Garbing the Gideon.

I'm not going to go into the description of what the Society for Creative Anachronism is or why I do it on here right now. Honestly, I've done the explanation enough that sometimes I wanna just get down to the barebones of the story without the preamble.
This is why I will never be Chatelaine. (ha ha)

[Note: I love newbies. I love questions. But I wanna get to the gist of my post, rather than the lengthy preamble. I'll write the preamble some other time and put a link to it in post-production. Okay?]

To say that I like sewing is a vast vast overstatement. I like parts of sewing. I hate other parts. I have thrown tantrums over sewing that make children quake in fear and take fervent notes on my technique. This being said, I do, typically, enjoy making my son garb. Because he is small. And clothing him takes maybe a yard and a half now. It's really a horse of a different color than making garb for myself, which is yards and yards more work. And fabric. And fabric ain't cheap, yo!

Some observations I've made in making Gideon garb:

-- I've decided that I love making buttons and not button holes.

--Sometimes taking a tailoring shortcut makes a whole lot of sense. This kid is growing ALL the TIME. His belly changes shape drastically post-meal times! Tailoring something to his precise shape is not only ridiculous but almost impossible.
--Barring super rich kids, the kind of outfits children would have worn were pretty bland. And I'm not fully convinced the super rich kids wore mini versions of the grownups either. Regardless, it is totally more fun to make little grownup outfits for kiddos.
--He loves getting fancy.
--It is great, amazing practice. A third of the work, a great looking kid and loads of mental practice? I'm game.

Right now I'm concentrating on late 1300s France. It's kind of my jam. I've also done a bit of garb making for Viking era and some Anglo-Saxon stuff for Gideon and my husband because they look amazing in it.

 (photo by my Mom)

I remember, where I was in the Society, growing up, I did not always have amazing garb. But I was definitely adequately garbed. Typically speaking kids who had really fancy garb were under some sort of painful threat of death to not mess up the garb (or so it seemed to me). I never found amazingly dressed kids where I played. When I saw them in A&S classes or court, they often looked mildly miserable. Or they were teaching the class with a mother breathing down their necks. That happened a lot too. I can only think of a very few kids that I saw navigate both circles of badly-garbed hooligan and a Laurel's fantasy. And of course, there were circles in between.

(photo by friend Willie (Willy?))

I have a whole train of thought in my head about why people play in the SCA, and people who live and breathe the SCA, and people who take it so seriously that everyone else around them feels utterly inadequate.
But that's not this post.

Gideon likes being fancy. He likes having big sweeping sleeves, bells off his belt, a huge hat on his head and people talking to him and approaching him about how handsome he looks.

Remembering that kids will be kids, I don't go over the top with his clothes. No silk for outdoors or really ever. No ornamentation that'll hurt or get snagged on something. Always have a T-tunic at the ready for when you KNOW a mess is going to happen. (See: the actually FUN children's activities).
I use girl's cotton leggings/tights for his legs. It's easier than a whole other slew of options.
I definitely want to make him braies and hose eventually though. As an experiment.

Right now, Gideon is young enough that he doesn't need modern flashy stuff on his garb to be enticed to wear it, though I can see the appeal of lining a kid's tunic with Spiderman. So for now, I try to look authentic for him.

I mean, my garb chest is still horrendous. But my kid looks amazing.

Although sometimes you need to just make the kid a Chiton and say to heck with it. 

 (photo by my Mom)