Historical crafting at the Métis Harvest Celebration

Today was a fun and relaxing day with my girl K at one of our history events.  It was the Métis Harvest Celebration at Louis Riel house.  We spend the day with other members of the society each working on our project for the day.  K did some hemming on her cloak and I tried my hand at some more beading.  K reenacts Selkirk Settler and I portray Métis, so there are quite a few differences in our costumes and the skills that we need to know.

This is what I managed to come up today.  I took a few tips and techniques from one of the young ladies in the society.  Her and her mother both portray Métis/aboriginal and has been in the society a lot longer than I have.  I'm slowly working at decorating a deer hide purse that two very good friends of mine gave to me.  After trimming away the felt from the bead work, and attaching it to the purse, I think it's looking quite neat!  I'll let the rest of you be the judge of my work.

I'm very pleased with how it looks and I'm excited to research out more beading ideas to finish my bag.  I need to find myself some white and yellow beads to continue this and decorate my dress.

I will be making myself a second strap dress (the first picture gives an example of a fully beaded/decorated wool example) out of some very nice blue wool I found at a local thrift store.  The one I currently have is burgundy and made out of an old blanket.  Because it was cut out of a completed blanket, it is fraying more than the wool melton cloth does.  There are also a couple holes in the dress at the back, likely from sparks from a bonfire back in it's blanket days.  Here is a picture of K and I with two other girls in the society.  I'm on the far right and K is next to me.  There are three very good examples of Selkirk Settler costumes and my ever fancy strap dress.  This picture was taken at an event in July of this year celebrating Cuthbert Grant, an equally important but lesser known person in Manitoba's history.