An Outfit for a New Pelican: kirtle and ropa

I have been working on a secret project, and I have wanted to share it with you all, but I wanted to wait until the event had taken place before posting anything online.
A friend of mine in the SCA was offered admittance to the Order of the Pelican (this is a Peerage within the Society for service).  She asked if I would be willing to make her a kirtle and ropa for her elevation ceremony.  I was thrilled to be asked! I am so proud of her for all her hard work and all that she has done to help everyone in our local group.  She provided me with almost all the fabric and trim and told me what she wanted.
For the kirtle, she wanted it done in her personal colors: blue, silver and black.  The kirtle is made of white linen, banded with silver/grey brocade and trimmed with blue and black trim and silver trim.

For the Ropa, my friend provided me with a patch of the 'pelican in her piety' she wanted used on the back of the ropa, but she allowed me to embellish it as I liked. I decided that the Pelican should pop out a bit more and that the edge of the patch should blend with the actual dress. To do this, I stitched 5 rows of gold metal thread around the patch and then added pearls and beads for detail.

Once the back piece was complete, I worked on completing the full ropa.  My friend provided a gold brocade table cloth, burgundy velvet, and two types of gold upholstery trim.  I think I used about 20 yards of trim on the Ropa by itself!  A word of caution to the users of upholstery trim, while most is fine, the wide trim with the very nice interlacing on the top is evil (at least this lot was)!  The interlacing is made by covering ocean weight fishing line with thread.  This fishing line bent a part of my Serger and would explode needles anytime I hit the fishing line.  I broke ~10 needles doing this Ropa and resorted to wearing safety glasses when sewing as I was scared I would get a needle fragment to the eye! Anyway, on to pictures!.

 I am happy to say that my friend liked her outfit and I am honored she let me make this for her!

Here are a few pictures from the event, these pictures are not mine, but were shared on the SCA facebook page.  If these are your pictures and you would like them removed, please let me know and I will remove them!  Oh and the chick in the pink and purple dress is me, I got to wear my new apron!