My Freshman year of High School I had just moved to a new school near Joplin, Mo after a several years of living in the Boot hill where there is absolutely nothing to do. I was taking French, and my French teacher told me about a trip to the Renaissance Festival the foreign language classes were sponsoring. I jumped on it. I had read several great books in Jr High about the time period (Nine Days a Queen, Doomed Queen Anne, Beware Princess Elizabeth, Mary, Bloody Mary, Girl in a Cage you get my drift...all great historical fictions for middle school students) So I embarked on my first trip to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. I feel in love. It was like my books had come to life everywhere I looked there were people from history, Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci. We took a tour of the festival and our cast member tour guide joked about how we all must have gotten attacked by thieves on our way there because we were all in our underwear. It was at that moment I decided I had to have a costume next year.
Over the course of the next year I met two friends who were either crazy like me, or easily influenced, not sure which, but I convinced them that we should go the the ren fest dressed like peasants the next year. So we went around and begged people to create these costumes for us. I asked my Grandmother who hates to sew, and it was a good thing she loved me. These costumes were just plain awful. The sewing was fine, but we didn't know what we were doing and picked the wrong fabrics, patterns, and colors, but did we have fun. We thought we were on top of the world. We even had a story going on about how we were the daughters of a Duke with his mistress. But we had fun.
But I was not content being a peasant, so I went back to my Grandmother and asked her to help me create a noble gown. She absolutely refused. So I called my other grandmother who lived in Houston, TX and asked for her help. She agreed. I thought she was going to make the gown for me, little did I know I was wrong. I got down there with my fabric and my hours of painstaking research and she showed me how to do it. The dress was about half way done when I left to go back to Missouri, and I spent hours that summer putting in seems and ripping them back out. But I was proud of the Emerald Green Anne Boleyn inspired dress. Unfortunately, because it was the first thing I ever made there were lots of little mistakes in it, and things didn't work out the way I thought the would. But it has been a staple in my Renaissance wardrobe. It is currently going through it's fourth remodel. I will try to do a blog on it. I wore this dress to my third trip to the Kansas City Renaissance Faire. That year I also organized the Debate and Theatre departments sponsored field trip to the Oklahoma Renaissance Faire. We took a group of about 12 the first year and all of us dressed up. It was beyond fun. We were all theatre students and so we had a running story going on as we ran all over the faire. My friend Jayson pretended he was a duke, and I his beautiful sister who had fallen in love with a musician of ours who was really a thief trying to marry me to steal my inheritance before running off with this maid he love...you get the drift...but man it was so much fun. We also got teased about being part of the festival, which I thought was the bomb.And I made up my mind right then and there that one day I would be part of the renaissance festival.
That's when I started on my biggest sewing project to date. My Katheryn Howard Dress. This dress is my baby. I finished it my senior year in time to wear it to the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival where it won first price in the costume contest. I adore this dress. I make sure to wear it at least once a year, and no one looks breathes, or touches this dress but me. There are thousands of beads hand sewn on it, fur sleeves, well you understand. I'll do a blog on it later.
We moved to Texas last year, and my sister (who has become my ren fest buddy) attended the Texas Renaissance Festival. It was so much bigger than the Festivals we had attended in the past, and we feel in love. We came back a second time within the season, something we don't usually have time to do because our parents aren't crazy about the whole Renaissance Faire thing...They think we are kinda strange. We both joked about going to auditions, but we doubted we actually would. When auditions rolled around in May, I decided to go give it a try. I am a theatre student at Sam Houston University, and am always looking for a chance to improve my audition skills (I happen to suck at them.) And well..the rest we will explore together as this adventure continues.
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| A recent picture of me. |
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