My mother was a skilled sewer, and started me early. She still has my first piece of embroidery, done when I was four.

When I was six, we moved to Placerville, California, a gold-rush era town that commemorates the Gold Rush every year by staging the Wagon Train, an actual covered wagon train that spends a week making a 50-mile journey, ending in Placerville with a parade and other festivities. When I was a child, all the people working downtown dressed in 19th century garb for the week, and and there was also a separate children's parade and costume competition, at which I won my first costume award.

I continued an interest in costume. During and after high school, I sewed for school productions and community theaters.

I moved to South Lake Tahoe, and got a job as a wardrobe attendant in a casino showroom. I worked for a large revue, where I learned a lot about theatrical techniques, quick changes, and how to fit a G-string .

When I moved to the San Francisco area in my mid 20's I got involved with Ren Faire, Dickens, SCA, and science fiction cons. I made most of my costumes for these events, and started a business making them for other people.

For several years I had a bridal alterations and custom gown business and I also worked in fabric stores, and sold sewing machines.

Considering going back to school for a degree in costuming, I sewed for a professional theater company in San Francisco for a brief period. While I loved the work, I disliked most of the people I worked with. I also noticed that several of them had master's degrees in theater, worked less than six months out of every year, and made less than ten dollars an hour. At that point, I gave up the notion of theater costuming as a career.

Throughout all of this, I READ. I read everything on the subject of costume that I could get my hands on. With the advent of the Internet, I found an additional source of information, support, and cameraderie: The Historic Costume Mailing List. I owe the members of the list my thanks for inspiring me to grow as a costumer.

T

These days, I'm a stay at home mom. I have two wonderful boys, Jamie and Robbie, and a loving and supportive husband, Wayne Anderson, who's a skilled leatherworker, a writer, and an apprentice blacksmith. By profession, he's a great tech support provider, which is handy when I start screaming and pounding on the computer. . We live in Camino, California, in a small house filled with books, craft supplies, and Legos. Its redeeming virtue is the 12x20 separate building that is my studio. We're just getting involved in the SCA, again after a long hiatus. After attending one meeting, I found myself Mistress of Arts AND Deputy Seneschal of the shire of Mountainsgate. My husband and I recently completed the docent training program at Marshall Gold Discovery Park in Coloma.

After I'm finished making this website, I plan to return to the other new art I'm studying, sculpting dolls in polymer clay. They will, of course, be elaborately costumed.

I'm also planning to write several books on costume history, to teach more costume classes, to market a line of patterns, design Web pages for family members and a local organization, and in my SPARE time.....

Are You Looking For Me?

I've used a number of names in the past, which has led to considerable confusion. There are also, I'm sure, old friends out there using the Web to find people they used to know. So, here's the names I've gone by: Margaret Klotz, Margo Klotz, Margo Kaye, Maudeleyn Of Bryn Aur, Margaret Woodrose, Meg Sheathwell, Margo Bradley, and Margo Anderson.

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