I made this dress for my daughter Claire who wanted to go as a Renaissance girl. She picked out the pattern from photos of dresses I found by looking through Google image. She picked out the fabric for the dress and inset. I made the dress by making significant alterations to a regular Simplicity dress pattern. I drafted the pattern for the circular pieces attached to the arm and the front inset. My mother-in-law gave advice through email about how to make a headpiece. It is made from a bias fabric tube trimmed with ribbon pom-poms that I made. Long loose ribbons and hemmed fabric are attached in three places in the back. I made a matching necklace out of polished stones set on a waxed linen cord. In order to make the dress easy to slip on and off, I left a 4-inch opening in the sleeve and closed it using grommets with black oval elastic criss-crossed to look like cord–you can see this detail in the ‘ren girl 1’ photograph. Claire loved wearing this dress to two Halloween parties and will get many happy hours of play out of it this year.

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