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"I can ride and wield blade"

The bodice of Eowyn’s riding outfit is made of a green fabric and quilted with gold thread. The bodice has gold buttons down the centre front and smaller gold buttons from wrist to elbow on the sleeves.  The bodice quilting is invisible on the DVD version of the film, but a glimpse of it can be seen at the bottom edge of the following photo:

  A rare in-focus glimpse of this costume.

The cowl and lower edge of the bodice are trimmed with a floral tape. The cowl and sleeves appear to be brown velvet, and the sleeves have a gold floral pattern.  

I made my bodice out of green twill, thin wadding and lined with the leftovers from my 1879 gown. This fabric was ideal for the lining because it has a diamond pattern that I used as a guide for the quilting.

I based my pattern on Vogue 8323 (which is a knit pattern, but it worked). I adapted it to open at the centre front with an overlapped opening. The bodice closes with clips – I had no interest in sewing a dozen buttonholes through all those layers of fabric and wadding.

I sewed each layer of the bodice together separately before layering and quilting. To avoid having bulky seams on the wadding layer I cut the pieces out without seam allowances and zigzagged them together with the edges meeting.

 There was a lot of quilting and it took several days to do it all.

I need to thank my mother for letting me use her sewing machine for this project. My sewing machine was exhausted by the end of last year and is currently having a well deserved holiday at the sewing machine servicing place. This outfit has been entirely sewn on my mother’s Janome, which was the machine I learned to sew on.

My sleeves and cowl will be made from a stretch panne velvet; the sort of fabric I would usually cringe to use. However it looked just right for this costume, was available and affordable, and this particular one has been much easier to use than panne velvets I have used in the past. I added the gold decoration to the sleeves with fabric paint – the leaves are stamped and the flowers were painted freehand.

I want to report that I managed to put both sleeves in properly first time :-). 

I have been unable to find the floral trim for this outfit. I have searched every fabric shop I know of in Canberra, a few interstate, and etsy. I even went to The Other Side of Town (for non-Canberrans: that’ a half-hour drive away and is considered a day-trip, made once a year at most).

Have you seen this trim?

Here is the bodice in its current state:

The Lord of the Rings images belong to New Line Cinema.

New year, new project

Eowyn from Lord of the Rings is one of my favourite fictional characters and I have been wanting to make one of her costumes for years. At the end of last year I decided on a whim that it was time to make one. I particularly like her ‘victory gown’ and her ‘riding outfit’. Both are in The Return of the King but only for fleeting headshots.

I have been on the lookout for some brocades for the victory gown for a while but never found anything so I decided to make the riding outfit.

As far as I know, there is only one full length picture of this outfit in existence:

Found here.

These online resources suggest that the skirt is split in front and worn with trousers, or possibly it is trousers that look like a skirt. I decided to go with the front split as that was also used for Eowyn’s ‘refugee’ underdress.

For the skirt I found a lovely grey satin in Cootamundra (Patchwork on Parker is an amazing shop! They don’t have a lot of dressmaking fabric, but almost always have exactly what I need) and I plan to wear it with the brown trousers from my assassin costume. 

I used an old 4-panel skirt pattern (for some reason we have multiple 1980s 4-panel skirt patterns) and attached the skirt, gathered in the back, to a rectangular waistband. The peak at the centre front comes from cutting the ends of the rectangle diagonally (making it actually a trapezium) to fit my waist properly. The skirt does up by being laced through 4 hand bound eyelets on the band.

Now, on to the bodice...



The Lord of the Rings images belong to New Line Cinema.

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.

Chasing after the wind

The embroidery for my Assassin’s Creed II outfit has defeated me. I had planned to hand embroider the 18 cabbage and phoenix motifs as well as hand-couching the border trim.

Eight months after beginning the embroidery I had two and a half motifs done. As well as taking far too long, this embroidery wasn’t fun and the end result didn’t look much good. I decided it wasn’t worth the time and effort to make something I wasn’t going to be happy with.

I am going to paint the motifs on instead. I will cut stencils out of overhead transparencies and use white paint. These should be done very soon; indeed they're drying as I type.

I held on to my plan to couch the border trim for a bit longer, but again after getting a little done I found it didn’t have the affect I wanted.

I made a trip to Lincraft and came home with matching gold and silver braids.

I also needed a gold and black braid but one couldn’t be found so I bought a gold braid and some black crochet thread and threaded the black through by hand.

By the end of the day I had got three skirt pieces trimmed. It was so lovely to finally start making swift progress on this outfit.

I have also finished fraying the seam allowances under the red trim on the outer layer which means everything can start being sewn together.

Progress, progress, progress.

Assassin’s Creed belongs to Ubisoft.

Regency day dress II

For my second Jane Austen Festival I made myself a new day dress. I used the same Cut of Women’s Clothes pattern as I used for my mourning ball gown, this time adapting it for daywear.

Since I was so pleased with the piped neckline on my other day dress I decided to pipe the waist and neckline of this gown in a contrast fabric.  The bodice is lined.

The dress has two-layer sleeves: a puffed sleeve over a long sleeve.

Rather than being gathered all along the edge, the puffed sleeve is gathered to a point where there is a decorative self-covered button. I had never done self-covered buttons before, but I liked them quite a lot.

The long sleeve has a tie and a button.

The skirt is gathered to the bodice and the dress closes with more self-covered buttons.

The features of this dress make it more interesting that my other day dress and I like this one rather better; the fabric is less stiff which makes it nicer to wear. I wear this dress over my bodiced petticoat and a chemisette.

I trimmed a straw bonnet to wear with this dress. I had been planning to use some leftover fabric but I couldn’t make it look right. Also, using the same fabric would limit the bonnet to only being worn with one outfit which I didn’t really want.

Preliminary design.

Instead, I used cream satin trimmed with the same colour ribbon that I had used for the piping. The ribbon is box pleated and the satin is gathered. Inside, the bonnet is lined with a sturdier cream satin edged with blue lace.

A day (and a season of Burn Notice) later, I had a hand-trimmed bonnet. I finished at 2 in the morning

Regency underpinnings

When I first made a regency dress I wore it over the chemise and short stays from the Sense & Sensibility pattern. I found this to be a very bulky combination, especially under the finer fabric of my ball gown, which showed all the bumps from the garment underneath.  When I made a second chemise I made the body pieces thinner so as to have less gathering but this still didn’t solve the problem.

So I set about making a ‘bodiced petticoat’ – basically an underdress that is fitted and supportive. This would mean wearing only one layer beneath the dress and that layer wouldn’t be all gathered.  

In my research I found several bodiced petticoats that had been made from dress patterns (instructions are available on the site) but I didn’t like that idea as I wanted the support of stays. I also wanted my petticoat to do up in the front which the dress-style ones didn’t seem suited for.

I found this extant garment online and I think I found others at the time, which were more like what I was going for:

source

I ended up making a set of short stays and adding a skirt. I have found the bodiced petticoat to be greatly preferable to a chemise and stays. 

Regency outerwear

I made a spencer and bonnet to go with my autumn toned Regency day dress. The bonnet was begun in a class at Jane Austen Festival Australia and is made from a straw hat.

The spencer is based on my adapted Sense & Sensibility pattern that I used for the dress. I found it worked a lot better for the spencer. It is comfortable and fits nicely, in terms of me and of the dress. The bodice of the spencer is lined. It does up with a frog and has a drawstring tie around the waist to ensure it is properly fitting.

The spencer and dress are made from quilting cotton, which I haven’t found to be a great fabric for these clothes. It is a bit stiff which means it doesn’t drape nicely and isn’t so comfortable to wear, and it gets very wrinkly in the wash. What quilting cotton does have going for it is the variety of prints available in it; prints being popular during the regency era.

The back. I rag-curled my hair which was recovering from being dyed blue.

I was very happy with how the spencer turned out and I think it turns a plain dress into an attractive ensemble.