It’s Almost Time for SLO Faire 2014

The countdown to SLO Faire is at 8 days and it’s our 30th year!

I still need to finish my new bodice (if I don’t want to be stuck in the one with the tight arm holes – and I really don’t), finish stitching the dags on the short sides of our new pavilion, make a tall hat for a Puritan, make a new pair of bloomers, stitch some eyelets. Oh, and locate the hanging’s for the Lord Mayor’s pavilion as well as pack. No pressure.

Faire is July 19 & 20, 2014 1585  at Laguna Lake Park in SLO. Come one, come all for meat pies, pasties (that’s pAsties you eat, not pasties you wear), jousting, stage shows, vendors, Queen Elizabeth and her court, as well as dirty peasants, constables, rogues, falconry and a good time.

For more info and to purchase tickets, visit the Central Coast Renaissance Faire.

 

Historical Costuming in Linen

Linen is a great fabric for historical costuming. It’s sturdy, versatile, takes color well and washes ever softer and softer. And it’s historically accurate – ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Ireland, Israelites, the Mediterranean, Cornwall, as armor, in the Renaissance, Victorian England and beyond, until cotton became cheap to manufacture.

Elizabeth's late 1500s Italian working class costume via FabricsStore Chronicle

My favorite linen source, Fabrics-store.com has a piece on enthusiastic historical costumer and author, Elizabeth, who works in linen.

 

Construction of the Sheriff’s Doublet

A. came up with the original concept drawing. In it she decided that a pleated yoke should be added to define the chest area. It looked great. The implementation was a bit of a challenge. It required a lot of time, a ruler, chalk, an iron and many,many pins. Due to some related issues I decided to hand stitch the pleats down with a simple whip stitch. After som discussion we decided that would be the side we would use on the outside. After the stitching was completes I cut out the yoke pieces to attach to the torso pieces.

 I decided to define the yoke further with a vine and leaf stitch from my sewing machine. I then used the vine and leaf on alternating pleats. For the top stitch I chose a brown thread that matched the linen of the pants. A found a wonderful source for the buttons and I fell in love with these made with brass.

 

Peacocks

In the past we’ve used the word peacocks to describe the men in our creations and this time is no exception. The Lord Mayor and Sheriff of the Central Coast Renaissance Faire, or SLO Faire (July 16 and 17, 2011), were preening, strutting and looking damn good, if I do say so myself, in their fyne new costumes.

The Lord Mayor of the Central Coast Renaissance Faire 2011

The Lord Mayor’s costume is a dark blue mid-weight linen doublet with yoke, sleeves and pants with a fine cotton flat-ruffed shirt.  The sleeves and doublet front are slashed with green dupioni silk and trimmed with blue-gray hand embroidery and antique brass buttons. His tall hat is made from the same linen and the hat band is hand made blue cotton trim.

The Sheriff the Central Coast Renaissance Faire 2011

Our Sheriff’s costume is a green doublet of mid-weight linen, heavy weight brown linen pants and a cotton flat-ruffed shirt. The doublet is yoked, as the Lord Mayor’s, but that portion is pleated and embroidered subtly with a vine pattern in brown thread. The buttons are antique brass. His tall hat is made of the brown linen with a green linen hat band with the same embroidery as the doublet.

The hat and doublet patterns are Rogues of Thread originals.

A special thank you to M for finding the time I had lost to make the Lord Mayor’s shirt. You saved me!

Related posts: The Lord Mayor – A Costume Autopsy

All images by The Rogues of Thread (bythebodkin.wordpress.com) and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, unless specifically attributed elsewhere.