Adam picked up a plain hood at Empire from Darkblade and asked me if I’d attach it to his cloak and make it a bit more carthage.
Well, here it is! Sewn to the front of the cloak to keep it on without fastening, and lots of eyelets added with beads on them.
Two lanterns for Empire LRP. Picked up plain in Tiger for £2 each and painted with black acrylic paint. The paint won’t last – it scratches off easily. But I wanted to see how they looked when used as props at night in the field.
If it works well then I might etch them permanently. Or at least use glass paint instead.
IC lunchboxes. Yup. To try and minimise the amount of crap we put in our mouths as we walk past crew welfare.
Needs a bit more hand finishing – the machine top stitching didn’t really work. I’ll fix them after the event.
So… I wanted to upgrade my Odyssey costume. Yes, there are only two events left. No, that doesn’t matter to me. I think it’s important to do what I can between each event.
This is what it looks like roughly assembled with the other kit.
And this is what it looked like before:
This shot shows how MASSIVE the skirt is. It’s a traditional Gypsy dancing skirt that is often worn by belly dancers. It has a 20m hem, but because it’s made from really light Cotton Voile it’s not too heavy.
And it’s loosely based on Minoan Snake Goddess sculptures:
I made all the ruffles on my Overlocker. 40 meters of ruffles took me less than an hour.
And they looked like this when I laid them out on my lounge floor:
And finally, this is in the middle of pinning the final 20m hem to the bottom of the skirt before sewing it!
I offered to pop up to Tahims in Coventry to get a friend some fabric for his Odyssey costume. It’s beautiful fabric this – what they use for making Sikh Turbans. And it’s only £1.35 a meter. I’m planning on writing up a tutorial for LARP Guide because I used my GoPro to film the process. Stay tuned!
Absolutely no murdering will be happening in these robes that I put together.
Deliberate oversized baggy fit, extra wide sleeves, dark grey fabric trimmed with mid grey bias tape.
First time I’d used commercially made bias tape and I have to admit, it holds a crease really well which allows you to get great accuracy when putting it on in a single pass.
I started this a couple of years ago. And it sat unfinished in my cupboard for quite a long time. Then last year I noticed a friend playing a Roman who wears blue, so I checked if it fitted her and promised I’d finish it for her. Then I realised the game is next month… cue finally finishing it!
Simon needs clothes for Heathen. This is the first bit of the puzzle.
I also made the mistake of testing out the idea of some hand embroidery instead of machine embroidery, and it looks really good. So there might be quite a bit of that on this tunic – in time.
Both the lavender and the olive fabrics are hand dyed. I’m feeling quite pleased with this one.
This weekend I put together three new pairs of Brais (for Adam, Simon, and myself) and dyed another pair dark. I’ve got to admit, I love my new overlocker. These came together so quickly with no need to french seam anything or do any extra finishing on the inside.
You see, Adam managed to wash his nice linen pair with something brown, and so his brais turned a nice nude colour. Not really ideal.
I had to do some dyeing of fabric anyway for Simon, so it was no bother to do an extra bucket of dark brown dye.
And I seamed around the edges on my overlocker too (which get tucked into the hose). Because for some reason nobody bothered to finish the edges when he bought them.
I decided last weekend to start a king size quilt as a way of destressing from exam period.
Today I finished the quilt top. It has 1369 squares.
Now I have to decide if I’m going to attempt to quilt it myself, take lessons and hire a longarm quilting machine, or pay someone else to quilt it.
It’s had 24 hours of construction in it so far. Which actually is less than I assumed it would take.
