Renaissance Festival Outfit

One of my favorite events of the year runs late August through September; the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. *squeeeee*  When I was a kid we would go and dress up and have a blast.  As an adult I've learned to be much more boring and stopped dressing up.  A few years ago my friend finally convinced me to start dressing up again and it's amazeballs.  Whenever Judgey McJudger, it's awesome.  Over the years I've now accumulated a small collection of Ren Fest gear, this year I bought a new cheapy underbust corset from eBay.

It's actually not that bad.  Steel busk, supposed steel flexible boning.  And it came with a matching g-string!  So, there's that.

Anyway, because of my new-found sewing skillz, obviously I needed to amp up the ensemble.  At the Ren Fest they sell gorgeous petal skirts to lay over your basic chemise.

Okay, if you don't know anything about renaissance fancy dress, you wear a basic solid color chemise or a blouse and matching skirt. (Well, they don't have to match, but we're talking the basics here.)  Then you would wear either an under or over bust corset (self-explanatory) or you might wear a thing that's like a vest/corset with a skirt attached which would cover part of your basic skirt.  There are lots of options.  Then you can pile on the accessories from there.  Accessories tend to be expensive so you get a couple pieces a year and mix n match.  One of the pieces being a petal skirt, made of a circle of several pieces of fabric with a pointed end.

So, I wanted to make myself an overskirt to match my new corset.  I have a nice, quality fancy corset that I took borrowed from my mom, but I recently wore it for boudoir photos ("wait, wha?") so I wanted to mix it up a bit.  I found a SUPEREASY tutorial on making a square circle skirt here.  AND THEN!  Then I found another square circle skirt tutorial that showed it with a solid layer on the bottom and an organza on top.  SOLD!  I decided to make the bottom layer a solid baby blue linen, then a light purple organza top layer.  The problem was that my um circumference is a bit...circumference-y... so the skirt doesn't quite work out perfectly, but it worked fine enough.

AND THEN!  One of the recurring dilemmas I have when going to the renaissance festival is the purse issue.  I don't want to bring a modern purse because a) that totally clashes with my outfit; b) i don't want to carry a stupid purse; c) stupid purse.  Hubs doesn't want to carry around my crap either.  He has and we get our money all mixed up and everything, it's a mess.  I do have a little purse with embroidery, but it's not quite big enough.  So, handy dandy new skillz came into play.  This time I drafted my own pattern.  YEP!  I'm already that genius.  I even lined it.  It's kind of awesome.  I made myself a little drawstring pouch type purse in a navy blue rose print brocade, lined with iridescent blue/purple dupioni.  The drawstring is navy rope.  It perfectly fits my phone, keys, hand sanitizer, and money.  YAY ME!  I think I could have understitched the lining but I still hadn't grasped how to do that yet.  I wasn't planning on blogging about this so I didn't take pictures of each item, but here is a picture of yours truly at the ren fest:

I got a lot of compliments on my outfit that day.  Go me!  Another alteration I had made was to my shirt.  Last year I wore this shirt and it was all sorts of unruly.  This year I figured I would "fix" the neckline by adding a running stitch where the elastic had been and gathering it just a bit.  Well.  I don't like the outcome.  I actually really don't like how I look in any of the pictures taken of me that day.  Whatever.  Live and learn.  I think my friend will be wearing this next and she'll rock it!  I also put together Hubs' outfit who is seen in the left corner over my shoulder.  It came out super awesome!  I put it together that day.  Yeah.  That's how I roll.  For the next time I go I have some new plans in mind for myself....... stay tuned!