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Debuting new garb at a festival is always frought with what-ifs. Is the length ok? Will the bodice ride up or down? What about the weight of the garment? After repeatedly stressing over how hot we were going to be in our new multi-layer linen dresses, the weather turned out cool enough to warrant extra layers. And the fit of the dress turned out just fine.  What you can't see is the long underwear on my legs.  I wanted to match the blue the princess was wearing. She's on the far left. But, everyone agreed we turned out looking awesome! (Kate here) I was actually a little sorry we ended up wearing the full outfit all day. I hope in following years, we get to show off the dresses underneath more. And, while the dresses were great, I have to add that we seemed to have found the limit of our cheap hoop skirts. Both of us were popping hoops by the end. For Ryan's new doublet, I literally traced over his most recent one - the green and brown doublet from the fall before - and added a few inches where necessary. The diagonal design comes from a costumed festival goer we had encountered in KC the season before, but the pants are being re used from another outfit.
I know, I know. I should have taken progress pictures of Ryan's doublet and the baby outfit. I ran out of time/inspiration. Ryan's sleeves were from an earlier pattern as well, and I just replaced the centers with strips of ribbon. The underarm is still out of blue linen. The whole doublet is lined in the same stuff as the frock coat. And I ordered buttons to cover with blue linen, which Ryan thought was very close to magic. The baby shift is secretly traced from a button up shirt I had for Easter, which will be in a few weeks. Almost every other baby shirt I could have traced was knit, which wouldn't do well if there was a sudden growth spurt. And in learning a lesson from my last baby outfit, I made knit side vents, which turned out to be unnecessary in this case.  (Kate again) We always seem to add things to our garb from the faire. This time, I found blue leather rabbit-trimmed fingerless gloves, and Rachel found tan velvet pouches that we strung from our bodice lacing. Perfect for hiding those modern things that you want to keep hidden but close to you, like a cell phone and wallet. Most importantly for tired feet, we added walking sticks. You'll have to imagine all these things until we can get a good picture up that includes these!
As a whole, the ensemble was a hit at the Festival! We ended up wearing the costumes both days, instead of switching out like we planned. I truly do not have any new outfits for myself planned for the Wichita Ren Fest this fall, but if time opens up this summer I may finish some costumes that have portions that have literally been in the making for around for 15 years.
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With the fervor of Christmas past us, and with Kachel now sporting what was beginning to look like an actual dress, I figured it was time for me to start on one of the parts of the dress that I said I'd do. After posting what felt like endless pins to our shared Pinterest board, we had decided on a partlet with a collar of gathered lace and attached sleeves, instead of a full chemise or smock underneath. This was for several reasons: A) we didn't want to overheat in the dresses, and the so-far two layers of linen are adding up, B) I wanted to take the excuse to learn about a new Tudor garment and run with it, and C) while doing nothing to promote modesty, a partlet would be quicker to put on and take off. Going off of the instructions from this site, I had traced out a partlet pattern based on the bodice pattern we'd made for the dress. You can see a bit of the partlet pattern pinned to Kachel back in this post.  After finding the most dreamy cotton voile fabric online, I cut out the pieces. You might notice some rectangles I drew on the fabric. This is because along with learning more about partlets, I wanted to take the chance to learn more about blackwork embroidery, and I thought the collar and cuffs would be a great place to try it out. In my research about the kinds of stitches used in blackwork and the designs used, I learned that aside from geometric designs, nature-based repeating figures were used, and modern blackwork uses colors other than black. The stitch is usually done on a fabric like Dublin linen that has an even weave and with a thread count that is big enough to be similar to a modern even-weave cross stitch fabric.  Since cotton voile is a very fine weave, I settled on an embroidery design that incorporates a blown-up blackwork figure. You'll have to take my word for it because I trashed the evidence, but I tried a dragonfly and peacock figure before settling on the simple bee figure. After all, I am not an upper-class lady with endless quiet afternoons to sew.  I went with a blue cotton embroidery floss to match the dress fabric. In the picture below, you can see that the blackwork stitch starts out very much like a running stitch. It ends up being something like a double running stitch to do, with the goal being that the stitching looks almost the same on the front as on the back. True blackwork patterns are on a grid, with curving lines actually being made up of little straight or diagonal stitches.  I think the collars and cuffs took binging about a season and a half of a TV show to finish? I wasn't counting. I decided to frame the pieces with a simple chain stitch to help the design stand out more. I backed it with fusible interfacing the stabilize the stitching, and give the cuffs and collar a little structure.  One cuff done! The cotton crochet lace adds a nice frilly touch. The grosgrain ribbon was as much a practical choice as a design choice. I find ties a lot easier to do than buttons or lacing.  With the collar on, it's taking shape! So, the cotton crochet lace at the collar kind of hides the embroidery, especially on our short necks. But I wouldn't do the partlet without an embroidered collar either. As you can see a bit from the photograph, a partlet ties at the neck, and (optionally) at the under bust through a narrow casing at the bottom instead of a hem. Most partlets did not have attached sleeves, as the chemise sleeve would be used, and the dress sleeves would cover the arms as well.  And here it is, all done and tucked under the bodice! (Also a preview of a trial trim placement for the dress bodice) Since Rachel and I have no intention of adding another layer with a chemise or smock, we attached sleeves to our partlets. You can decide to have the collar tied or open, and how open (or not) you want the opening of the partlet to be. The sleeves have a little bit of extra length to ensure that the cuffs can poke out from the dress sleeve, but otherwise they are not too extra long. I can't wait to try out this new kind of garment, and to see the partlet (and the embroidery!) up against the rest of the dress!
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