Medieval peasant dress

During the last weeks, I made Eva this dress, and I´m really proud of it:

(Please don´t mind all the tiny monuments in the background... we´re going a little overboard with that...)

 She wore it this weekend on carnival, which is quite a big deal in our region, she wore it to school and in town, and she will have multiple occasions to wear it in the future - our Dutch couchsurfing friends invited us to join them to the Elf fantasy fair in their tow, and I´m also hosting our towns fantasy night, and of course I´ll take my Eva with me.

So, sewing this dress serves a lot of purposes and was kind of overdue - I always wanted to make a medieval dress.

I looked a lot at the dresses Cersei Lannister wears in Game of Thrones, because I quite like her, plus she´s blond (and slightly bossy) like Eva, so I thought that might suit. But then again, I´m far from being a taylor like those amazing guys who create her costumes, so I figured we might go for someone from the ordinary people. Which doesn´t mean she´d have to go without her personal knight in shining armour:

 But it´s a lot cheaper, too, because look how we started:

 The fabric I used is a (large) scrap of Ikea´s Aina fabric - I had it lying around from Ronjas birthday party, where it served us as a tablecloth.

I didn´t even iron it, and basically freehanded the pattern. The only part missing here is the back, which I inserted later - for no particular reason.

One reason I didn´t iron the fabric is... I had to dye it anyway. Because just beige is a little plain. Evean for a peasant girl.

 I think the good, authentic method would have been to smash some berries. I might have done this, but since it´s February, we´re kind of short on berries. So instead, I used this:

Regular fabric dye. At least I went all authentic using my hands to move the fabric around. I guess I could have used a spoon, or worn gloves, but I liked to feel what I was doing, and I liked my red hands after.

I find stuff like that romantic. However.

Then it looked like this:

As you can see, I allready put the basic parts together, added loops for the front lacing, and began playing around with different ribbons I had around to use as a trim. We finally decided on a light green lace one I had lying around for years - my aunt in law wanted to throw it away, and you know how I am... and doesn´t it look cute:

And the ribbon for the lacing... pssst, don´t tell Tim... we borrowed it out of his box for magic rope tricks :)

So, this was my very quick take on a medieval peasants dress for my daughter Eva. And just because he´s such a cutie, here´s her knight, once more:

See you soon - I really hope ;)

Music for the day:

I adore how this song builds, and builds, and builds. I love the yearning it expresses, and the comfort and warmth one might find even in such yearning. Very beautiful.