pond_ripple's Fabric Blog

So it has been rather quiet of late on this blog, but not because I haven't been sewing, crafting, and designing. Actually I have been doing too much to have time to share. November 21st and 22nd my friends and I attended a renaissance faire in Louisiana, and I made a dress and boots for me as well as a jacket for my friend. Hopefully, there will be a post for each one starting with the dress :) So I basically went all out when designing this outfit. The base fabric is a wine colored broadcloth, and the underskirt is a navy satin. The undersleeves are organza with the gauntlets made of the same material as the dress. It is embellished with four separate gold colored brocade trims, gold stitching, and glass pearls. The woven trim on the edge of the overskirt is gold tone with pearls. The gauntlets are held in place with brass lion head buttons, and the lacing rings are fancy brass leaves. There is also a matching snood with some more of those glass pearls on it. I also w...

This is my outfit for the ren faire. I started out with the Butterick 4827 pattern, but I got rid of the princess seams and back lacing and replaced them with side lacing. Otherwise I went by the pattern on both the dress and the underskirt. The dress is made from a navy satin and the underskirt is a lovely brocade. The finished dress with the underskirt hanging up behind. It has always been one of those things that I wanted to try making, but it was a bit more difficult than I expected. First off, I couldn't find any tutorials on how to put together a side lacing dress. This meant that I was pretty much on my own design wise. What I've come up with does leave an opening in the arm scythe above the lacing, and a bit of my white chemise will show through. The fit through the shoulders gets a bit weird, but I'm not sure if that has more to do with my alterations or the original pattern since I really only altered the seam lines on the side of the dress. Dress bef...