Modern Elizabethan project posts so far:
Elizabethan Inspiration
Blackwork Ruffle
Blackwork Partlet
Elizabethan Stays - first try

I wasn't happy with my first pair of bodies, which I made using the custom corset pattern generator from the Elizabethan Costuming Page.  I'm not saying their pattern generator was bad, just that I should have tested the pattern and altered it substantially before making it up.  Still, I made a bunch of useful mistakes on it that I have learned from.  This time, I decide to combine the old pattern with online pictures of the Effigy Corset, one of only two extant pairs of bodies from that era! 

My first essay into my Elizabethan-inspired ensemble is a blackwork ruffle, mainly because a ruffle can be used anywhere, so I could make it even when I didn't have any clothing patterns.  It seemed a good way to get started on the project and see how I liked blackwork. 

Do you ever watch historical movies and wish we dressed like that today?  Or wished, as I do, that we dressed something like that... cherry-picking the aspects we like and eschewing the cumbersome or ugly parts?  Well, as the genius behind xkcd reminds us, we are grown-ups, and we can decide what that means.  And for me, it means I don't have to settle for cobbling together outfits from the remnants of only the last few decades.  I can make and wear whatever pleases me.  There's no law on the books that says I have to look like everyone else in my decade!  So I'd like to begin a sartorial art project... to look at my favorite times and places, and use them as inspiration for clothes that are thoroughly my own.  I'll start with the Elizabethan era, because it's got a ton of embroidery and handwork, and lots of layers.  I figure it'll be nice to wear in the winter, but I need to start in the spring if I want it to be done in time.