Elizabethan loose gown (part 1): Sorting out the Pieces

In preparation for the Castle Wars, November 20th tenting event in Macon, it came to my attention that I had NO cold weather gear. Well duh!! Being in Australia from 10 years, I never needed anything warm. Alas, now I do....so after years of drooling over Mistress Constanzia's wool coat, I have decided to make one of my own.

Being that wool is stupid expensive (in Ken & Dan speak that means over $6 a yard), we looked for a more financially reasonable solution and found a great one! At a local army/navy surplus store we scored tropic weight wool blankets from the British army for $20 each! I got two of them for my dress and Ken got one to make a cloak. The blankets were originally dull army olive, so we used some Rit to try and dye them black. My two blankets turned out a soft grey, while Ken's unfortunately is an olive-y sort of grey. Since they are priamrily going to be worn at night, we decided they were good enough and off we went.

The lining of the coat is a simple, functional purple cotton flannel. I am allergic to wool and can't have it near my skin, so when JoAnn's had flannel on sale the other week, we stocked up (I even have enough for a red flannel petticoat...but that is a story for another day!).

Having never made a Spanish ropa or Elizabethan loose gown, I looked at lots of pictures and determined that I did not have quite enough material to make a really full gown. That said, since I am not 'nobility' (nor do I play a noble on tv) I figured a less full gown would be more appropriate to my 'station'. While the amount of material I had would do, my immediate problem was the pattern -- that is...not having one!

I am not that great at making up patterns on the fly. While I am perfectly capable of modifying existing patterns, making one up is hard (ohhh...I really want a dress dummy...THEN I could make patterns!!). So, I borrowed a victorian riding coat pattern from Celeste with a view toward modifying it. The pattern had slight curved seams down the front, and a 4 piece back. I cut out the original pattern pieces from the waist up, and sewed them together to make a toile. From this I redrafted a pattern that has two front pieces (a left and right) instead of 4, and 2 pack pieces (L and R) instead of 4.

The next step was cutting out the fabric. I learned an important lesson in this -- I want a BIG dining table when I grow up so that I don't have to crawl around on the floor to cut out material!!!! After playing with the pieces like a gigantic puzzled, I worked out that I could get all of my outer shell cut out of the blankets with enough left over for tie on wool sleeves for another dress! Huzzah!! :)

Cutting the lining out took a bit more tweaking because the material is only 42" wide, so I had to adjust how I laid things on the material very carefully so that I would have enough to line the sleeves. As you can see, I managed it quite nicely. I think I even have enough to make some flannel pouches for our ceramic goblets.

Next up...the sewing!