Anne of a Thousand Days

First, much thanks to this site for providing LARGE images of the brown gown Anne wears in the movie.  It helped a lot for figured out a couple of things for the dress.

Ever since I saw the movie first 10 years ago, I've wanted this dress.  I have no idea why - it's not my normal colors or anything - I just love it.   The hood isn't accurate but the dress actually isn't that bad - it's something I can easily wear to SCA events and not get shunned.

I forgot my stays the day of the faire and couldn't exactly drive the two hours back home to get them so, I relied on the dress itself to hold everything correctly. It did okay - I didn't look ridiculous- but next time I need to remember my stays.

I bought the material years upon years ago. I think the main brown fabric is some sort of man made material meant for designer raincoats - perfect for a rainy day or a day right after a rainy day as long as it stays below that 72F threshold. It did, thankfully.

The gold material is gold cotton damask I think I got off of ebay four years ago. Maybe longer. The trim and false undersleeves are out of the paisley orange and black fabric that just happened to match the colors of the original movie gown - and I think the material is probably from the same time period as when the movie was made.

So hardly any natural fibers and a not historically accurate gown was a switch for me - however, I do like this dress.

I used the old McCalls Tudor gown pattern 3282. I have used this pattern a ton of times and love it. I drafted out the princess seams and the back darts. I enlarged the upper sleeve by adding a half inch on either side (you have to - they made it too small unless you have t-rex arms). I didn't bother cutting out the skirt and just used the remaining fabric, pleated it, and used that as the skirt fabric - which matches what they did on the movie gown better.

The french hood is, of course, hilarious. I didn't manage to finish what I wanted to do but I put together "something" so I'd have a dress many would hopefully recognize. I need to get some puffy gold fabric paint to make the "embroidery" on it. (The original really looks like fabric paint when you see a close up of it) I won't be able to wear it to SCA events but I want to complete the gown so I can wear it next year. :-)