"Nothing is true"

My big project for the summer is to make three Assassin’s Creed costumes. I sometimes sew presents for my cousin and this was his choice. As I have considered making one for myself, and every-so-often my dad mentions that he would like one, I decided that if I was going to make one assassin costume I may as well make three.

Left to right: Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood, Revelations.

Of course, we have all chosen outfits from different games – making the same outfit three times would be far too straight forward. I have chosen the outfit from Assassin’s Creed II, my dad’s will be from Brotherhood and my cousin’s from Revelations. As much as I can I will try to make them historically accurate, but for the most part the game designs just aren’t true to history and it is more important to me that my costumes be screen accurate.

The outfits are all made of many layers so I needed to carefully analyse the illustrations to work out how many individual garments I would need and which pieces would be sewn to where.

The AC II outfit has a shirt and tunic. The tunic will have a waist seam (to be hidden by the sash) to which all the skirt layers will be sewn. It has two layers of sleeve caps – one slashed and one not.  It took me a while to work out how the various layers worked to get two collars and a hood. I concluded that the hood is a separate piece which is buttoned on under the collar.

The hood looks like a separate piece from the back.

The other two outfits were busier visually so I did the analyses by tracing over pictures in Gimp. The images I used are these screenshots from the game. I also referenced some promotional images. The costumes in the promotional material are not entirely true to what appears in the game which allowed me a bit of choice about how to do things. Having a choice is both helpful and unhelpful.

The Brotherhood outfit has a shirt, a jerkin and a doublet. It has a separate hood as well.

The bottom row is all the jerkin.

The Revelations outfit has a jerkin and doublet but no shirt. Really there probably would have been a shirt worn with it but there isn’t one visible and I don’t need another thing to make and my cousin doesn’t need another layer to wear on a hot day.

The green layer is the doublet, the other pieces are all parts of the jerkin. The red layer is beneath the purple layer in the front and on top of the purple layer in the back.

I suspect I am not using true meanings of ‘doublet’ and ‘jerkin’, but for this project I have assigned them to have the meanings: doublet - ‘sleeveless skirtless outer layer’ and jerkin - ‘sleeved, skirted underlayer’, so I can keep everything straight in my head. At this point I am not planning to make any of the metal or leather pieces.

Assassin’s Creed belongs to Ubisoft.

I can wear evening dresses all day if I want to

As it’s now the season for wearing summer dresses, I thought I would blog about some. I have made a series of dresses from the pattern for a 1929-30 Vionnet evening dress on page 78 in Patterns of Fashion 2. When scaling the pattern I made it slightly more slimline than the original because the original was sheer and worn belted over a petticoat, whereas mine would only be one layer.

It’s a weird dress to make. I’ve found it easiest to describe the skirt as an 8-sided square, although four of the sides are slightly longer than the other four.  The bodice side seams are only about 3.5” long.  This was the first pattern I started hand-hemming, because the satins would look awful otherwise. By the end of it I was very experienced, as each dress has around 10 metres of hem.

I can't decide whether this reminds me more of an octopus or a starfish...

At the beginning it was difficult to work out where all the skirt pieces fitted together and how they fitted onto the bodice. I have now made five versions of this dress.  The first time round I sewed all the skirt pieces together, then made the bodice, and then tried to combine the two. It was a pain to sew all those angles into each other and the resultant seams don’t sit well. In the later versions I started by attaching each skirt piece separately onto its respective bodice piece then sewing the completed dress front to the completed dress back.  This worked much better.

 My first version of this dress was made from a satin fabric with a variegated turquoise and mauve diagonal pattern. I had been looking for a bright print satin but could find  none, so this was a compromise.  I wore it to my friend’s 16th birthday supper.  

The bias-cut bodice is kind of odd to wear – you move your shoulder and the fabric pulls on your opposite hip.

I never quite understood what the pattern intended for the shoulder drapes so I made my own drapes by cutting out spirals of fabric using pinking shears;  I then sewed the spirals on at the shoulders. I also did this for the next two versions of this dress I made. These were gifts for my cousins.  To make their dresses I needed to adjust the original pattern not just for size but also for dimension and body shape. Because the girls live interstate, I made a variety of mock-up bodices that I posted to them so they could each pick the best fit.

My school friends decided to arrange a summer picnic at the end of the year I was making these dresses. The dress code was ‘dresses or button-shirts’.  I could have re-worn the dress from the 16th birthday but, even though it was summer, the Canberra weather was still a bit too cool for that. So, obviously, I needed a new dress.

Spot the camouflaged bolero.

I found some lovely I-have-no-idea-what-it-is fabric at Spotlight. It had a bright and blocky pattern and would be warmer than the satin. On the day before the picnic I made myself a second dress using this pattern and, to go with it, I made a bolero from Style 2302.

Sourced from my mother’s pattern stash.

On the morning of the picnic I machine-hemmed the eight-sided skirt and trimmed a straw hat to match (which has since been untrimmed). I was one of the few at the picnic who had decided to brave the weather in a dress; however I learnt the hard way that this skirt is difficult to control in the wind.

Or, alternatively, that it spins well.

I had wanted a bright print satin for this dress when I had made my first one so I was never entirely happy with the variegated fabric, so when I found some blue and green patterned satin it seemed like a good reason to make another one.  This time I added sleeves.

The sleeves are squares of fabric with the armhole shape cut out diagonally below centre.

All of the dresses have different skirt length and slightly different necklines. When cutting the pattern I initially cut the fabric straight along the shoulder seam line and then chose the neckline afterwards and shaped it while trying it on.

I don’t think I cut this neckline at all.

My first attempt at this dress is now a summer house dress. Because I can wear a satin 1930s Vionnet evening dress around the house during the day if I want to!

A quick project

Tunics form a staple part of my wardrobe. I’ve made several, all slightly different styles from A-line to fitted crossover.

While working on an outfit that required careful planning, patterning and execution (as-yet-unblogged) I decided I wanted to make something that would be finished quickly.

I had been brainstorming tunic designs, so I picked one and made up a pattern.

The one on the right.

The pattern was based on a pattern based on a pattern. (It started out as – but no longer resembles – McCall’s 3129.)  One of the changes was to make the side front and side back go up to the shoulder seam, rather than into the armhole.

Because this was to be a ‘quick project’ I didn’t make a muslin. I knew the top pattern fitted me so I figured it would be okay. It did fit, but was much less fitted than I wanted, so I had to take in all the seams to reduce it down to the fit I wanted.

I cut each front piece wide and fitted the angles of the crossover by hand. As this required very precise placing I basted the edges very close to the fold before cutting, neatening and hemming. I liked the look of the basting so much I kept it in.

The fabric is a curtain offcut that was in my stash. It has a lovely woven texture. The ribbons are also from the stash, which is why the ones on the inside don’t match and are odd lengths. I am considering buying some more of the purple ribbon and having another tie halfway up the front as it can gape a little.

The tunic closes with ribbon ties (because zips haven’t been invented yet).

This tunic was made to be a practical and versatile piece in my wardrobe so it can be worn with many things: pants, skirt, corset, short sleeves, long sleeves.