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| Fairy Queen at the Great Lakes Medieval Faire 2009 |
The thing that drove me nuts about the pattern, though, is that the skirt is separate from the bodice and are supposed to attach together at the waist with hooks and eyes (wtf?). Sooo the biggest modification I did was to make the construction a little more "period;" the bodice and overskirt are one piece and the underskirt is a stand alone piece. I created an open seam along one side of the bodice with heavy duty coat hooks on the inside:
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| Close up of bodice hooks and eyes |
Before I even got to the part of assembling the whole thing, I wanted to first bead the "puffed" fabric. I figured if I did it after it was constructed, it would be too easy to miss a spot due to the fullness. That is what took me (and several friends!) over a year to do! Lucky for me, the fabric was purchased already with those gathered puffs.
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| Close up of pearls on fabric "puffs" |
Besides the bodice/skirt reconfiguration, the only other modification was the addition of hanging sleeves (which amounted to a rectangular piece of trimmed out fabric attached between the fitted sleeve and the puffed sleeve). The other pain in the ass part was the cartridge pleats on the overskirt. If you don't know what they are, pray you never find out the hard way! Cartridge pleats = hand sewing = cranky costumer.
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| Close up of cartridge pleats |
Finishing touches include a jeweled belt I found at my local "scratch and dent" clothing outlet, Gabriel Brothers, jewelery from now defunct Sleepy Hollow (used to be at the southern Ohio Renaissance Faire...miss them terribly!), and an old 1930's era hair comb I found garage sale-ing that I painted gold. The staff is a curtain rod setup from Lowe's home improvement stores that I glued gems on. As for the wings:
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| Fairy Queen wings now serving as wall decor in my spare bedroom when not in use |
I think I am going to do a whole post dedicated just to the creation of all my costume wings.
