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.
She is glorious! What a cutie honey! By the way? I am hoping to get to Pennsic this year, so I would love it if you all could come by!
Cilean
Thanks, Cilean! We like her, too! We want to do Pennsic, so we put it in the maybe column for this year. If it makes the list, I’ll let you know.