Tudor Lady In Waiting

Miss M has been studying the Tudor period in school and this week they had a dress up day where the whole year group coming in wearing Tudor costume.  This by coincidence happened to fall on Miss Cs birthday so I knew that as we were having her party on the weekend the dress I would have to make wouldn’t happen then and I needed to get a head start on it.  So back in half term I got the ball rolling.  Using the fabulous drafting series that Lorraine made a couple of years ago, I endeavoured to make Miss M a sloper/block.  It took a number of iterations before I got something I was completely happy with…

(could do with a little more swayback adjustment)

(finished article with lots of bit of paper stuck back on!)

 

Making a sloper/block (I’m never sure which word is correct, does it just depend where you come from or is there an actual difference between the two?) was great fun and really answered my own question about what I should do about sewing although it was a lot easier fitting someone else rather than myself.  So much so I’ve asked Santa if he can arrange a sewing session(s) with someone to make my own sloper/block! 

So once we had a base we looked around at Tudor clothing and discussed what it should look like, Miss M wanted it red, she wanted a square neckline, she wanted a long skirt.  Pouring over Lorraine's resources we liked the principle of her Renaissance Dresses

(source)

and also the dress on the right

(source)

so between these two sources of inspiration we can up with a pattern made from newspaper!

which produced…

I found a curtain offcut for the cream brocade inset for £2 and amazingly I found some trim which matched that offcut perfectly!  The red crushed velvet cost a fortune for a costume but hey, you win some you lose some!

I enjoyed the designing and drafting aspect of this project and I enjoyed sewing it until it got to putting the whole thing together and then the velvet became a bit unstable so a pain in the backside.  I did a handpicked zip and also hand sewed the trim on by hand as I knew it would never look neat if I sewed it on the machine, as it is there's a bump on the zip at the back but to be honest I’m probably the only one bothered about that, as usual all I can think about and see are the negative niggly bits of a project that didn’t work completely perfectly! But for a 1 day costume for school it works, now its been put away ready for Miss C in 3 years time when she will be studying the same subject, as I always say “If they can recycle the curriculum I can recycle the costume!”