Your Wardrobe Unlock'd

In Part 2, Lynn shows how to make several more hairstyles, add the finishing touches, and make the wigs removable.

Lynn shows how to display your hats like a museum would, by making paper wigs for headforms.

Gina Barrett shows us how to make Deaths' Head buttons, one type of the many different type of  passementerie buttons. 

How to create stand-alone miniature works of textile art with cord, thread and a few pins.

You can easily picture your spectacular new gown trailing behind you as you make a grand entrance... but what about the dust?

Christina translates some gorgeous but cryptic Victorian instructions into modern-style knitting and crochet diagrams, and then tries them out.

An introduction to late 18th century frippery and furbelows - the items commonly used to complete feminine ensembles of the beau monde.

Five simple techniques can make a wide range of jewelry to provide the finishing touch to your Tudor or Renaissance outfit.

You've just finished sewing your dream outfit—maybe it's Tudor, or 1550s Florentine, or a gorgeous black velvet Spanish gown—and it fits perfectly, but something seems to be missing.  

Accessories take an outfit from costume to clothing, and jewelry played a huge role in the opulent look of middle-class and noble 16th century clothing for both men and women.

While some types of 16th century jewelry require serious metalworking skills or advanced faux techniques in polymer clay and other materials, a huge range of beautiful and authentic jewelry can be made using basic beadwork techniques, supplemented with carefully chosen costume jewelry.

Knitted, embroidered, striped and painted: the Natural Form era had a diversity of stocking options for ladies.  

Far beyond plain black or white, catalogs of the era carried fancy knitted stockings in gold, green and bright cardinal red zig zags, striped stockings in cardinal red, garnet, tan, grey and blue and embroidered cotton stockings in red, gold, black and white.

So get ready to shop for the perfect stockings, thread your embroidery needle or grab your knitting needles! We're diving into the realm of stockings and socks with fashion reports, catalogs from 1882, stocking embroidery diagrams and  lots of knitting patterns for socks and stockings for all ages.

I love handbags. They are the cherry on the banana split of fashion ensembles. Like hats, they complete and complement your gown. Properly researched, they add credibility to your historic or vintage attire.

Two bags came into my hands a few years ago: two wristlet purses, artfully gathered and sewn onto the highly popular Bakelite bangles of the era. “Cheap, fast and easy” was a phrase applied to high-living flappers, but the same could be said of these bags aswell. I'll show you how to recreate them both.

In our recent survey you told us that you'd like to see more how-tos involving costume accessories.

Loren Dearborn shares with us two easy techniques, using polymer clay, to create beautiful and convincing portrait and mourning jewelry appropriate for the 18th and 19th centuries.

Introducing Handmade Trims: Part 1 - Lucet

There's an old saying that goes "It's all in the details". With historical costume, this counts double - details can make or break an outfit, be it in terms of period accuracy, colour, or design.

But creating detailed, authentic handmade trimmings for your garments and accessories is actually much easier than you might think. In this extensive beginner's guide, we'll look at lucet cording, a simple and versatile technique that gives great results and doesn't need a lot of equipment; secondly, we'll take it a step further and try fancy braiding; finally, we'll move to inkle and tablet weaving for more complex and impressive historically accurate results.