Project three, making re-enactment costumes

My friend Vonnie, who teaches Kundalini dance and Bellydancing, kindly offered to model this dress for me, although she said you really need a very buxom wench for this one. Hee hee if you are a buxom wench into re-enactment and fancy this dress make me an offer, lol. (I am 5 foot 3 inches and weigh about 60 to 70 Kilos depending on how I set my scales that day hee hee.) This dress is made of velvet and is pretty heavy and hot, the shirt however was your all purpose undergarment for the time and is very light and airy and was actually pulled in between all the strings down the arm to give the puffy look.

I used to do many re-enactment weekends, mainly up at Taminick near Glenrowan as it was only a few miles from where I lived. The bottom picture is of all our Teepees and period tents in the Taminick valley. Yep I'm a big kid and like to get out there and play with my bow and arrows. (only at targets for me, being vegetarian, but hey its good fun) Most of the clothes were work day clothes as I needed to do work while I was out there, proding the teepee fire and such, partying hard and cooking food. The two sets of clothes I have on there were just the general clothing of the poor in around early 1800's. I put me in twice just do you could see both sets of clothing.

Now I can't say the clothes I made were 100% authentic copies because you have to spend much money on research and materials to really do these things justice. However I stuck to fabrics which would have been around at the time and small print cottons with only a few colours on. All the sewing was done by hand and the eyelet holes in the bodices were also painstakingly done by hand.

I often wonder why I was so attracted to living in the past, I think subconciously I was trying to come to terms with some of my past lives. It is also very good to occasionally live close to nature, and realise exactly what goes into life and food production and keeping warm. Its all fairly easy now in that most of us do very long days at other kinds of jobs to support all our labour saving devices. I must say having lived very close to nature and being pretty self sufficent, although it takes alot of effort there is much satisfaction to be found in feeding and clothing yourself very simply.

If you have any comments email Alyssa at alyssa@alyssamaryrose.com