12th Night Costumes

For the past several years our church has hosted a Medieval 12th Night festival to raise money for local Norman charities.  As the 12th night is the twelfth day of Christmas/Epiphany, it's almost always the first Saturday after the first of the year.  While this is as close to accurate as possible, it is a pretty inconvenient time of year for a big event requiring lots of volunteers and organization.  Everyone is usually just getting over the holidays and of course all the lead up time most people are likewise very busy preparing for Christmas.

However inconvenient the timing though, the actual event itself is pretty fun.  It's theoretically set in 1470 and we have a very yummy Medieval meal, funny skits, and period music provided by the choir (of which I am a part).  The choir also fills the roles of the royal court so has fancy dress costumes.  

In the past we've borrowed or rented costumes from the OU theater department and from a church up in Oklahoma City that does a similar event (at a different time), but this year we started making costumes for the church to have.  I was in charge of this sewing and gathered together a fabulous group of ladies (and three young girls) who were willing to sew.  I bought fabric, patterns, notions, and trim then made up kits for each sewer so each could make her assigned costume.  We were six sewers and we made 4 lady costumes and 2 man costumes.  Next year, hopefully we'll make just about the reverse and that should do it.

I made the costume for our choir director and it was somewhat challenging since I haven't made clothes in ages. 

After doing some alterations, I think it fits pretty well, here are some pictures my friend sent from when she tried it on. 

I was so thrilled with all our contributing sewers; everyone came through brilliantly.  Some people were relative beginners while others were true experts.  Several of the costumes are just exquisitely finished and assembled; way nicer than anything I'd ever make.  Shout out to Ms. Mike Mcgehee, Ms. Helen DeBolt, Ms. Christie Godec, Ms. Kathy Mills, and Ms Vicky Bratton, you guys are awesome! The three young ladies in the front row were all interested in learning how to sew so we got together and I helped them make simple costumes to wear at the feast.  I've blurred their faces so as not to spread them around the internet, but they did really great!

And here's a picture of all the choir members wearing the fabulous new costumes.   The costume I wear is one I made many years ago and its sadly somewhat small now.   Some of the others are also old or borrowed from other sources but the gentleman on the left and all five people on the right are all wearing newly sewn costumes.

Any of you been sewing costumes lately?  It's pretty much the wrong time of year for that I guess, but we were pleased to get these made.