Renaissance Comic Crossover

Renaissance Faire season is upon us!  Well, it's upon me.  Nearly upon me.  Whatever, I'm starting to work on Ren Faire stuff.

A group of friends decided to get a bunch of folks together  to do Renaissance themed comic book characters for Myths and Legends weekend.  By the time I found out, most of the likely suspects had already been taken, and I don't really read comic books, but a quick Google search lead me to Cyclone.  She's a red head, her costume is insanely simple, and it's green. Just green.  Perfect.

This...but actually clothing.

I've been wanting to make a working class Flemish/Dutch/Netherlandish outfit for a while, but hadn't had an excuse.  This was perfect; a relatively simple solid colored dress that I can layer with things.

Like the cook in this painting by Joachim Beuckelaer but green.

The best part was when I was trying to figure out a way to make the little tornado on the front when I realized I could just use yellow spiral lacing.  Boom.  So easy.

I had my little heart set on getting linen for this, but I ended up coming across an almost perfect cotton fabric at Wal-Mart for $1/yard and I couldn't pass it up.  The whole 6 yards cost me $5.50.  Five dollars and fifty cents!  That's less than what one yard of green linen would have.  It's good enough.

I did pick up some actual white linen for the partlet and I love it.  I keep touching it and it's so nice and soft and cool.  I'm basically molesting my linen.

I have a more or less finished white cotton chemise and I'm just going to use that in an effort to de-stash.  It'll be fine for now, but I do plan on making a linen shift at some point in the future.  Mmm linen....

I opted to use an apron to mimic the red and white striped socks rather than wearing socks and hiking up the skirt.  Sometimes I think I'm pretty clever.  I am also incredibly lazy, so I'm turning a tea towel into an apron.

I'm wading into the controversy of Netherlandish gowns.  After spending entirely too long staring at Flemish paintings, I don't buy into the split overdress argument.  It just doesn't look like it's an open overdress over a kirtle to me, so I'm choosing to make mine as a single piece with some kind of fabric behind the lacing.  Also, August is hot and if I can avoid wearing two layers of fabric then I'm going to do that.

A witch hat!

She also has a perfectly adorable, but not even slightly Renaissance period appropriate, witch hat, which will absolutely be done because it's a themed Ren Faire costume and it's going to look cute, and I just don't care.



Onward, to the sewing!