Princess Rap Battles – Hermione vs Katniss

My friend Whitney Avalon has been making these amazing Princess Rap Battles for a couple of years now. Every one of them is great fun to watch, but in honor of the Robin Hood Festival’s upcoming Wizarding Weekend, I thought I’d share this one. Starring Whitney Avalon as Katniss, and Molly C. Quinn as Hermione Granger.

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Harry Potter Cosplay Contest at the Robin Hood Springtime Festival

My Ravenclaw outfit from Super MegaFest earlier this year.

As you probably know by now, I’m in the midst of selling at the Robin Hood Springtime Festival in North Haven, CT.  This coming weekend is Wizards Weekend, which I’m really excited for! Kate and I have our Hogwarts house robes ready to go, and are planning the outfits to go with them. We have our wands. And we have a tent full of magical items ready to sell.

And the other day, I was asked to co-host the Harry Potter Cosplay Contests this weekend! I’m not sure yet who my co-host will be, but I’m very excited to be a part of this special event.  There will be a contest each day (Saturday, Sunday, and Memorial Day Monday) at 4:30, and prizes will be awarded for three different age groups.

So come visit, and put on your best Hogwarts outfit! Come as Harry, Dumbledore, Madam Hooch, or your own interpretation of any of the Houses — this is a genre wide open for fun costuming!

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New Item – Tudor Rose Messenger Bag

In 1485, Henry Tudor defeated King Richard III in battle, thus ending the War of the Roses. As King Henry VII, he married Elizabeth of York, and symbolically combined the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York into one sigil — the Tudor Rose.

Our small messenger bags are the perfect size for carrying just what you need — wallet, keys, phone, and even a book. They have one compartment inside, which measures 10.5″ wide by 6″ tall by 2″ deep, and fasten securely with two adjustable plastic side-release buckles. Straps are 4 feet long.

This bag is available in our Etsy shop, and on our website.

Click here to buy one!

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Get ready to beam down to North Haven, CT!

Even Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise are getting in the spirit for this weekend’s Robin Hood Springtime Festival!

Well, except for Worf. Worf is not a Merry Man.

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Variations on a Theme – Let’s get Medieval!

The Robin Hood Springtime Festival opens in just two days, you guys! In celebration, our theme for this Thursday will be a medieval one.

Lion Rampant Patch

This patch features one of the most popular medieval heraldic devices – a lion rampant. We’ve stitched the lion in gold with a red tongue on a black field.  Or, to put that properly in the language of heraldry: Sable, lion rampant or, langue gules.

We’ve made this design is available in two sizes – our standard small shield patch, or in a large size patch suitable for the back of a jacket, or for the front of a knight’s surcoat.

Of course, every knight needs a great leader, which leads us to…

Richard III Patch

Alright, maybe he was only a good leader. Well, he was okay. Sadly, in the end, Richard III was killed in battle, his body dragged off and buried by his enemies who knows where.

Wait, we DO know where! Under a car park, recently discovered, identified, and re-interred with respect at Leicester Cathedral.

You can still buy our No Parkyng patch even though he’s no longer there, though. because let’s be honest – it’s just funny.

You can also purchase the design in our Redbubble shop, available on a variety of products from t-shirts to stickers to travel mugs.

Tudor Rose

Okay, technically this design is Tudor, and not medieval. But since it was Henry VII who defeated Richard III and adopted this as his house sigil, it seems like a pretty fine line to me.

Our embroidered Tudor Rose is available as a patch, on a scarf, or on any of our messenger size bags, so it really gets around. You know — like Henry VIII did.

It’s also available in our Redbubble shop on — you guessed it! — a wide variety of products.

We will have all of these designs – and so much more! – available for sale at the Robin Hood Springtime Festival. The show runs for three weekends, so if you’re in the area, stop on by!

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New Design – Potion Bottles

Feeling a little run down? Low on energy? Not strong enough? Need to recover from an injury, and FAST? We’ve got a potion for that.

This design is available as a patch in our Etsy shop and on our website, where you can order it in your choice of red, blue, or green.

It is also available in our Redbubble shop as a collage of all three colors, available on a wide array of products from stickers to throw pillows to duvet covers.

Need a thematically appropriate dice bag? Our Redbubble shop can now provide that!

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Flashback Friday – the First Robin Hood Faire

The year was 2010. It was the first year of the Robin Hood Springtime Festival, and not only did I still sell garb, I was still doing it out of a pop-up tent. I was also still the costume designer for the Connecticut Renaissance Faire, and part of that job meant helping some cast members into their costumes in the mornings. Maid Marion was played that year by my friend Taryn – and she HATED wearing a wimple. So much that I’m pretty sure she made this face every time I put it on her. But this picture, and this memory, made me laugh when I came across it earlier this week, so it seemed like the perfect picture for today’s Flashback Friday.

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Upcycled T-Shirt Skirt

I have a lot of t-shirts. Like, a LOT of t-shirts. I’m a geek, and I fall in love with these geeky clothes, and I buy them or get them as gifts, and I LOVE them.

But I have too many.  Some shirts have drifted to the bottom of the drawer, and rarely see the light of day. Some no longer fit right, but I like them too much to give them up. Lately,  I’ve been wanting to diversify my wardrobe, and I love wearing skirts in the summer. So I decided a little upcycling project was in order.

After a morning of trying on every t-shirt I owned to see how they fit, I managed to put together two themed  piles of shirts I would change up — one Avengers themed, and one Doctor Who themed.

I grabbed my pattern for a six-panel skirt, which I’d previously made out of regular cotton jersey, and got to work. I first needed to see how the skirt pieces would fit on the t-shirts, and make sure the design would work. Clearly some shirts will work better than others, but I was satisfied enough with this to keep going.

Once the pieces were cut, I needed to figure out how I wanted to arrange them. Once I had that, I pinned them all together so that they wouldn’t get mixed up. In this case, I used the backs of the t-shirts to create solid color panels, and I arranged it to have that panel opposite its corresponding graphic panel. The colors are all pretty similar in this instance, but it means that the blues, grays, and blacks all have some separation between them for contrast.

I decided to sew all my panels together with the serged seam on the outside, to give it a little bit of character. I like the way the line of serging gives an intentional break between the different panels, and it adds a subtle visual interest to the skirt. I’ve seen other upcycled garments use this method of construction before, and I always quite like it. It also made the whole skirt come together quite quickly to use this method for both the seams and the hem. In the end, the only traditional machine stitching I used was on the final stitch of the waistband.

Et voila! A fun, geeky skirt that will be very comfortable to wear all year long. Cool in the summer, and great with a pair of leggings in cooler weather. And since the t-shirts I used have all been washed dozens of times already, I can even throw it in the laundry without fear that it will shrink on me. (Or at least, not shrink beyond going back to the size it was when I put it on. I swear, these skirts get larger as you wear them all day!)

I will definitely be making my Doctor Who themed skirt as soon as I get a chance. And if my now-reduced t-shirt collection doesn’t watch out, I may be cutting up even more of them!

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Sharing the Love: Chrononaut Mercantile

Jacket by Chrononaut Mercantile. Photo by Festival Fotos by Jennifer Provost.

Welcome to the latest installment of our ongoing series, Sharing the Love. There are a lot of small and independent artists out there working in all sorts of mediums — writers, painters, jewelry makers, leather crafters, actors…this list could go on and on. And it turns out, I know and admire an awful lot of them!

I first met the folks at Chrononaut Mercantile 8 years or so ago, when we were vending together at the Connecticut Renaissance Faire. Since then, we’ve worked a lot of faires and conventions together, and they’ve always been fantastic neighbors.

Even more importantly, though — they make gorgeous stuff! The jacket I’m wearing in the photo to the left is one I’ve had almost as long as I’ve known Chrononaut. I must have tried this piece on 3 or 4 different times over the course of a year, while I saved up the money to buy it, and it’s been a staple of my ren faire wardrobe ever since. If the weather is looking a little bit iffy, or if I’m doing a more steampunk themed outfit, it’s the perfect finishing piece for me.

Hanging out with Shakespeare Approves, wearing a wool capelet by Chrononaut Mercantile.

While the pieces I own from Chrononaut are all outerwear, they also sell amazing jewelery and hand beaded items through their Etsy shop. Their cloaks and jackets are available for sale there as well, and if you’re not going to be at an event with them, there are a lot of online options to choose from!

In the meantime, however, you can find them at the Robin Hood Springtime Festival in North Haven, CT starting on May 21! I haven’t seen a site map yet, but if I’m lucky, we’ll be close neighbors, so I can point you right to them from my front door.

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