Kili Project - Scabbard strap

With HobbitCon just around the corner, I found out I would try on Rik's Kili costume, just for fun, to see if it actually fit, and it did! Inspired by this sudden delightful surprise, I did a quick make up and hair and realised (to Rik's horror) that I might actually make a pretty decent Kili myself! The idea formed in my head that I could actually participate in the costume competition at HobbitcCon, as Kili instead of Tauriel. As much as I love my Tauriel cosplay, I've put down a ridiculous amount of time, money and effort with the Kili costume, way beyond what I've done with Tauriel, and it would be amazing to be able to showcase that work through a competition (especially if the rumors are true and Richard Taylor (yes, THE Richard Taylor of Weta Workshop) IS in the judge panel). Therefore, after putting it down to a vote on my Instagram and Facebook account, Kili won through with way over half the votes!

Great! This will be awesome! At least that's what I thought a first. And then my compulsions kicked in ...

"I'll have to make the coat now! I don't have time for that ... But I can make the quiver/sword strap! I have time for that! And maybe the bracers? I could have time for that (possibly) ... And the gloves? That's pushing it."

As you can see, I have a nasty tendency of getting in over my head, but at least I've gotten better at calling myself out on it. I made the strap. Well, technically, I'd already made the strap, as a scabbard for the sword for the premiere, but it was just a simple leather strap, no embellishments, so I modified it look like the one in the movie. I might make the bracers if I have time tonight. Possibly.

Anyway, here's progress photos! And me as Kili! ^_^

Making more studs out of fimo clay:

Drilling holes in the corners of the studs for sewing, oh, and the buckle:

Gluing the studs and the leather pieces onto the strap:

Putting on the overlaying leather that attaches the buckle to the strap and gluing that too on:

Getting an idea of how it's gonna look before securing the studs by sewing the corners to the leather:

The finished product (I apologize for the messy background, I'm messy, I know, Rik keeps telling me off for it):

Me as Kili:

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 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! :)

Kíli Project - Boots & Buckles

Having finished the tunic, I'm working my way trough the bare essentials for the costume, so the obvious next step was the boots. Considering I now have a limited amount of time (and my own costume to fix on the side) before the premiere of The Desolation of Smaug, I'm settling for boot covers, rather than making full boots. I had the leather required, but the boots feature some buckles that I'd be hard pressed to find in any store, as they have a quite particular design, which also is featured on the belt buckle.

So my only decent alternative was to make some from scratch. Using Fimo clay and some steel wire to make them a little bit more resilient, I made six of these, and although I'm not entirely happy with the result (they're far too bulky and chunky), they'll do the job:

When the buckles had cooled down from the oven, I gave them a quick layer of Citadel paint, Ironbreaker, drybrushed on to give a worn look.

While I had the clay out, I figured I might as well try to do the belt buckle as well, and it turned out a lot better:

That's it for now! I'll come back to you with a new update when the boot covers are ready!

Kíli Project - Tunic Finished!

It's taken a lot longer than expected, but finally the blue tunic is done! It took a lot of material and lot of broken machine needles (seriously, if you're using linen and are sewing it in multiple layers, make sure you have needles meant for leather for your machine, because this stuff is tough, as in "meant to stop arrows from penetrating it"- kind of tough!), but here's the final result, modeled by my very own handsome dwarf!

 I made the lacing out of a long strip of the same linen, hand sewing it into the cord you can see on the photo.

The eyelets too are hand sewn, a painfully long process, but it looks so much better as a result.

The hood, although you can't really see it in this photo, is pleated and attached to a short, Victorian styled collar, and ends in a point at the back.

The gambeson bits on the shoulders came out looking a lot better on him, than it did on the mannequin, so I'm really pleased with that!

I'm not quite sure what I'll be focusing on next for this project, but I might just go for the boots, or in my case, boot covers. We'll see. ;)

Kíli Project - Tunic 0.2

Finally getting back into this project,  I've started remaking the blue tunic, this time in linen, which is far more satisfying than the dreadful cotton.

Having measured up and cut out the pieces for the front and back, , however, I realised there probably won't be enough fabric for me to do both rhe sleeves and the hood, so today will take me on yet another trip to the fabric shop. :p

This is how much I managed to do before running out of material, though:

Having learned a few lessons from the last attempt, I'm using three layers of material for the front piece, plus a fourth layer for the gambeson pieces at the shoulders. This will pad the whole thing up and give it the rigidity around the shoulders seen in this photo. It also makes sense to pad the chest area with you several layers of linen as this would serve as extra armour and protection against weapon penetration.

Also, having studied the video blog material on my precious Blue-Ray of The Hobbit, I finally found some shots of the back of the tunic, allowing me some further insight into how it's been constructed. As I'm loathe to post images on my blog that I do not have the rights to, I'll post the sketch I made from the still instead, which illustrates the extra layer on the shoulder area on the back piece:

It now looks like this:

Front piece stitched together (I know, the gambeson piece is far too small, but I cant be bothered redoing it again):

 

I will return to you with more updates once I have grabbed some more material and made further progress! :)

Kíli Project - Under Coat: Leather Vest and Trims

I've been working on the under coat lately and more or less finished most of the leatherwork, barring the hems and the surface finish (I'll most likely paint it to make it look less suede). This si what I've got so far:

For the center back seam I had to help ease the leather with some water to flatten it enough to sew it down:

 Here's the result:

 Front view (it still needs a litte cutting to adjust the front opening):

The shoulders turned out a lot more raised than the original and I'm pondering how to deal with it without affecting the mobility of the arms ...

Not being able to go much further with the leather without a fitting first, I dived into the task of sorting out the beautiful, but painfully intricate trims. I've decided that I'll only be happy with the exact same pattern and it has to be embroidered, so there is no way around doing it all from scratch.

I started with some lengths of solid cotton canvas and begun the job of sketching up the pattern:

Havong finished sketching up the pattern, the next step was for the sewing to commence.

Having looked at the original trims the "zig-zag" pattern was sewn on first, so that's where I began:

On the original pattern, the squares were sewn on thereafter, each overlapping the last (and because I'm a bit OCD when it comes to this stuff, that's how I did it. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough thread to finish it off, so the rest will have to wait until tomorrow, but I'm quite pleased with how it looks so far:

And that's all for today! Now, I'll head out to the pub for the Tuseday Irish Session! ^_^

Kíli Project - Under Coat

So, having made what I'd like to call a "first draft" of the blue tunic (I'll be doing a new one once I get hold of the right material, which I suspect to be linen, or wors, natural silk), I can start my work on the next layer; the under coat, or actually, as it turns out a leather vest with gambeson sleeves. Having done some research, and stumbling across this awesome blogpost describing both the making of a medieval gambeson and testing it gor it's usefulness in battle, I've decided to go for the layered method for the sleeves. However, I'll be using cotton rather than linen due to my budget. For the leather, I will use some more of the suede hides I got for a bargain price. I'm still not certain what to do with regards to the trims, but I suspect I'll be buying some wide velvet trims and simply sew the dwarven pattern on myself (just need to get thread with the right yellow/gold hue).

Here's what I've got so far:

Gambeson sleeves:

I first cut out five layers of material, then aligned them all, stitching the top and bottom together. Turning them inside out, I ironed them so that the hems were all nice and neat. From there I started the work of sketching up the seams:

 After the sketching job was done, I pinned all the layers in place:

Here's the result:

And when the last edges were sewn together, this is how it looks:

A it turnes out, these may be a little too tight and a little too short, so I'll probably have to redo them, which is why I didn't add the last vertical seams as seen on the original. However, this was a useful test run and I've learned a lot (and broken a lot of machine needles). From here, I will be moving on to the trimming and the leather.

Kíli Project - Tiny, Almost Insignificant, Update

I've really been focusing a lot on my music lately, which has put the Kíli Project a bit on hold, but yesterday, I got a little boost of inspiration as I read a blogpost by my lovely and talented  friend Therese (not only is she an excellent seamstress, make-up geek and generally delightfully nerdy, but she also has an amazing singing voice!) about her self-made Merida costume.

For the blue dress, she had used linnen, and the colour was perfect for Kíli! This obviously got me way more excited than anyone should be allowed to be about a bloody fabric, and I started interrogating her about it. Turns out, she bought natural coloured linen and dyed it herself, however, the perfect woad blue result she got was actually just a normal "stuff it all in the washer and see what happens"-dye.

Feeling very relieved at the fact that I might actually not have to go through the whole messy process of using natural dyes to get the right colour (I do still want to work with natural dyes at one point, but I'd rather it be for a project without a particular time limit on it), I'm really looking forward to pick up where I left! I will get back to you as soon as there is some real progress to write about! :)

Kíli Project - Studs

A tiny, little update! :)

Feeling up for a little break from the hard leather work, I sat down and digged out my old Fimo stuff. It's been ages since I tinkered with Fimo, so a little bit of tidying up was needed. I did so while lamenting the lack of nummies currently available in my flat. Fimo somehow always makes me think of sweeties ...

Having a better account of what I actually had available, I set myself the task of making a tester for the studs used on Kíli's vambracers, belt and over coat. Using black Fimo and silver dusting powder, this was the final result:

 I think this'll do, don't you? :)

Kíli Project - Patterned Sleeve

The half sleeves on Kíli's coat has a beautiful dwarven pattern. I don't know  for certain how they've made it, but I will assume that it's embossed or raised, which means that's what's up next!

So, before I start, I had to do a test run,  so I drew the pattern onto a piece of leather with chalk.

Once that was done and it looked relatively correct, I went over the chalk lines with a silver clothes marker to make it more clear, and not to mention, more permanent. 

From here, I proceeded to cut out the pattern, resulting in this:

As it turned out, this didn't really work, as the pattern needs to be embossed fra the inside and out, so I tried a new tactic. Finding a wooden plank and drawing the pattern onto it (a lot more precisely, this time,  mind you), I began the process of carving the pattern out.

After hours of work, this is how it turned out:

 I did a test with a piece of leather and this is how it turned out:

I'm not entirely happy, as the pattern doesn't show as well as I had hopes, but, then I didn't soak it through with water properly, nor did I work very long on the embossing process. But at least I have a stencil (and very achy hands)! Yay!