A Look at the Beginning

Long ago, in the far remembered past, I embarked on the tremendous adventure of making my own costumes. (Well, alright, it was my early 20s.) I knew how to sew by hand but I had never tackled anything with a machine. I had seen them used by all of the women in my family, and yet, I had never learned their mysteries. Indeed, my one lesson with my mother was rather disastrous.

I was, however, rather fearless about these things in my 20s and determined that I would make my own costumes. I had a mental picture that I wanted to see in fabric and I could envision every detail of its construction. I knew precisely how all of the pieces needed to come together; I simply didn't know how to join them with a machine. In my naivete, I started by hand. By the end of the project, I knew the basics of how to use a machine.

The project was simple and inspired by my then current passion for Celtic linguistics: I wanted an Irish Renaissance Costume. I am afraid that historicity and this costume only briefly touched at places. The rest was fancy inspired by what I saw at the various Renaissance faires that I attended while I lived in Texas.

The internet was a wild and wooly beast in those days. There was information to be had, but no Google or Wikipedia to help track down sources or cross reference. The Costumer's Manifesto was in its very early days of construction but a most helpful site. There I turned for much of my information.

I started with the shift or Leine and I used what information and images I could find on the wild wooly web at the time. (It seems opinions may have changed.) I found a tremendous deal on the most lovely linen at a JoAnn's in Austin. They were practically giving it away so I bought every last yard they had. Most of this linen went into making my shift and the majority of that went to the sleeves. (I recall that I made the lower portion of each sleeve out of a yard of fabric per sleeve. They are rather weighty little things.) I gathered the top of each sleeve into little tucks which I sewed down carefully by hand and then covered with long embroidered strips of linen. I worked on that embroidery for weeks. I even took it to my classes and embroidered between lectures. I carefully applied the embroidered linen strips with a hidden stitch that I ran under the folded raw edge. The linen was given to a bit of fraying so when I finished the sleeves, I folded over all of the seams and sewed them closed so the raw edges would be covered. I thought it looked a little nicer and would wear a little better.

Completely departing from all of the research at the time, I added my own touch to the body of the shift. I took several tucks under each side of my bust to tame the very full body of the shift. To my youthful eyes, all of that fabric just hanging there, untamed, was rather dowdy. Worse, it was unwieldy. I rather liked the tucks. They made me feel prettier in my pseudo-Irish shift. Initially the neck line was very high, and I embroidered a simple red chain stitch around the whole thing and created a sort of keyhole opening with a simple pewter Celtic knot clasp. However, my youthful need to feel pretty in my ensemble led me to making the neckline rather more daring. (Goodbye keyhole and clasp; hello cleavage!) I re-embroidered the red chain stitch around the new neckline.

I will not try to recount the many hours of sewing that went into this shift, but suffice it to say that every seam is done by hand. By the end of it, I was extremely eager to learn how to use a machine and to acquire one for the purpose.

~La Cucitrice