big fan. Not to mention they're $5.00 a pop. My husband was less than enthusiastic about my request that he make me them (shouldn't have gone to college and taken classes in jewelry design if you have no intent to be helpful!) and he was even LESS enthusiastic when I discovered that we would need a $600.00 kiln. Shot that idea out of the water. So we found these:
which will be set with square blue acrylic "stones." Not a fan of acrylics but people also need to eat and sapphires are just a little beyond the budget at the moment. Throw in some ivory glass pearls and I think we'll be set.
So hopefully the patterns will come in soon and I can get started on this project. In the meantime, Jake raided my stash and discovered blue velvet that I believe was once someone's drapes and decided that he needs a new outfit too. Slashed blue velvet doublet and slops with pale blue silk underlay. My mom has the posterboard patterns(all the guys are roughly the same size so we made a hard, resuable copy) at her house so I'm hoping she'll bring them up when she comes for Christmas because I hate cutting patterns more than anything on earth. At least I won't be bored.
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