Maid Marian Gown: Complete

I finished my Maid Marian gown! You can see more photos here.
♥ Anna Kristine

Supplies for Finishing :)

I have been really busy lately so I'm sorry for the lack of posting! My parents were here visiting last week and my mom brought me my beads so now I can finish my Maid Marian dress! She also brought me the leftover dress scrap fabric so I need to decide if I want to make a belt or not. If I do...it's going to be awhile before it's finished. :P

I haven't been doing very well on my challenge have I? I'm already 4 costumes behind. :P Ah well, it has helped me get more done then I think I would have otherwise. And who knows...maybe one of these months before the year is up I'll whip out a ton of costumes. ;) And they don't all have to be big costumes, accessories count too. :)

Below are the supplies I have to finish the dress. I am excited to finish it! 

The beads on the left are some I bought while being impatient for my beads to get here, but I think they might be too gold. The beads in the middle are what my mom brought, but now I'm worried there aren't enough of them. The red cord is some suede cord I'm going to use for the lacing in the back and the embroidery floss is to hand sew the eyelets. I think I need a day to watch Robin Hood and work on this!

I am going to have to put working on costumes into my schedule so I will remember to get it done. ;) 

Hopefully I will have more to update soon!

What have all of you been working on?

♥ Anna

Inspiration

I needed a little inspiration to work on my Maid Marian dress, so I was looking for pictures, and ran across this close up of her beading. I wish I had found this before I started the beading on my dress! Oh well I still like mine...but someday maybe I will make a more detailed neckline. I think hers is so pretty!

{image source}

 I got some new knitting gadgets in the mail the other day so I am distracted by those but I'm really going to try to get some work done on this dress this week! Maybe I can finish it before the end of the month!? All except some beading that will have to wait for my mom to bring my beads in May.

I already have ideas floating around my head for more costumes so I can't wait to finish this one!
♥ Anna Kristine

Maid Marian Progress

My Maid Marian dress is finally coming together! I attached the collar today while watching an episode of Robin Hood for inspiration. But I realized I left the beads to finish the beading at my parents house in storage...so I may have to wait a little while before I finish that part, but it can be added after the dress is completed so it wont hold me up!  

 I did much more simple beading than on Marian's dress since for this particular project I didn't want to invest that much time in it. But I think it still looks okay.

 Pinned down:

 All done being stitched on:

 Also yesterday I attached the sleeves, yay! It's getting so close! Just need to do some seam finishing on the inside, eyelets down the back and hem it and I think it's nearly done! Unless I decide to make a beaded belt....still not sure about that yet.

Alright....off to watch more Robin Hood and do some more stitching!
♥ Anna Kristine

Maid Marian Progress: Sleeve Lining

Lately I've been trying to be good about using up what I have and not buying any fabric unless I absolutely have to. So, when I got to the point of lining the sleeves on my Maid Marian dress I was stuck. None of the fabrics I had looked good with it. If you look at this photo you can see her sleeve lining is a light brown, looks almost tea dyed...right? ;) So I decided to make an adventure out of it and decided to make some of my fabric work.

I took some white fabric I had in my stash (I think it used to be a sheet) and cut out the pieces for the lining...but I thought white was a little boring so I decided to add something pretty to it.

 I played around with some of the different stitches on my sewing machine until I found a couple I liked.

 Then I started sewing lines.

 And more lines...

 Until the whole piece was transformed into a much more interesting piece of fabric.

 And then I did the same to the other sleeve.

 Next, I took about 10 Trader Joe's Irish Breakfast tea bags and put them in a non metal bowl.

 I added boiling water and let the tea steep for a few minutes:

 And made myself a cup of tea with the extra water. ;)

 Then I added my fabric. Here is where I made a mistake...I left the tea bags in thinking it would help the fabric darken but it ended up making some dark spots in odd places...so if you ever do this you may want to take the tea bags out first! But hey...you live and learn.

 I let that 'brew' for about 6 hours (you can go longer if you want a darker brown) and I flipped the fabric over every now and then to make sure it was all getting colored evenly. Then rinsed them and soaked them in cold water for a few minutes, then wrung them out and hung them up to dry.

The end result:

I am pretty pleased with it overall! I think it looks quite Medieval, don't you? I'm excited to sew the sleeves together next and see how it all looks!

February Project: Maid Marian Gown

For my February costume challenge I hope to finish my Maid Marian gown replica from the BBC series Robin Hood. I finished all the beading (at least that I am going to do for this particular project) and have some of it sewn together...but there is still a lot to do and figure out!

So I guess that means I will just have to watch lots of Robin Hood this month to stay inspired!

 What are you working on this month?

Maid Marian

One of my goals in the new year is to finish up some projects that have already been started. One that has been in progress for a few months is my replica of this dress Maid Marian wears in the BBC Robin Hood series.

Today I got most of the front and back sewn together except for side seams and started on the beading.
I'm going a lot lighter on the beading as I don't have as much time to invest in it but here it is so far:
It's good to be back to sewing again. :) Feels good to be getting somewhere on a projects as well. :)