If you have already purchased the Elizabethan Lady's Wardrobe, and you're considering buying the Elizabethan Working Woman's patterns for when you choose not to play a noble lady, you might want to read this first.

As we've said elsewhere, most of the pieces in the Working Woman's Patterns are adapted from the Elizabethan Lady's Wardrobe, with the intention of creating a historically accurate option for those playing lower class characters. If you already bought the Elizabethan Lady's Wardrobe, you really don't need to buy the Working Woman's patterns. If you're considering starting with a lower class character, but will probably make a noble costume in the foreseeable future, you may also want to consider selecting the Elizabethan Lady's Wardrobe and adapting from this article. Our intention is NOT to sell you the same thing twice, under two different covers. (We'd rather offer an honest service to our customers, and simply make our money by publishing the best patterns you can buy.) We are therefore offering this information free to owners of the Elizabethan Lady's Wardrobe patterns.

The instructions for adapting the Elizabethan Lady's Wardrobe patterns are available here for download in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer, it can be downloaded free from www.adobe.com.

These instructions consist of the following four parts. Simply click on each one to download it. We strongly recommend that you print the instructions and add them to the binders you already have for the existing instructions.