Tudor Dress Progress

So, I decided a while ago to make a Tudor dress. I’ve been wanting to make one for a while now, even bought the fabric to make it, but I just got around to sew it all together. The dress is made from Simplicity pattern 2589 with raspberry red/black taffeta. (Outside gown is made of taffeta only) The color scheme is red/black/gold, but I originally wanted it to be blue, green, or purple. I ended up going with the current color scheme because I liked the fabrics that were in these colors. They were too pretty not to use. Plus they were on sale. (50% and 60% off fabric!!! YAY!!!)

Anyway, here are some in-pictures of the dress….

Top of the bodice without the sleeves. Here’s the raspberry red/black taffeta I mentioned before. It has embroidery on the fabric and it really look pretty….

More taffeta, only this time it’s black and the designs are fuzzy velvet! This is going to be what the inner sleeves are going to be made out of. The lower part of the sleeves  might be made out of black velvet, but I’m not sure yet. I’m still doing research on Tudor dresses so we’ll see…

Underskirt front panel fabric. It’s upholstery fabric and is really heavy….

The top of the gown with the gold rhinestone trim. I debated over what to use for the trim because I like the way pearls look on these dresses, but I didn’t want them on my dress. So this is my way of getting the look of the pearls, but made them look the way I want it to….

I hope I can wear this dress at the Arizona Renaissance Festival 2013. There are many costumes I’m making (I’m currently up to three different costumes) that can be worn at the Festival, so I might have a hard time picking what costume to wear. 🙂 Still, progress on this costume is going faster than I thought it would so I hope one day soon I can get photos of me wearing the dress. YAY!!!! XD