2014 Review

In 2014 I made:

Lucy from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

A fantasy gown.

  A Viking outfit.

Ezio’s outfit from Assassin’s Creed II.

Ezio’s outfit from Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

Ezio’s outfit from Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.

A cotton petticoat (not pictured).

* * * * *

In the past year I discovered Dorset buttons which I first made for Lucy and then for my AC II costume.

These buttons are inexpensive, light, flat and soft which makes them very useful. The downside is that they take 40 minutes to an hour each to make, but for these costumes I found that manageable.

I used bleach on fabric for the first time ever to decorate the AC: Revelations costume and was very pleased with the outcome. I also discovered the usefulness of string as part of the trimming toolkit.

With the Lucy and Assassin costumes I started to come to terms with myself about not always needing everything to be screen accurate. I’ve often observed that the overall impact of a garment is more important than whether the small details are right but that doesn’t stop me getting worked up about them. However I managed to be satisfied with having the Lucy outfit and the AC II outfit trimmed with a gold pattern rather than trimmed with a screen-identical gold pattern.

 

These are not the same.

Very few people other than me will notice, and if I had adapted or hand-done something for the sake of accuracy but of poorer quality, that would have been noticeable.

While attempting an accurate trim on the AC II outfit I discovered my limits in the field of handsewing which might, if I am very sensible, help me to make more realistic decisions about future garments. I ended up painting the motifs and using braid instead.

While I didn’t develop many new skills making the Assassin outfits I still learned a lot from them. I had to solve many challenges with regard to patterning, fitting, historicity, accuracy and construction, and went through the process with a lot of doubt as to how they would turn out. Happily, I think they eventually turned out well. Of course, in 2015 they will require me to develop a new skill-set as I try to make the armour and weaponry to go with them.

Given that I am largely self-taught and am constantly putting myself in situations where I have no idea what I’m doing, it was kind of odd to take on a mentoring role in the last year. At the beginning of the year I was asked for help by a girl from church who had never sewn before, so I walked her through making a sundress. It was a fairly complicated first project, containing darts, front/sidefront construction and a zip, and required fitting a mock-up. However, I am of the belief that it is better for a beginner to make something they want rather than something simple but dull.

I also spent some time sewing costumes with my young cousin. I have achieved my goal of corrupting the next generation! When we visited in the middle of the year I did some corsetry with her. When she visited us a few weeks ago she made this Victorian-inspired gown (McCall’s pattern 6097).

It’s not completely finished in the picture, but it's pretty good for three days work. I’m very proud of her.

Now, I’m going to stop typing because I have a new project to start.

We are assassins

They’re done! They’re finally done!

I’ll have more detailed write-ups for the AC II and Brotherhood outfits soon (the Revelations one is here ) but I’m so excited to be finished I wanted to share them now.

Next year I will start on the accessories.

Assassin’s Creed belongs to Ubisoft.

Requiescat in pace

I have sent the first assassin outfit off to its new home.

Some of the decorative features I have documented already but since my last post I still had some trimming to do.

The lace on the back and front lace I sewed on by machine but the sleeve and sleevehole braids were attached by hand.

It was tricky sewing the trim onto the sleeve because the sleeve was already sewn up and attached to the garment. I ended up doing the stitching on the ‘right side’ of the sleeve with my left hand and the stitching on the 'wrong side' with my right hand.  The braid has a seperate cord running along each side and I connected the cords as I attached the braid, one side at a time.

There are many rows of straight string trim on the skirts which were all done by machine with a zigzag stitch. I used an invisible zipper foot to guide the string. The scrolling and other fancy bits had to be sewn by hand.

Once all the trimming was done the outfit went together fairly quickly.

I decided to have the doublet and jerkin do up with ties and the front flap closes with clips, which are less historically appropriate.

The hood is lined, which I have never done before but I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out.  I gave the lining some anchoring stitches to the outer fabric at the peak of the hood to stop the layers separating.

To make the sash I sewed three widths of red cotton together with flat felled seams. I hemmed the long sides (by machine, because I had an attack of sanity). The short edge is finished with satin stitch a bit in from the edge, and I frayed the fabric down to the satin stitch to create the fringe.

I was so excited to finish this. While I was making it there were many moments of panic when I became convinced it wouldn’t fit or would look awful but when I finally put them all together it worked. It was a big job and I think it turned out pretty well.

Assassin’s Creed belongs to Ubisoft.

"We work in the dark to serve the light"

The Assassin’s Creed: Revelations outfit has a number of decorative designs on the fabric. In some images they look like embroidery and in others they don’t, so I have chosen to make the designs by bleaching the fabric.

To get the hood and skirt designs, I traced over reference pictures in GIMP with my drawing tablet. I then manipulated the picture to make the designs symmetrical and flat.

For the doublet I decided to use the assassin logo which is how it appears in game, although there is a different symbol on most of the promotional art. The design I used is readily available online, being printed on t-shirts and the like. (I would like to express my gratitude to Ubisoft for making costumers’ lives easier for once!)

My design patterns for bleaching – not to scale:

Hood Back

Hood Top

Hood Beak

Hood Side

Upper Skirt

Lower Skirt

Once I had my designs, I printed them on overhead transparencies which I then cut into stencils.  For the bleach, I used a Milton bleach tablet moistened in a small amount of water and applied it with a paint brush. I had to be careful with the consistency – I mostly had it at ‘almost a paste’. If the mixture was too liquid the bleach would run under the stencils.

Once I had finished the bleaching I let it sit for 8 or so hours, then rinsed out the fabric.

Out to dry – but not outside because by this time it was 9pm.

And here are the finished pieces:

Assassin’s Creed belongs to Ubisoft.

"Everything is permitted"

The Assassin’s Creed: Revelations costume for my cousin was the harder to fit than the other two assassin outfits I am making because he lives in a different state. I mailed a muslin for him to try on, but found I couldn’t really get enough information from the exercise to be confident of a good fit. I know there are people out there who can make fitted garments just from measurements - I must learn this skill.

I made all the skirt shapes by draping and cutting the desired shapes, based on my reference pictures.

The centre-front doublet piece extends up to form the front panel of the hood.

This costume needs a sturdy grey-blue fabric so I am using a light denim.  It has to be lightweight because there is so much fabric in the outfit. I will use the leftover red poplin from the other outfits for the sash – and that’s all the fabric I need.

This will one day be a costume.

I have resisted the urge to hand embroider all the decorative trims on this outfit and will instead use a variety of braids. The variations between the many reference pictures gave me some freedom in choosing the trims so, although I have not achieved exact matches, I’ve ended up with a set I am mostly happy with. 

There are designs on two of the skirts, the front of the doublet, the hood beak, and down the side front of the hood.  I am going to bleach these motifs into the fabric. 

 I will soon have a more detailed post on the bleaching process.


Assassin’s Creed belongs to Ubisoft.