I took the photo with my cell phone so the color is a bit off. I'll post pictures of me wearing the dress later this week, hopefully.
The dress is out of what was a blue cotton brocade I bought at the thrift store - 15 yard bolt for $5- that I dyed with Scarlet rit to get it to a lovely grayish lavender. It reads gray in certain lights and almost bright purple in others. I really love the way it came out.
To pull out the more purple tones, I added pink silk velvet sleeves and pink glass pearls. The glass pearls were a great find at Pennsic - $3 a strand and they are so realistic looking, even the lady who sold them had trouble telling them from the real thing! You really have to inspect them to see that they are glass - luckily glass pearls are quite period correct.
The dress is a mix of handsewn and machine sewn. The neckline is hand sewn - whipstiched. The hem is machine sewn.
The lining is linen that I dyed using the last of the indigo dye.
The dress is very comfy to wear. The cotton brocade is just thick enough to wear in a range of temperatures without getting too hot or too cold. The silk velvet sleeves are a dream when it does get cooler. The sleeves are lined in silk to help keep my arms warm this fall and going into the winter months!
I was going for the early 1520's Venetian look, similar to this:
