Saturday some friends and I attended a Regency-themed event: Archery and Jane Austen, hosted by the Wylie Recreation Center.  It's unusual that a city puts on a costume-friendly event like this, so we had to take advantage of it!  Since the main activity was archery, I assumed it would be an outdoor event.  Coming on the heels of some harsh winter weather, I also assumed it would be chilly.  Well, I was wrong on both counts but my friend Chris got some snazzy cool weather gear out of it anyway!

Working from Laughing Moon #130, I made her the redingote without the cape.  Chris's only request was that she wanted something colorful to break up the all white dress she'd be wearing underneath.  Knowing she loves purple, I perused the selection at JoAnn's and came away with a velvety velour/suedecloth sort of fabric.  While it's not historically accurate, it is super soft and a great color.  Parts of the bodice call for a lining and I just used some light lavendar satin that was already in the stash.

The pattern goes together well enough, though I did find it particularly time consuming.  I did have issues with a few of the marks not lining up, but everything was close enough that I wasn't confused by it.  I made some adjustments based on Chris's body type, so I essentially cut the collar, sleeves and sleeve heads in the smallest size, and the bust and skirts in the size that corresponded with her bust measurement.  This caused a little bit of wonkiness with the sleeves since I didn't adjust the sleeve pattern to correspond with the larger-sized side bodice piece, but in the end it still fit her all right and worked out for the archery.  I did shorten the standing collar by about an inch since the pattern instructions specifically mention that it's very tall.



( More outfit and archery fun! )