Fabric Sourcing!

After spending yesterday compiling my research and starting on the basic look that I want for each character based on their character analysis and House livery (Mountague, Capulet and Escalus) myself and Tanya went down to Southbourne for some initial fabric inspiration. Considering the period setting, being the Tudor period, the fabrics would have been rougher and heavier then the machine woven fabrics of the modern world, and so we headed first to Zebedee's Fabrics. As well as having an impressive range of synthetic fabrics, they also have a section devoted to thicker and upholstery fabrics and brocades. This is the section that we ended up spending most of our time in, as they had some good inspiration fabrics for tones and pattern, particularly for Mountague clothing. I also managed to find ribbon in there that matched the Mountague and Capulet colour schemes!

 

Upon leaving Zebedee's, and slightly more hampered by the rain, we headed to The Treasure House. One of my favourite places in Southbourne, The Treasure House is a treasure trove for haberdashery, in particular buttons, ribbon and dye's! Hunting through the wall (yes, WALL) of buttons, I found some rather beautiful jewelled ones as well as more traditional but equally lovely wooden ones from various different woods.

Also in The Treasure House I found some beautiful, thick traditional lace in white and in a tea colour that I feel would be perfect for the prodution, in particular the white for Juliets Ball dress and the tea for either Lady Mountague or Lady Capulet. I would have considered it for the Nurse, as she is considered, especially by Juliet, a member of the family but in that time lace would have been precious and I do not think that a lace as thick and good as this would have been afforded to someone who was technically still a servant.



A small break before braving the rain once more - purchaces to the left of image!

After our break, we headed for the trek to Jo-Ann's fabrics at the other end of Southbourne - this is one of my all time favourite fabric shops as she is a litteral Aladin's cave of fabric finds. However, unfortunately on arriving she had closed for a long lunch break and, being an hour before she re-opened with the weather getting continually worse we were forced to postpone our hunt there.