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! :)

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. ;)

Other sewing projects

Life has really been keeping me busy, and I've been sewing all sorts of things not related to the Kíli Project. I've been doing medieval and viking markets, plus a larp, which have kept my fingers busy and here are some of the results:

 This was my outfit for Oslo Medieval Festival.

I made the rusty coloured skirt, the leather corset, 

the high waisted leather vest, and the leather hip belt:

This was a green linen dress that I made for the 

second day at Oslo Medieval Festival, which I 

wore along with the leather corset:

 Here's my brown linen viking gown, most of which

is handsewn, over a chemise I quickly put together

out of white, thin muslin:

For the Viking Festival in Sarpsborg, which I visited 

briefly on my birthday, I used the green linen dress 

under the viking gown with some of my viking bling:

For the larp, I made a two way bodice with lace-up 

front and a short sleeved gypsy blouse:

 

 I also made this skirt two times, out of unbleached 

cotton, and then dyed one of them a mossy green

and the other a sharp purple:

 I did the same with this blouse, only, I made three 

instead of two and kept one of them white:

 Then, because I felt up for a bit of a challange, I made

these leather boots. Unfortunately, they're actually a

bit too wide, it seems, because the shaft of the boots

tend to end up in one big, crumpled heap around 

my ankles when I wear them. But they look good 

for 30 seconds! ;)

For the larp, I also made this huge, squishy, 

colourful pillow:

 And, lastly, I made a new cover for my Kindle in 

light grey leather, which I dyed into a tan brown:

So, as you can see, I have not been idle, even though I've been sorely negligent of my blog, for which I apologize profusely! I will do my best not to leave it this long before I blog again!

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! :)

Etsy Shop

There's not been much progress on the Kíli front, I admit. Life and the building of a career  has come in the way, and stolen time from it, although, I promise I'll be getting back on track soon! One of the reasons taking me away from the project is my brand new Etsy shop! It's named Chameleon Candour after this blog and it's where I'll be selling stuff I make and possibly even take some commissions.

There's not really that many listings there currently, but I'm working to remedy that coming up with new ideas for products and posting new listings as they take shape. For now, it's mostly products made out of suede leather, but there may be some other materials popping up later on.

Here's some pics of some of the things I've got listed there so far:

Please pop by and have a look around! :)

Chameleon Candour