The Order of the Iron Hand

This past month I have been more active on the costuming message lists. I am relatively new to period costuming and have many questions. I do have a pretty good traditional sewing background, but feel like I'm on another planet while navigating my way through historic portraits, patterns, lack of patterns and pages of dress diaries on the web. There is so much information out there that it can get very overwhelming, very quickly.

I want to thank the Margo Anderson message board for not only being so very helpful and supportive, but giving me answers to so many questions. Some day I will be able to answer someone else's newbie questions!

Anyway... back to the post title: On Margo's list, we were talking about hand sewing and how much of a B@#$& it can be. It seems that they have started a group for those of us who have struggled their way through hand-sewing a piece of clothing in one month.

Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I said that I would sew:

• a linen Tudor smock
• Tudor doublet
• Tudor Venetian hose

All this hand-sewn in one month. Now this all has to be documented with pictures and such. These will be for my son's first SCA costume. He's all excited (or as excited as a 12 year old boy will openly show) about his outfit and can't wait to see it.

I will certainly keep you all posted here, as this will be the place for my dress/garb diaries.

Wish me luck...

Your's in time...