A Seamstress With Get-Up and Go : Sense of Fantasy and Fun Helps Her Create Lavish Costumes for Herself and Friends

Playing dress-up is a child’s game that Mary Lodwick never outgrew.

After just a few hours at her sewing machine, she can transform herself into an Elizabethan peasant or princess, Little Bo Peep or Mae West.

“It’s a real nice way to blow off steam,” Lodwick said. “When we were little girls, my sister and I liked to play dress-up. That’s what this is all about. Most people with imagination and a flair for life never give it up.”

By day, Lodwick manages a medical clinic in Huntington Beach. After work, she’s back home stitching elaborate period costumes to wear to Renaissance fairs or masquerade balls.

Friends call on Lodwick when they need a costume in a pinch. Like a fairy godmother, she can turn an ordinary woman into a princess, a man into a musketeer.

“People just have a ball,” she said. They wear her lavish get-ups to Oktoberfests, costume balls and Halloween parties.

“There are more places than you’d think to wear costumes,” she said.

For a Mardi Gras party she held in her home, Lodwick created a fantasy gown of purple lame with huge gold metallic over-sleeves and a headpiece draped in gold beads. She dressed her husband, Michael, up as King Henry VIII, in a gold coat with a purple fur collar and a Tudor cap with peacock feathers.

“You have to have a sense of fantasy,” she said.

Most of her costumes are faithful recreations of historical garb. She studies books, historical movies and “Masterpiece Theatre” for costume ideas.

“It broadens your horizons,” she said. “Because of this I read about historical figures. I’ve read about four or five books on Queen Elizabeth.”

Lodwick can look at a picture of an Elizabethan gown in “The Chronicle of Western Fashion” and duplicate it without a pattern.

She reproduces the historic fashions down to the smallest detail. Her Elizabethan peasant outfit, for example, consists of a muffin cap, a straw hat, a lace-up vest worn over a peasant blouse and two skirts--in those days one’s best skirt was worn over an older skirt, then hiked up around the waist when necessary so it wouldn’t get dirty.

Lodwick made an elaborate musketeer outfit for a friend that featured a green velvet cape lined in white satin, a green velvet Tudor flat cap with white ostrich feathers and a brown cotton jacket with authentic tie-on sleeves and gold braid trim.

Through her hobby, Lodwick frequently uncovers trivia about clothes. She pulls out a medieval blouse that laces up the back through metal eyelets.

“This blouse showed you had a servant,” she said. “You can’t lace yourself up the back.”

The blouses were low-cut and tight around the bodice so “whatever’s left comes out the top,” she said. “You look good in them.”

The musketeer jacket has green satin “slashes” or fabric inserts that were originally designed to simulate the wounds of battle.

“In the old days they wore another shirt underneath and had the material poke through the slashes. It showed off the fact that you had more than one garment.”

Lodwick hunts down the materials for these regal-looking outfits at thrift stores, fabric shops, craft stores and florist supplies. She recycles thrift-shop finds such as old jewelry, lace, feather boas and straw hats.

She made the wide-brimmed chapeau for her Mae West costume from a beat-up sun hat she rescued from the Goodwill, covered with gray nylon and adorned with a feather boa that she dyed black. The floral tapestry used for her peasant costume was found on sale at a fabric store for 50 cents a yard.

“Once I had to make a Scarlett O’Hara outfit. I went to a thrift store and I swear I found green curtains being sold by the pound.” Like Scarlett, Lodwick made the gown out of old drapery fabric.

Lodwick’s skill as a seamstress stems from her childhood.

“My parents had four daughters and one income. If you wanted more than three or four dresses a year, you sewed,” she said. “It got to the point I could look at a dress in (a store), memorize it and go home and make it.”

In her 20s Lodwick began making wedding dresses and costumes to sell.

“As I got older, the costumes got more elaborate,” she said.

She started singing with the Pacific Chorale 11 years ago and found another outlet for her costume-making.

“I found a whole bunch of people who liked playing dress-up,” she said. “They liked to go to benefits with themes and word got around that I made costumes.”

Seven years ago a trip to a Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Chatsworth sealed her fate as a costume-maker.

“I went in blue jeans and decided that was no fun,” she said. She began attending fairs in full Renaissance garb.

Lodwick is a speedy seamstress. In one day she recently made two blouses, four skirts and two vests for friends to wear to a Renaissance fair. She has sewn a shirt in 35 minutes.

Her costumes cost $30 to $250 to make depending on the materials. When a friend asked that his musketeer outfit be made using fine fabrics such as velvet and satin, the cost went up to $350.

Despite steady demand for her creations, Lodwick has no plans to sell costumes professionally.

“This way I don’t have to deal with anyone unpleasant,” she said. “I’m happy doing this for a hobby. It fits my creative needs.”