SCA: Quick and Dirty "Peplos" for Quick and Dirty Work

Now that Bjornsborg's spring event is over, there's only one more event between me and the summer lull*, and that's Steppes Warlord.  Warlord is a fun event.  It's a HOT event. It's a FAR event - up in north Texas just east of Dallas, which is about a five-hour drive for me.  It's got all the usual fun and games that events have, but for me, it's WORK.  

I'm part of a group called the Ansteorran Longship Association, which is an SCA-adjacent (not actually SCA) group that builds Viking longships for fun.  Sadly, I live about three hours away from where all the boat-building action happens, so I don't get to be near the ships very often; but I do help out with the fundraisers as much as I can. 

Enter Steppes Warlord. Every year at Warlord, the ALA hosts a breakfast fundraiser where we make omelets by the hundreds on Saturday and Sunday at the event, and the proceeds go to - quite literally - keeping the boats (and the ALA) afloat.  It's four hours at a time for two mornings in a row, of extremely fast-paced kitchen work.  It's grueling, exhausting, and SO MUCH FUN.  I'm not a huge cook on my own, but I love working in a busy kitchen - usually prepping stuff in the back out of sight to help keep the front line going smoothly, which is what I do at Warlord.  I come out of it greasy, messy, covered with eggs, and thoroughly exhausted. 

Thankfully, Warlord has showers.  

The only problem is that working at the Longship breakfast is seriously dirty, sweaty, and hot.  I don't want to wear my regular garb to cook in, it just gets ruined; and more often than not sleeves and jewelry and things like that just get in the way.  It's also not safe - nobody wants your tortoise brooch falling into their omelet, right? Ew. 

So. Cleaning out my garb closet a couple of months ago I found one of those cotton tapestries that are so ubiquitous at renaissance festivals and which we all had at least 3 of back in our early 20s for some reason.  I decided that would be the perfect thing to make a simple peplos out of that I can cook in - it's tough cotton fabric with a busy pattern that will hide stains, it has no sleeves or jewelry to get in the way, and I can just wear it to the shower and back after the breakfast is over.  

I basically just folded it in half lengthwise, folded over the top, and stitched it together along the open side and at the shoulders.  In a "real" peplos the shoulders would be held together with brooches or fibulae; I sewed the shoulders closed instead so that I don't have to rely on jewelry alone just to keep this thing on while I'm running around cooking.  I can wear brooches or fibulae over the sewn parts and it'll look fine, so I'm pretty pleased with it.  

In fact, I liked the way this came out so much that I made a second one out of a blue sheet that someone gave me as part of a huge bag of sheeting and other fabrics that they were de-stashing recently.  

Tada!  Casual, easy garb for working in.  And it'll make a good shower dress for BAM and Gulf Wars, too.