Green Noble – 10 months

Shirt – Jennifer Thompson’s easy Italian chemise

I measured the baby from her collar bone to her ankles for the length and gues-stimated the width based on the cotton/linen remnant that I had. I did the same for the sleeves and made the gussets 1/4 of the sleeve length. The pieces were sewn together with the prescribed 2″ and 6″ from the front and back edges. I serged side seams after stitching them up. For both the neckline and the cuffs, I made a casing for elastic, which I draped around her chest and wrists to measure. I left a couple of inches in the hem to ensure that she’ll be able to wear it the full season.

Dress – Simplicity 2563

This was done in the remnants from my green brocade gown. I chose to start with View A (Snow White), making the necessary alterations to fit the faire style. For sanity’s sake, I kept the darts. If anyone had called me on it, I would likely have keyed his/her car. I omitted the piping and lining, and I changed the bodice to front opening. I left off the sleeves because, again, the didn’t fit the style. Since I changed the bodice, I also changed the skirt, making it front opening–“easy on, easy off”, fussy-baby-friendly is the way to go. Instead of gathering the skirt (because gathering is cruel and unusual punishment), I put in box pleats using the divide and conquer method. It involved matching up the suggested seams and dots, then minimal math adjustments to get the right number of pleats. I folded in the edges with bias tape and did some decorative stitching to keep it all down. I stitched the bodice to the skirt, added metal eyelets, sewed around the eyelets with embroidery floss, did a hem check, and marked it “complete”.

Biggins cap – Unknown

The pattern for this is “unknown” because I can’t remember where I got the pattern for mine. Years ago, when I was new to faire costumes, I came across an easy Biggins cap tutorial and I made it. The baby wore mine for the first faire, just to protect her head from the sun and itchy straw hat–it was like a bandana on her. For this one, I used the same cotton/linen from her chemise. I put the big one on her, pinched up the excess, and made a new template from that. I did some machine stitching in embroidery thread around the front to resemble blackwork, and attached a ribbon at the points.

Booties – Grammy

My Mom made them in the car on the way to the faire. I threaded the tops with silver ribbon. ‘Nuf said. She’s awesome.

Teething necklace

It’s made of cotton (looks like leather) cord with a silver closure and black plastic purse rings. She wore it, but she didn’t use it. That’s my girl.