Ladies in Red (part 1)

Well. Here we are again. 

After the completion of our most recent Renaissance dresses, the Blue Bee dresses, I asked Rachel if we had enough dresses for festivals and faires. What a silly question. 

Red seems to be the one color we haven't really explored, and is the other royal court color besides blue. We knew we wanted to stay away from a pink-red or orange-red. And after our forays into Italian and English styles, it was time to once again embrace our genetic heritage and go with a German style.

I took the opportunity to sketch out the costume design digitally for the first time - usually I use a pencil. I'm happy with the way it turned out - for my first time. But (spoilers), about from the time I clicked "save", I knew I'd be making changes to the design. So be sure to keep up with the twists and turns on this one, as I know this will be a multiple-post project.

Rachel is fantastic at using unexpected, budget friendly fabric in her Renaissance dresses. But I wanted to take the excuse to be very deliberate (and, I'll admit it, "boojee"). Linen was an obvious choice, but I wanted it to be a bit lighter in weight than the blue linen we'd used before, and I was after a particular shade of red. As I live in an, ahem, "fabric desert", about the only way to achieve this is to order swatches from an online store first.

I wanted a near-tissue weight linen for the shirt, and a light-medium weight for the dress. After finding what I wanted from Fabric-Store.com (which specializes in linen) I took a picture of the fabric swatches with a fork as background to compare weight and color.

One of the sheer options, and the black linen. The black linen was pretty much a given, but it doesn't hurt to have a sample before you order.

The red, and the sheer white linen we decided to get.

​With so much money sunk into the linen - we're talking nice prom dress amount here - I wasn't going to go with a cheap ribbon trim that I could find at any fabric store. 

Rachel happened to find some beautiful trim made in India (thanks to her shopping for vintage Indian saris for their silk). The price was very reasonable for the design, width, and length. The edges are hand-finished! It will definitely change the look of the dress (and will rival the beautiful red linen for a focal point), but it makes me feel very fancy and elegant!

This came from an Etsy store based in India that specializes in trim for saris called Shop of Embellishments

I finally have the major pieces all together, and I can't wait! I think it'll be amazing!

The other item I bought for the new dresses is trimmer string. That's right - like for a weed eater. 

In researching what other costume makers are trying, I found a few blogs that mentioned that the plastic string from string trimmers has the same approximate tensile strength as the kind of reed that was sometimes used to stiffen bodices from my target time period. It should make for a very flexible stiffening with more movement than the traditional boning. I'm so excited to try and learn new things with this new project!