One of the highlights of the school calendar is Medieval Day.  It’s part of their Year 8 Humanities studies, and is a day where the girls get to dress up and learn more about life in Medieval times.  When Clare was in Year 8 she still fitted in to her Eowyn costume.  Stella grew much faster than Clare, and there was no way that she could squeeze into that!  So we made her something new.

Stella started thinking about her costume many months before the day itself – thank goodness! We searched the internet for inspiration, and bought a couple of patterns to base it on.

We used Simplicity 1773 for the underdress. I had ordered poly satin from Super Cheap Fabrics to make both dresses. The ivory for the underdress was pretty lightweight and pretty slippery. You know, work of the devil type of fabric. I knew that I’d need to make fit alterations so cut a muslin from an old sheet, sewed that up, pinned out all the alterations, then used the muslin as the pattern. It was way too wide across the upper chest and shoulders originally, and needed grading between bust and waist, plus shortening through the torso. Quite a few fit changes really, which I had anticipated. I know that when I’m sewing anything fitted in a woven for my daughters that I really do need to muslin it first. Everyone’s shapes are different; just because they are slim it doesn’t mean that patterns will fit them as drafted! Rather than have a heap of small buttons at the wrist, we inserted invisible zips. Definitely not period accurate, but much better for ease of dressing with those close fitting sleees! There’s also an invisible zip in the centre back.

So, on to the outer dress. This was sewn in poly satin crepe, with the crepe side as the right side. It was actually quite nice to sew with, which was a welcome relief! Pattern wise I used the muslin from the underdress as a fit guide to mash up the Butterick and Simplicity bodice patterns, and grafted on the sleeves from Butterick 4571 instead of the Simplicity sleeves. We didn’t bother with the Butterick undersleeve, because the underdress had long sleeves. I wanted to line the dramatic oversleeve with something and spotted this cross-stich printed quilting cotton in stash. It was perfect!

Time wise, it was around twenty hours of work to make both dresses, including cutting out, muslining, and construction.

Adding the eyelets to the front was the last stage. It’s really difficult to get quality hardware fittings for the home sewer – what you can buy at Spotlight just doesn’t cut it (same applies to the Spotlight jeans button kits). Fortunately I had some higher quality hardware in my stash that I’d purchased from leather/saddlery suppliers. I really do advise that you don’t use the cheap stuff; you’ll just get frustrated and you also run the risk of causing damage to your project. Reminder to self: throw out the cheap kits that are still in the bottom of the drawer. I had some leather thonging in stash that worked fine as lacing.

So once again, this isn’t a historically accurate recreation by any means. We’ve got polyester, zips, metal eyelets, and a mish-mash of styles that possibly range from Medieval to Baroque. Stella’s crown was purchased on eBay, and the sword is a LARP sword.

And although the overdress looks quite blue in many of these photos, it’s actually a definite teal. I have a couple of photos taken at school that are much more representative.

Fit wise, it’s still a bit too wide across the upper back and shoulders. However, that was mostly fixed with bra strap keepers sewn to the inside of the underdress, and a couple of safety pins between the underdress and the overdress! I didn’t want to fit these too closely to Stella as I still anticipate that she’ll grow a little more (she’s just turned fourteen) and we hope that this is a costume that can be worn to more occasions in years to come.