Costumes -- A Pirate Wench

When I was invited to a pirate ball I realized that what I had in my closet would not do for the occasion. I started by sitting down and creating a few ideas. I finally settled on idea one that took my fancy and set about making it.


First I selected some fabric, and then I set to work. I chose a vest pattern with a deeply scooped neckline, a fitted shirt pattern, and a pattern with a gathered skirt for my base patterns.

My skirt took the most alteration. I made the top part of my skirt according to the pattern, and than ran two gathering stitches down the front of my skirt. I gathered one until it looked good, gathered the other one to match, and then ran another seam on top of my gathering seam to hold it in place. I made my underskirt after finishing my over-skirt. I made it of a rectangle of muslin that was shorter than the over-skirt's length and about as wide as my over-skirt could stretch. I added two ruffles to it, which were made of flat lace. They were about one and a half times the width of the bottom of my under-skirt and the bottom ruffle was about twice as wide as the other.

The vest needed no alteration, but I added a tie in back for decoration, cut it out of a striped red polyester fabric, and found some sufficiently gaudy buttons for the front.

My shirt pattern had the wrong collar and sleeves, so I left the sleeves and collar off and made my own. The sleeves I made out of muslin rectangles that were a bit wider than the armhole when sewn in a loop. The ruffles for each sleeve I made out of two rectangles of flat lace, which were wider than my cuff and two different widths, one being about twice as wide as the other. My inner ruffle stuck out about four inches beyond my top ruffle. Hidden about half an inch under my upper ruffle I ran a gathering stitch on my inner ruffle to keep it from flattening out too fast. My collar I made of rectangles of flat lace one and a half times the length of my neck edge. I cut two of them, in the same manner as my sleeve ruffles but of a different length, to match my sleeve effect. I finished the collar with a facing and put a row of buttons down the front.