Project Specs:

Materials: cotton and linen

Pattern: 14th Century Women's Kirtle and Cotehardie by Reconstructing History

First Event Attended in it: Technically? Spring Coronation 2020 on my couch. Actually? Yet to be determined. Please excuse my sloppy change into the green side, I was running late to something.

The Return of the Red Dress went so much better than I expected. This is the first project I have done in which things actually went exactly as they planned. I was utterly shocked and I'm wondering what devil I sold my soul to by accident. The necklines and hems and sleeves all lined up correctly on the first try. It's black magic and I am not responsible for the consequences.

It took both more and less time than expected. I ended up having a lot of time of my hands all of a sudden with the COVID-19 pandemic. All told, the project took about a month once I really go down to it. The biggest time allocation was spent on trying to line the gores up.

This pattern comes with two different sleeve styles- one with a gore, and one with the gore built into the sleeve. On the red side, I used the gore and the goreless on the green, just to see which worked best. I think I had the most success with the green side and if/when I make this pattern again, I'll probably stick with the goreless method.

From a fit perspective, this dress is awesome. It's comfortable without being restricting and can be dressed up or dressed down and I'm really looking forward to this being a utility piece in my SCA closet. I think the next major piece of garb I make will also be this pattern, but trying to mix in some block printing and trying to make a middle ground between casual and court garb. I'd like to actually do this as an A&S display project, with some research into the style and some real documentation.

I'm in the process of finishing the removable sleeves. These will not be reversible and I'll have both a red and a green set. I'm debating making a smock appropriate for this cut of the dress, but I'm actually quite happy with how this shows off my blackwork.

High points:

- I love the colors. Both the red and the green are exactly what I wanted.

- The fit is super comfortable!

- I enjoyed learning how to lucet and it is definitely coming with me as a new addition to my "I need projects to fiddle with" project.

Points of improvement:

- Fitting this dress myself was a challenge. Evan tried to help but that went... interestingly. It's not super evident anywhere but underneath the arms on the red side but I certainly notice it. Next time I'll have help from someone who actually knows what they're doing.

- I used silk thread to stitch the green side because that's what I had. I thought that its tensile strength would be a boon in the integrity of the dress. However, securing it was a challenge. I had to re-sew several points. Ultimately, I made the decision to go pick up some green linen thread and that was the right call.