May – June 2009
A low-sew, hot-weather, pseudo-historical pirate outfit. Made largely from stash fabrics. It may be the first costume that Aaron can wear very comfortably at temperatures over 75 degrees.
This was a relatively quick project. I already had the Renaissance shirt. And part of my motivation for making a pirate costume was to take advantage of Aaron’s current moustache. He humored me and changed the waxed, handlebar style to a pirate version.
My original plan was to make up the outfit and then try to distress it so he’d look like one of these rough and tumble Howard Pyle pirates. When push came to shove however, I was unwilling to damage his perfectly good Renaissance shirt. The other option would have been to sew and distress a new shirt. But that would have defeated the purpose of trying to whip up a low-sew costume. Without a grimy shirt, I didn’t see a point to messing up the pants, and so this ended up being a very cleaned-up pirate costume.
I started with Kannik’s Korner‘s “Man’s Outer Breeches, Slops” pattern. I skipped all the nice historical details they put into the slops since Aaron wouldn’t be wearing another pair of breeches under them. It went together like a breeze. They’re in some medium-weight blue linen from the stash. I even had five old brass buttons to finish the fly. The sash is made from a remnant of linen/rayon purchased years ago for it’s lively color. It was pretty exiting to finally put it to use. It was cut into three 15″ wide strips, sewed into a single length, and then frayed along all the edges. I purchased 1/3 yard of yellow-red shot linen for the head wrap, again finishing the edges by fraying the seams.
Luckily we found a pair of very comfortable buckle shoes at the Goodwill, along with a totally beat-up old belt. I made the clip-on brass hoop earrings for just $3, and had a few other odd pieces of jewelry in my supplies box. Since Aaron’s not into wearing weapons with his costumes, we got him this Jas Townsend pipe. It’s more his style anyway.
