New Year, New Start, New Projects!

Last year ended on quite the low, having lost so much in the fire and having had no luck with finding a flat we could buy. However, we were dead set on looking forwards to the future, not lingering in the past, and, after a lovely New Year celebration, just my husband and I, we kept our spirits up as January started, and a sudden rush of flats for sale rolled in. And just one week ago, having fallen a bit in love with a flat we'd visited for a viewing the day before, I entered a bidding round I was almost certain I would lose, as the recommended bid started very close to our financial limit. But then, by some unbelievable strike of luck or circumstance, I ended up being the only bidder, and lo and behold, won! So, 2015 is truly a new start for the two of us as we move into our first, very own flat towards the end of February!

So, long term accommodation secured, I've started a new cosplay project! My lovely friend and fellow cosplayer, Ida, known as Starbit, (check out her DeviantArt account and her Facebook page!) has become the Tauriel to my Kili. She's designed a beautiful dress for Tauriel, which she aims to finish for HobbitCon in April, and it's so beautiful it inspired me to do my own design for Kili to match it!

I present to you; Royal Kili:

I've bought materials for it already; blue velvet for the tunic, black velvet for the short sleeved over tunic, and leather imitation and fake fur for the over coat! I'll be using the old trousers and boots, as well as the old belt, to make it a little easier for myself. You can see the leather imitation and velvet below (as well as some faux suede for a potential Tauriel update), even though the colour of the leather imitation looks a bit wrong in that light:

Also, check out Ida's design for Tauriel, the Starlight Gown! It's absolutely exquisite!

Tauriel Bracers

Having finished the bodice, I started to work on a new pair of bracers that would match it. The old ones are too tight and rigid to be comfortable and they're made out of the same thick suede I used for the old bodice, and are spray painted the same way. Good last resort, but hardly impressive. I had to make new ones!

I used the old bracers as a pattern and cut out four copies; two in a thinner, brown suede material, and two in the same thin leather that I used for the bodice.

I could probably have wrapped it up quite quickly if I hadn't decided to decorate the bracers with gold thread embroidery. I sat down, found some reference pictures, which are pretty few and hard to come by, so I opted for an original freehand design that took on some of the style from the fragments I could find pictures of. Using baking paper, I traced the pattern and taped the paper to the suede side of the thin leather (the gold thread is quite fragile, so I only used it on the under thread, thus, to get the gold on the right side, I had to sew it with the suede side up).

After that, I simply sewed the pattern with my sewing machine, using the freehand embroidery fuction. It was rather time consuming, and it sometimes turned out a little different than the design, but on average, I'm pretty happy with the result.

Then came the tedious process of removing the baking paper! It was truly such a bother, I decided to go for some silk paper for the second one, and that definitely made it easier as I didn't have to worry about ruining the seams when I pealed it off.

With the embroidery done on both pieces, I started to peg (those wonderful pegs again) the supple, thin leather to the more rough and rigid suede leather, and stitched the two layers, also with gold under thread. And that's what I've done so far. Next, I'll be sorting out some sort of closures,  hut I'm still trying to come up with one that both looks good and is functional.

I think they turned out rather nice, though! What do you think?

Tauriel Bodice

After I had stitched together the leather pieces as demonstrated in my last post, I also did the lining and attached some channels for boning to the latter. Using thin spiral steel boning gives the bodice the rigidity it needs, and yet allows it to remain flexible enough for comfort.

I sewed together the leather and the lining and proceeded to sort out the lacing in the back, inserting boning at the end piece and then eyelets for the lacing. Only to realize I'd made the whole thing a bit too wide; even lacing it all the way in, it looked and felt slack, so I had to do some cheating on the back panels to get rid of a couple of inches. That worked a treat!

Moving on from here, I started to work on the "winged" sweetheart neckline and straps. This was a fiddly process, but I got it right in the end, with the help of some pegs (!), and now, all that remains is to attach the two last bits on the straps, and then attach the latter in back!

Tauriel - Bodice progress

Using one of the two leather coats I originally bought for the Kili project, I started cutting out the pieces for the new bodice. I also made an extra set in a thick cotton and polyester mix material for lining. Pinning them together, I sewed them together:

It then ended up looking a bit like this. Now, I know the original doesn't have a seam in the middle of the front panel, but I was running out leather and had to compromise.

Having stitched it all together, it looked like this. I'm currently working on boning and the lining, so there will be a new update as soon as I've got that fitted. :)

Tauriel Upgrade

I did it. I bought tickets for HobbitCon 2014. And now I've started the stupidly time consuming task of upgrading my Tauriel costume! The one I made for the premiere of The Desolation of Smaug carries all the hallmarks of being a de-prioritised side project, so I feel like I owe it to the costume to make jt better!

I'm starting with the leather bodice, which is the part of the costume I was the most unhappy with. The upgraded version will be made out of thin, napped leather from an old leather coat, and lined with thick cotton canvas. I'll be probably add some spring steel boning as well to give it a bit more rigidity.

I have already made a pattern for the mock-up,  mainly by making test bodice in cotton and then cutting it up again for the correct placement of seems, pretty much the same way I made the pattern for the tunic sleeves. (I only cut up half of the test bodice, leaving the remaining half as a pattern for the lining.) From here, I'll need to cut the pieces for the mock-up and sew it all together to check for any adjustment requirements that may pop up.

This is how it looks so far:

I'll give some more updates when I've done more! :)

Side project: Tauriel - part 2

Before I went back to the sewing, I decided to sit down and make Tauriel's pendant with Fimo clay. It was a fairly easy task and didn't take long, leaving room to make the bracers as well. Here's how they turned out:

Having finished the little bits and bobs, I finally returned to the green jacket to fix the collar and front opening. I made the collar, then cut the neckline before attaching it. Here's how it turned out:



















I fixed the front opening by sewing on little hook and eye fastenings all the way down the front, but I don't really have any good photos of it.

After all the seams were sewn, the costume was pretty much done. I'd bought some nice boots some months earlier and had decided to just wear some brown cotton leggings (mainly because it meant I could wear warm thermals underneath to shield me from the Norwegian winter cold), so I couldn't resist trying it all on, even if I didn't have the full hair and make-up!



















I took a couple of selfies, but the lighting wouldn't really show off the full costume, so I bribed my fella with a cup of tea and had him take some full figure photos where you can actually see the skirt and the boots as well. :)

Side project: Tauriel - part 1

Considering I too was going to the premiere of The Desolation of Smaug, I needed a costume of my own. With all the rumours that had been going around about there potentially being a romance thing going on between a certain redheaded elf and Kíli, I obviously couldn't resist the temptation of making my first Middle Earth elf costume, so as a side project, I'd made a simplified Tauriel costume.

I started with the green jacket thing, which I made out of dark olive green linen:

Here's the pattern I made for the sleeves, which are the work of demons, I tell you! I first made a normal sleeve, and then marked up the lines where the new seams would go. Then I proceeded to cut the new seam lines and pinned it together so that I could adjust the seams to make the sleeves fitted. Once that was done stitched it together with big stitches and cut away the surplus fabric. Unraveling the seam, I then had a pattern for the sleeves and could start cutting the linen pieces.

I sewed them together to make sure they had the right fit and went on to make the bodice part of the jacket.

 I simply used a pattern I had from an old jacket design for the torso, and pinned the sleeves onto it when I  had sewn it together (this is the first time in ages that I've sewn sleeves on this way; I usually sew them on before I sew the side seams and the seams on the sleeves).

This is how it looked after I had attached the sleeves. They fell kind of awkwardly whilst on the mannequin, but it looked good when I put it on, so I continued. Cutting the waistline, I measured up the linen for the four "skirt flaps" on the jacket. It was a little trickier than I thought it be, because, I had limited amount of fabric and had to cut the flaps seperatly instead of making the skirt out of one or two pieces, and so it took some adjusting to get them all in the right length and width when attaching them to the bodice.

I got it right in the end though and moved on to the next step, which probably should have been the neckline and collar, but I was still a bit uncertain about how I wanted to do that, so instead I jumped on the next bit item, which was the leather bodice.


Because I didn't have any leather in the right colour, and thus would have to dye it anyway, I went with the light grey split leather I still have a ton of. It's suede, but it's thick and I needed the firmness of it to make it work.


I treated it as a basic corset construction with several panels, and it needed a bit of adjusting before I got the cut right, but in the end it turned out alright.



I made the straps and attached the extra bits on the front and it was done. All that remained was the colour. Now, since I didn't plan on using this costume a lot, I cheated and decided to just spray paint the fuck out of in, so (almost) one can of fur brown spray paint later, this was the result, and I figured it was close enough. After all, this was a side project to Kíli and I didn't want to spend too much time on it.


In between sewing and spray painting, I managed to fit in some time for a hair test. I can't stand wearing wigs, and If I can avoid it, I will. In this case it was pretty easy, as I have a very similar hair colour to the one Tauriel has, and it's now grown long enough to reach just underneath my shoulder blades. Yes, Tauriel has hair down to her knees (which is a practical nightmare if your job is to engage in combat, but I guess elves have magical hair that doesn't get caught on things or slap you in the face :p), but I figured I wouldn't want screen accurate length if I was to sit in a cinema most of the time whilst wearing this costume, anyway, so I just went with what I already had.

Doing the hair test made me thank the powers that be that I've been doing strength classes all year, 'cause the amount of strain this hairdo puts on your arms is insane! Turned out alright, though I found out that the side braids were in fact twisted and not braided, which I did for the premiere night.

I'll show you how it all turned out in part two! :)