Project Runway, Woot

I decided to participate in Den of Angel's 12th Project Runway competition. I wasn't giving it much thought until Dollusional brought it up, and I thought it would be a good thing to be able to know someone also doing this, and have mutual kvetching sessions. Furthermore, it's running the full month of June, when I'll be between clothing swaps and might not know what to do with myself if i don't have a deadline project.

The theme of this Runway did trip me up a little. It needs to be inspired by Arabian nights, and I only have a causal familiarity with the Scheherazade tales, which are not detailed when it comes to clothing. I'm not in the mood to use Disney's Aladdin for inspiration, and the only outfit that caught my eye from the Thief and the Cobbler is Tack's clothes, which I don't want to replicate. What should I do?

Historical accuracy to the rescue! In other words, I hunted some Renaissance sites to see what they had regarding Near Eastern clothing and pulled up some articles and patterns that looked helpful. The cut of the clothes will be semi-accurate in regards to 15th and 16th century Persian clothes.

The theme of the outfit will be "rebellious princess." Tomboyish Heather seems best suited to model this sort of gear, so stuff will be loosely designed to fit her. The clothes will be made with rich looking fabrics to reflect her royal standing, and be designed to provide ample range of motion needed for any action girl.

One of the beauties of patterns from this place and time is that it's all triangles, trapezoids and rectangles. Very little cloth goes to waste, which helps as the stash fabric I chose is limited. Drafting has also been simple, though I realized rather too late that I cut the coat gores too wide. Sigh.

Finding a decent hat patter has been a bit of a pain. Pictures are too drapey to give me a good gauge for their construction, and I don't want someone from this time period running around with a naked head. It took several days and lots of annoyance, but I found a hat pattern that's straightforward, and does not get in the way during a hard hour's ride or brutal fight.

Links!
The hat
Everything else