Monthly Archives: September 2010

Sadly, there is not much variety in men’s’ and and woman’s’ pirate costumes. Seriously, type pirate costumes into your search bar and see what you come up with for costumes. You either get Jack Sparrow ripoffs or Playboy Bunny wanna-be’s. Granted we are going to the renaissance faire and pirates of that era didn’t dress so that they would be instantly recognized as such, but come on! Jack Sparrow or Playboy Bunny?

Even the big 3 are that way! Now they do also offer cheesy cliche pirate options as well. But that is not any better. In fact, I think it looks cheaper, and I do not do cheap looking costumes. It’s not my style. I say go big or go home!

In the end, however, we decided upon the Jack Sparrow rip-offs. This does include the Elizabeth Swain rip-off for me. I have been making some changes to DH’s version to help it differ from all the others out there. It is still basically the same coat, minus the crazy amounts of trim on the jacket. A full review will be posted once the costume is complete, but it will consist of the following pieces.

1. Overcoat
2. Chemise
3. Pants
4. Under vest
5. Over vest

That’s right, DH likes layers and wants 2 vests for his costume to be worn together.

For mine, I did want something a little more fitted than the coat from S3677. I am in love with the corsets that Damsel in this Dress does. Michelle has mastered the art of making a women look sexy and still be tasteful! See what I mean? Gorgeous, right?!?! Everyone should go check out her Etsy store and buy one from her! I wish I could!

I am making my costume some what of a cross between the two. I am using the coat base of S3677 and tailoring it to be slightly more womanly and I am working up a faux leather corset boned entirely with spiral steel hoop boning. I first used it for the peacock dress and I am 100% sold on the amazingness of it! I can’t believe I ever used the crappy plastic boning when I first started making costumes. As much as I love the idea bustles on back of the pirate corsets, I am not going to do it this time. Maybe next, we will see. The pieces I need to complete for mine are

1. Overcoat
2. Chemise
3. Corset
4. Pants

More pictures will follow as we progress with these. The goal is to have both costumes completed by mid-October when we go to the faire.

I have been feeling awfully inspired as of late to start an in-depth project. I am going to attribute most of this to the fact that I am currently reading Julie and Julie by Julie Powell. But it also has to do with some of the other blogs I read like Victoria at Ten Thousand Hours of Sewing. I love doing my individual projects, but I want more of a challenge and a goal. I want a focus to my blog. So, I asked my DH to help me come up with a project. Now, I admit I did phrase this the wrong way initially. In true Sarah fashion, I said, “Honey, I think I need a new project.” To which he immediately pursed his lips and donned his angry eyes. If you know me in anyway, I tend to have multiple projects going on at once, so this reaction was to be expected from him. After further explanation, he helped me come up with a basis for said project.

Here are a few things you should know about me first:
1. I am kind of a history dork. Now, when I say kind of, I mean there is absolutely no way of denying the dorkiness of my obsession.
2. We attend the Ohio Renaissance Festival every year and are going to a Old West Festival starting this year.
3. I love love love costumes. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, next to my own personal holiday known as Black Friday.

With these things in mind, I am going to start a 2-3 year long costuming project. I plan on making costumes for each myself and DH for 8 different periods, for a total of 16 complete costumes. If I am going to do it, I am going to do it up right. This does include accessories, even though I will not be making all of them. The will be complete costumes by the time they can be worn. None of the we will add to this later. The costume eras are as follows.

Renaissance Festival:
1. English Tudor
2. Pirate
3. Barbarian/Viking
4. Highland/Celtic

Old West Festival:
1. Civil War
2. Victorian
3. Frontier/western
4. Steampunk

Now I know that the steampunk is not really a real era but the Old West Fest has a steampunk weekend and come on, it’s steampunk, making it kinda awesome. This was much harder than I imagined to narrow my choices of projects down. I really wanted to do some sort of Asian kimonos, Marie Antoinette/King Louis era and Middle Eastern costumes. In the end, I decided to stick with costumes for the festivals that we are currently attending.

I will be taking these era at a time, starting with pirates. I am currently working on pirate costumes for us to wear next month to the festival, so this will be a little incomplete for what all I want to document. I may also just decide to make a different set of pirate costumes later just so I can fully include everything. I want to start with posting my research on styles, colors, fabrics. I will also keep track of hours spent, cost involved and fabric and notions used. I do want to keep better photographic documentation throughout the process of each costume. The goal of each project is to improve my costuming construction and attention to detail. I want to make garments that are very true to the era in all areas of overall appearance.

With all of this in mind I am trying to decide if I want to change the name of my blog to streamline it with the project. I will still be making other non-costume garments that I want to post about. I think I may just leave it as is. What do you think?

I began this weekend with grand and glorious plans of sewing a few pieces. I have ended up with only 1. I did not do any sewing on Friday or Saturday. Why I do not know. Other things just kept coming up. Sunday I set out again with those grand and glorious plans. I started out by going to Jo-Ann’s on what I had intended for 2 weeks now to be a small trip to get the much needed yarn that was on sale to finish a scarf. What I ended up with was 18 yards of fabric. Some for my pending pirate costume (S3677), 7 yards to be exact. The other 11 yards was at the request of DH for his pirate costume (S4923). Now this is the first and probably last time that I have ever truly not intended to buy fabric and had DH be the one saying I should get this. I don’t know what to think of it. I don’t have any pictures of anything as the camera batteries are dead. But here is what we got.

For me:
3 1/2 yards cream woven cotton for my chemise
2 yards gray twill for my pants
1 1/2 yards burgundy woven cotton for my corset lining

For DH:
3 yards lime green duck cloth for his pants
4 yards black cotton for his chemise
1 yard burnt orange crepe back satin for a sash
1 yard brown silk for vest #1
2 yards brown micro suede for vest #2

I don’t know how this happened. I have turned him into a costume monster! He is all about his ren faire costumes now. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. After this trip, I only got one military green cotton knit top sewn (S2603 view E) to wear to work. I love the sleeveless top that is included in this. It’s perfect to wear under cardigans and jackets in the office. I also made another one last weekend out of a gray, yellow and hot pink print knit. This is probably going to be a TNT pattern for me. It was quick and easy to get together with no, I repeat NO, alterations! I also got all sorts of pieces cut out to work on a new skirt (B4613 view E), vest (S3690 view D) and wrap cardigan (S2603 view B) to wear to work. Those 3 projects are going on the back burner as the pirate costumes need to all be ready for the ren faire next month. September is National Sewing Month and I have found my sewing mojo just in time! I will probably resurface with pictures sometime in October once all the sewing is done.