Texas Renaissance Festival!

Yesterday we we able to go to the Texas Renaissance Festival.  We try to go every year, and it is definitely one of the things we will miss about living in Texas.  This is the first year that I have made all of our costumes.

I've posted about the costumes individually , but I'll link them here for the Google searchers.  I'm wearing McCalls 6141, altered for maternity.  It's still is a great fit at 33 weeks!

Logan is sporting McCalls 5500 on top and Burda 9671 on the bottom.  The applique is a dragon, roughly based on an online coloring page.  He got tons of compliments on his cool dragon!  The pants get worn constantly.  They fit him well and he likes them.  The tunic is a little big, but he's comfortable in it.

Mitch is wearing a heavily altered McCalls 4530 on top, and Simplicity 4378 on bottom.  The pants are a TNT for him.  He loves his tunic, and I am so happy to have finally managed a Ren Fest outfit for him that is comfortable and looks good.

My little princess's gown is based on Butterick 4910.  She loves it, and passers-by universally found her adorable.

We had a great time at the Faire! We watched belly dancers, jousters and sword fights, enjoyed all of the interesting costumes, and ate way too much faire food.  But the coolest part?

The elephant ride!!

McCalls 4530 Ren Fest adaptation

Mitch's Renaissance Festival tunic is hot off the machine, leaving me with only the pants to go!!  Woo hoo, home stretch!

I realize that it looks a bit like a nightgown on the hanger...  I'll get a better/modeled pic once the pants are done.  For reference, here was my "inspiration piece".

I started out with McCalls 4530 as a basic shirt block.  I cut the front as one piece with center front on the fold, and a slightly lower neckline.  I lengthened the body to just above the knees and marked the slit in the front of the neckline, and up the the hip on the side seam.  I used the sleeves as-is, except for straightening out the lower edge to make a smooth hemline.  Obviously, I ignored cuffs, collar and front bands, as well as the various "western" yokes.

I bound the neckline with a self fabric bias strip, which I topstitched down.  It also did a nice job enclosing the scratchy trim edge.  The fabric is a homespun that I got at Hancock.  It was nice to work with generally, but a pain to make into bias tape, as it tended to curl.

As a result, the sleeve seams are bound with commercial bias tape.  I did make nice french seams throughout, which look good, are sturdy and also serve to enclose the trim edges on the sleeves.

I also enclosed all of the hems and trimmed section of the neckline within the trim itself.  As a result, there is not a single exposed fabric edge anywhere in this shirt.  I realize that this is just a costume, but Ren Fest gear gets worn more than once around here, at least for the grown-ups, so I wanted this to be well made.