For this gown I used the pattern from Woven Into the Earth: Textiles from Norse Greenland. Lady Katrina of Bryn Madoc showed my how to draft the pattern, lay it out, and cut it. She also taught me how to make sleeves! I learned a ton from her and can’t thank her enough.
This is a yellow 12-gore cotehardie. It is going to be an underdress for a blue cotehardie with short sleeves, so only the bottom half of these sleeves will be visible.
Back view.
Here you can see the crazy amount of buttons on the sleeves. I was trying to put a dozen on each one, but only 11 fit. Thank heavens for ebay, I was able to get 4 dozen metal buttons for about $15. I'm going to use the remaining 2 dozen on the fron of the blue overdress.
Here are my eyelets that I hand-sewed. I don't like doing it, but it makes a dress look much better. Also I made matching lucet cord with pearl cotton. (It was my first luceting attempt, so it is a bit lumpy.) It went relatively quickly once I got the hang of it. There is a great lucet making video on YouTube that really helped me out.
Here are the side gores. The all began square at the top and I just took them in more and more until the dress was fitted. I really like the way it looks. The dress is also serged, but I hand sewed the seams down, so the whole thing gives and impression of being hand done. This was Lady Katrina's idea and I think it is great!
Here is the blue overdress. I finally finished it. The blue dress is really loose, but I'm going to use it as my maternity garb. Afterwards, I plan on taking it in.
I went with streamers on the arms instead of traditional tippets, I just like the whimsy of them.
Closeup of the million buttons (okay, it is twenty, but when you are making button holes it feels like a million)
Here is the hat I made to go with the dress. It is really fun to wear, but it gets really hot...I feel like I have a stuffed animal on my head. I need to find a better pin for the front, this one is rather Victorian but it was what I had to make do with.
I made this hat with instruction from Cynthia Virtue’s website here. It was super easy to do. Plus, I already had everything I needed so it didn’t cost anything. Yay!
Here is the dress on Halloween. I wore it to school as my costume. I'm about six months pregnant here but even though Jude is now over a year old, I still haven't managed to take the dress in.