More Garb Photos

This is my first Renaissance Festival Costume - Made from Simplicity 7756. It's just a comfortable basic chemise plus skirt and overdress. The chemise is of white broadcloth, the skirt of grey broadcloth, and the overdress of light rose-colored cotton. I made some basic alterations to the pattern, namely making the chemise's neckline and wrists drawstring instead of elastic, and making the chemise sleeves wrist-length. I sewed the whole thing by hand as I didn't have any access to a sewing machine, and even so, it didn't take long to make.

While not in the slightest historically accurate, the dress was very easy to put together and has a definite Renfest feel. If I ever make this dress again, I'll join the shoulder straps so they don't tie at the top, make the chemise longer and take out the drawstring neckline and wrists, and make the skirt more full. There are lots of other changes one could make, if one were knowledgable, but those would be the basic ones. The dress pattern comes with an apron, but I'm not sure I'd wear it. I wore it once and it was just about useless, as well as looking historically majorly out of place.

	This is a simple cotehardie, or just "cote" ("hardie", I'm told, means "daring", and this isn't a very daring sort of dress. It's made of basically geometric shapes -- triangles, rectangles, etc. This would have been worn in the Middle Ages, from the 500s or so all the way up to the Renaissance.
	Here you can see the paler pink inset panel under the armhole.

This basic green tunic is made much the same way the cote was made, with lots of geometric shapes. It only took about 2 yards of material to make this tunic, for a tall skinny guy. The material was a thin, olive-green gabardine of unknown fiber that I found at a dollar store and thought I'd use to try this new and odd way of making tunics. (Here's the link I used to get my pattern, by the way.)

The first picture to the left is a view of one of the underarm gussets. The gusset is a square-shaped piece of fabric sewn into the junction of the armhole, sleeve, and side seam to ease tension. It works wonderfully. This tunic needed it because it was so fitted across the chest and armholes. A looser-cut tunic probably wouldn't need it. The second picture to the left is just a shot to show how very comfortable the tunic is to wear.

This is a dress made from Simplicity 8192. The chemise is black satin with white lace trim at the neckline and wrists. The neckline and wrists are gathered. There is no underskirt. The bodice is structured and can be reversed due to the method of construction. It is boned with something stiffer than Featherweight that I can't recall the name of offhand. It is grommetted at the back and laces up with rattail cord. Sandra is wearing an eyepatch out of necessity, but she embroidered it very spiffily with silver thread on black satin to match the dress. She crocheted her snood out of gold-metallic and black thread and set it with gold beads. This is not strictly a historical representation either, in the slightest, but you can see it does some amazing things for a girl's figure, and it's very spiffy for a Rennfest, which is where she wears it. The bodice in particular is oddly constructed, but I watched her make it -- we sewed our costumes together -- and if you do what they tell you to, it comes out great.

This page last updated: July 10, 2009

All text copyright Vangelista di Antonio Dellaluna, except where otherwise noted. All portraits are understood to be copyright- free and are presented as research aids only.