Building a Broadside Costume, One Detail at a Time

There are few things I love more than tumbling headfirst into a costume project, and this one started about four months ago when I began working with the wonderful Kathy Page. I had found the pattern on eBay, a Butterick historical costume pattern from their “Making History” line and I was immediately obsessed. It wasn’t just vaguely colonial-ish. It was the full fantasy: coat, vest, shirt, breeches, hat. The kind of pattern that says, with complete confidence, “Yes, we are doing this properly,” which is exactly my kind of drama.

Butterick Pattern 3072

Once Kathy and I got started, the real fun began. She pulled together fabric swatches, and we spent time choosing materials and colors that felt right for the period but also theatrical in the best possible way. That part always feels a bit magical to me, when a flat pattern starts becoming an actual person. We thought about texture, weight, and how the colors would play together, building the look piece by piece until it started to feel less like sewing and more like time travel with opinions.

Fugawee Pewter Buttons

And then came the buttons, which of course deserve their own paragraph because buttons like these are not merely functional, they are a commitment. I ordered them from Fugawee, and they are glorious pewter buttons in multiple sizes, dozens of them, each one with that wonderfully weighty little historical presence. The smooth domed front, the loop shank on the back, the slightly imperfect hand-cast character — honestly, they are tiny metal divas. Once those arrived, the whole project suddenly felt deliciously real. Nothing says “I take costuming far too seriously” quite like gleefully sorting pewter buttons by size.

Colonial American fifer costume reproduction

What I love most about costuming is how it turns research into something tactile and joyful. You’re not just imagining a character or a time period; you’re choosing the fabric, fussing over trims, admiring the buttons, and watching the whole thing come alive detail by detail. Working with Kathy has been such a treat because she understands that the magic lives in those choices. And when it all starts coming together, it doesn’t just look historical, it feels like you’re getting dressed in 1770 in the Colonies, one glorious layer at a time.