Condo Blues: Elizabethan Doublet Costume Work in Progress

Monday, August 28, 2017

Elizabethan Doublet Costume Work in Progress

This time of year most folks are looking forward to their favorite fall holidays and pumpkin spice everything.

As much as I hate to see summer slowly transition into fall, it signals one of my favorite times of the year:

Costume Season!

I gave a tiny sneak peak of my latest costuming project on Instagram (follow me @condoblues on Instagram pretty please?) an Elizabethan doublet, breeches, and hat for my husband.  I'm machine embroidering all of the velvet trim like a crazy person.

A post shared by Lisa (@condoblues) on
This eagle will appear on the back of the jacket, flanked by two embroidered flourishes. I bought the killer machine embroidery files from Urban Threads.



Before I cut or embroidered my good upholstery fabric, I made a scrap fabric test (called a muslin) of a new commercial sewing pattern. I'm glad I did because there were a few historical fit details I wasn't happy with in an extreme overly picky history buff kind of way. I decided to use my more historically accurate go to Dashing Doublet pattern instead. (affiliate link)

After making a tweaking a new muslin from the Dashing Doublets pattern, I used the muslin pattern to cut my good fabric, and got down to embroidering the velvet trim pieces. It isn't perfect machine embroidery, but better than my frist big project. The front panels match up and didn't take too many tries to match up. Whew.


The two front pieces are one 12 hour day of nothing but embroidering the same patter over and over again.

My ever helpful Project Manager and Pattern Weight Lacey is working hard keeping me on task so I meet my dead line.

I'm really just here to watch the movies Lisa streams on Prime Videos while she works.  
(affiliate link that lets Lisa buy more fabric and dog food)

The hat will be a blue velvet 1870's Spanish toque. This time around I am building it with plastic canvas instead of buckram in case my husband gets stuck performing outside in bad weather  (buckram melts in the rain.)

The unfinished hat to be.

Here's a rough dry fit of what I have finished so far. I will add detectable tie on sleeves my husband can wear when the weather is cold but only after the rest of the costume is finished since he won't need to wear the sleeves right away.


Fingers crossed I finish on time!

And just to keep the whole Green Living thing real...


Recently I've been writing quite a few tips and suggestions for reducing household trash. While my family took on reducing our landfill trash as a household project, it just like everything else we do around here follows the 80/20 Rule. I never claimed or tried be be a Big Greenzilla Guru and want to show you that real life is alive and well here at Condo Blues.

Here's a photo before I took out the trash in my sewing studio yesterday before writing this post.



In other words, I'm not done with the project, so I will generating more trash as soon as this post goes live. Sleep is for the weak. I'm on a deadline!


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