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Since there are already a number of resources on what fabrics you should and shouldn't use, I will try to cover some of the practical but less touched upon aspects of material selection (how to find something that screams "Embellish me! I'm a forepart!", why you should start in the upholstery section of the fabric store, etc.), as well as the parts that everyone talks about. I will, as usually, be concentrating on what's appropriate to elizabethan england. 'Material Selection' is a pretty broad subject heading, so I'll try to keep it chopped up into the sections listed below. This page will be completed in chunks as time permits, so please be patient.
Let's start with a grand understatement: fabrics and textiles have changed a lot in the last 500 years. These changes have, in turn, changed the way clothing is made. Wider looms now produce wider widths of material, leading to garments with less piecing (sewing small bits of fabric together to make a larger bit of fabric - if you look at period costume, especially skirts, you will see stitch lines were peices of fabric were added to make up the necessary width of the garment. Additionally, many garments were made with fabric that was reused from a previous garment, and often oddly pieced together.See Janet Arnold for details.) Machine woven fabrics are not as tightly woven, and therefore drape more readily. The patterns used in brocades have changed as much of the rest of fashion over the centuries. Fabrics are now more often partially synthetic than not, and natural fibers from the Americas have widely supplanted linen and wool int blended materials. Dyes used now are chemical, and come in more and brighter colors than natural dyes, as well as being less affected by light and time. These things considered, unless you are planning to card, spin, and weave your own fabrics on a 23" loom, you can probably give up on finding wonderful-perfect-just-like-in-period fabrics. So what's a person to do? Here are some hints.
Use lightweight cotton batiste, lightweight linen, or (if you're feeling really wealthy) silk for shirts and chemises. This is one part of your costume that you really definitely want to be a completely natural fiber - it will be cooler and wash better. Partlets, in period, were made of as fine, and often transparent, of a material as the wearer could afford, and were often decorated. (I have an entire rant on the 'opaque white cotton' theory of partlets, but I will save that for the appropriate section and a later date.)
Use heavy weight fabrics for all outer garments (foreparts, skirts, bodices, sleeves, doublets, slops, canions, capes, etc). Heavy weight fabrics have the mass and presence that you see in period protraits of costumes. They hang in loose folds, and have body of their own. If you find a fabric that is otherwise perfect, but is not as heavy as it really ought to be, back it with heavy denim or canvas duck. (This works beautifully. It is from a tip I read online somewhere regarding foreparts. I wish I could remember where, so I could give due credit.) With larger hanging garments, like skirts, you can use a trick called 'flatlining' - this is essentially a wide (8" or more) facing at the hem that extends up the edge of the skirt and is blind hemmed at the top of the facing. This not only adds extra weight to the bottom of the skirt without adding bulk to the top, it also garauntees that a raw seam won't be visable should your skirt encounter wind.
In my (always humble) opinion, the best fabrics for outer garments are usually those referred to as drapery fabric. Specifically, upholstery brocades and upholstery velvets are quite nice and hang well. Avoid like the plague anything with a pattern that is stamped on, rather than woven in. If you are looking for a fabric with a pattern, remember that elaborate florals, especially those with realistic looking flowers, didn't crop up for some time after the elizabethan era. Pattern in period included rather elaborate heralidic and ecclesiastical design (be careful with church designs, though - there were points in period where these could get a person into a fair amount of trouble), natural abstract looking patterns, simple geometric patterns, and elaborate surface embroideries. Southwestern tapestry prints really don't count as period, even if they do pop up in pattern envelopes from certain popular pattern manufacturers. Ahem.
If you are looking for a piece of material that is going to be embellished, look for a repeating design motif. Remember to buy a little extra fabric so that you can center the design on the garment. When you are embellishing a piece, you draw attention to it - you want this to be a good thing, not a way of pointing out a flaw in your work.
Usually, when I make a costume, the trim ends up costing me at least as much as the fabric. There are two reasons for this: 1) Fabric goes on sale more often than really cool trim, and 2) I started doing costuming so that I would have a reason to buy really cool trim. I have to admit it - I'm a trim junkie. But after a couple years of simply buying ready-to-go trim, I've started getting into the idea of embellishing the trim I use, and creating my own 'custom trims'.
Let's start with the basics. First off, if you are going to buy flanged piping to sandwitch into seams and use for edging, skip right past the 'normal' trim section of the fabric store and march into the upholstery trim section. It's usually hiding some where in the back of the store. You'll find the exact same basic pipings, but they will be between 30 and 70 cents less per yard. This will save you a surprising amount of money. An even better way to save money is to take yourself over to your local Walmart and check there first for your trims. They have some suprisingly nice ones. I habitually add small twist piping to all of my seams, and I can get it at the area Walmarts for less than a dollar a yard. (I'll look on a reciept for the exact cost later.)
If you look at what's currently in the photogallery, you'll see that I do a lot of embellishment with applied ribbons. I use the patterned ones produced by Europa ribbons, usually carried by JoAnn Fabrics. Generally, I try to avoid any ribbon with large amounts of gold tinsel showing, and choose those where the tinsel is woven in. I think they look a little more tasteful.
Embellishing trims can be as easy or hard as you choose to make it. On
the effective-yet-simple side, I have seen a costume decotated entirely
with a trim composed of three peices of plain upholstery gimp, laid side
by side - the outer two matched color and the inner was a contrast. It
looked quite nice and does very closely resemble some of the detailing
seen in period portraits. On the more time-intensive side, I am currently
embellishing a peice of inexpensive trim with pearl and bead work, to
be 
use
as a cuff on a chemise. The picture at left is a before and after of the
trim. The somewhat country looking daisy pattern lends itself well to
symetrical embellishment patterns. When actually in use on the sleeve
it is intended for, it is hard to pick out the flowers at all, but their
presence made the beading much faster because they worked as a pattern
for me.
I have a personal theory that any part of the costume that doesn't show is fair game. I've tried using period-esque boning (basketry reed) in a farthingale, and it never did cooperate. I've found that large cable ties, lashed together, lie nicely where I want them and compress nicely. (It is quite the truth to say that the person who invented the corset and farthingale never stopped and thought about those of us who drive manual transmissions.) In general, I use large cable ties for boning, and paint stir sticks for busks. No one will ever see these things. I use medium weight denim, or light denim backed with duck, for corsets. For farthingales, especially if they will go under a thouroughly opaque skirt, I use whatever I can find on sales that is cotton. As I do nothing that involves standing on a stage or walking up stairs at the faire, the farthingales should never show. If I am lining a bodice, I know that the lining will not show (even at the edges, due to my compulsive piping habit), so I use whatever medium weight cotton I have handy. I add a bit of boning to the grommet/eyelet edge of any bodice, so that it does not pull awkwardly when laced. I have seen some people whose bodices look like they were either boned at the bottom edge, or else constructed as a top layer sewn into their corset, which results in a very stiff bodice which does not wrinkle at all. I do not personally do this, as I am not sure I like that look, nor am I sure that it is any more period than not. I am still doing some research on that point.
Selection of Applied Embellishments
This, and trims, are the really fun parts of elizabethan costuming, to my mind. Applied embellishments, in period, included pearls by the score, buttons (often without the benefit of button holes or even the need for a button), gold and silver beads, set jewels, medallions, and one of my favorites, aiglettes. Often, the pearls used for garments worn in processions were fake. This is documentable, so don't feel bad about doing it yourself. Buttons should be metal, and not those silly little military ones. They should have actual shanks, not holes, for attatchment. For a cheap source of "set jewels", medallions, etc, consider going to garage sales, resale shops, etc, in search of costume jewlery. Often, period protraits show mismatched jewelry used for sleeve closures. It was not so important what was worn as the fact that you were wearing it.
