Lincoln Green

[meltintall3]

For his llama costume entry this year Little Brother #2 decided that he wanted to be Robin Hood and his llama could be Will Scarlett. Not surprisingly, the shirt from the Robin Hood costume I made him back in 2008 didn't fit him anymore. So I used the following links and a heathly dose of fudging to make him a new one. (I put more work into his costume than he put into the one for the llama. XD )

• http://www.renaissancetailor.com/demos_shirt.htm
• http://www.sempstress.org/skill/hand-worked-eyelets/
• http://crossstitch.about.com/od/patternsfromyourguide/ig/Alphabets-/CS-Alphabet---Six-Stitches.htm

I used a light cotton in a dark green and eyeballed the measurements against one of my T-shirts. It is possible to rip nice squares and rectangles on the grain of the fabric, so that's what I did for most of my pieces. For the shoulder gussets I did right angle triangles instead of isosceles triangles. If I'd been paying close attention, I could have pulled the underarm gussets from the scrap ripped to square the edge of my fabric and used more exactly two-thirds of the 3 yards of 45" fabric... the little nibble out of the remnant piece makes me sad.

Friends and I had recently visited an exhibit on Nordic Lace and I noticed on the shirt from a man's wedding outfit that embroidery was used to hold the placket down. So I put my brother's initials there because I didn't have time to do the entire alphabet like on the piece I'd seen. I did two handworked eyelets to close the collar. The cuffs are currently loose. I don't know if they will eventually get eyelets and lace shut or hooks and eyes or a button and frog or... never be done at all. :p