Costuming is most fun when done with others. Fortunately, I live with lots of others. Unfortunately, I’m the only one so far who has the sewing skills to kit everyone out with gear. So I’ve only gotten one of my three point five interested kids set up with enough costuming apparel to join me.

On my birthday, my daughter and I did our first 18th century costuming venture together. We kept it simple – skipping pockets and bum pads and going for a barefoot, working class look.It set the other kids clamoring for outfits of their own, although they almost never wear the Victorian costumes I made for them for our first foray into family costuming. It pains me to make costumes for kids who will quickly outgrow them, rarely wear them, and whose younger siblings may not have the same interest in costuming.

That said, I’m also curious to see how everyone will look, and I’m excited about the creative challenge. It also gives me an excuse to procrastinate on my own costuming goals. As of now, that’s starting on an 18th jacket I’m allowing myself to be intimidated by, and a recreation of Vermeer’s The Milkmaid.

With COVID, it’s hard to think about a time when I could be part a group of costumers and DO stuff together. I’m still pretty unsure about re-enacting since that community has a reputation of being super judgemental, and with so many places closed, are people even doing much re-enacting?

So for now, it looks like I’ll be churning out a fleet of costumes for whichever of my children shows interest while I slowly burn through my own projects on the side, while taking breaks to mend all the holes everyone has keeps ripping in their modern day clothes.Hopefully my arms don’t fall off.

Costume notes: The post about the gold bedgown is here,  and the petticoat, accessories, and apron I made using mostly historically accurate techniques for my Outlander cosplay. I say mostly because my quilted petticoat is made of pre-quilted poly/cotton.

My daughter is wearing an African head wrap we bought from a vendor at a local Juneteenth celebration in 2019, a bedgown made the same way I made mine, a basic cotton shift, with a shot cotton petticoat, quilted petticoat, apron (red at her request), and neckerchief made using the instructions from the American Duchess Guide.

I constructed the quilted petticoat with kantha cloth from my stash. It ended up being way too long and you can see it peaking out in many of the photos. After the shoot, I added two growth pleats in the quilted petti which will add body and stop it from peaking out from under the outer layers. I also fixed some hem issues on the outer petti, which sat in the WIP pile for so long that some of the pins came out of the pleats. I didn’t notice the missing pleats, which resulted in my sewing it to the waistband wrong.

I hand-sewed all the hems, hand-finished the seams and visible parts, and used the machine for some of the inner long seams. I actually enjoy all the tweaking to get the fit right and find it quite satisfying as long as it doesn’t involved too much seam ripping.

As an aside, we both wear our bedgowns with our modern clothing all the time. Below is a closer view of the kantha petti, which my daughter plans to wear with her modern clothing. I made it to be reversible, and I’ll probably post the other side of it on a future post. I wasn’t able to find out how long kantha cloth has been a thing, but it’s no less historically accurate than my polyester blend quilted petticoat, and it looks pretty amazing. I do know they had India cotton in the 1700’s, which is what Kantha cloth is made of, so it’s at least possible that someone somewhere might have used some to make a quilted petticoat. If they didn’t, it was their loss.Yes.