Armour inspiration for the Mythlore Costume.
Velvet/suede over leather with padding. Wet moulded leather base for the shoulders?
I promise, this is absolutely the last one in the series for now. However hopefully Simon will pick another game next year that we can use to develop this costume.
I want to thank Tom Garnett for sharing some gorgeous pictures from the event where he captured all my hard work. I want to thank Simon less for not wearing the whole thing and apparently not taking the armour I made for him out of the car. However, it was designed to work in layers of various kinds, and so I think it’s ok – as long as he wears it in the future sometime so that all my hard work becomes worth it.
Also Adam, for seeing me through a day of costume making where there were sense of humour failures, serious regret and almost even tears as I battled to get it finished on time for the event.
I’m surprised at how light the blue of the outer robes looked in the end. They looked far more grey in my flat, but I really like how it came together.
I was particularly pleased with the tagelmust. Not anything particularly fancy, but I added a row of studs to the end of the fabric that echoed the design of the armour. Before he wears it again I plan to also trim the long edges with yellow binding so that there is a twisted effect when he wears it.
You just have to love that striped effect around the legs, don’t you? Well I do. The back being cut into three and the high side splits really make it for me. I love the way that it flares as he walks.
I’m also really pleased that we did the whole thing out of natural fibres. I know some people really like synthetic fabrics for this kind of costume. I mean, they are an easy way to get bright colours and cool patterns. But I’m pleased that early on we decided to stick entirely to natural fibres. I much prefer working with them and I like the look of natural fibres about a thousand times more than synthetics. I know there’s a time and a place for everything, but if I’m ripping traditional middle-eastern/Arabic/Bedouin to pieces and recreating it in a fantasy style for shits and giggles, the least I can do is remain authenticish to the materials. That’s a vague attempt at some respect as well as making it look cool. (Cultural appropriation really bothers me.)
I should add at this point that yes, I’m willing to take on commissions. However I’m not cheap. Nor will I make something completely off the peg. Please don’t send me shitty emails telling me I’m more expensive than other LRP traders or I’m not worth as much as I think I am. I don’t really care about your opinions and if you don’t like my prices you can have something from someone else. Also, I only create kit for people I like, with a brief that I can fall in love with. Try me.
After all was said and done though, this whole outfit cost about £130 in materials in total. That’s the robes, outer robes, armour and tagelmust. As well as a whole metric-fuckton of love for a friend. You can’t buy that shit.
And just two more background shots…
With a scant twenty-four hours before he’s due on the field at Mythlore I handed over the costume to Simon and it was at last gone from cluttering up my flat!
So here’s the pictures of the final stuff. Please excuse the unwilling model.
The robes were… a sticking point. I started making them up in pale grey and blue and they looked horrible. Like this… (excuse second unwilling model).
I’m not kidding. They sat pinned to my mannequin for weeks without being sewn because I just couldn’t face it. Eventually it started to become critical so Simon and I decided that a short wallow in some Antique Grey Dye was the way forward.
And hey presto, in 24 hours the magic happened and both the robes and the armour got finished and covered liberally in Fullers Earth!
I also distressed the robes as much as I could without ripping and destroying them. You’ll spy seams that have been pulled through deliberately, and I wanted to simulate a slightly clumsy wearer by stretching the front of the loose weave linen robes *after* I’d sewn the more stable cotton bias tape around them (did I mention that I made somewhere around 24m of cotton bias tape by hand for these robes? I have mentioned my pain several times to Simon). Basically I put my foot on the bottom of the robes and yanked upwards on the collar to make it stretch around the feet where he’s fallen over it.
The only bit I’m not quite happy with is the way that the back hangs. However that might be rectified in PtII – The Return of the Minoan Robes.
Would I do things differently? Sure. There were many lessons learnt, especially on the armour. However I think it all turned out more or less ok.
I’m kind of sad sending my first completed costume out into the world. I’m hoping it has fun at Mythlore this weekend and Mr Pennington doesn’t get them all slotted within thirty minutes so that they can go to the pub.
As a little added extra I wanted to show you these in a beautiful black and white. Some of you might know that I used to work full time as a product photographer and it’s really my passion when it comes to photography. Portraits and products (and a bit of architecture). I’d love to, one day, shoot products ahgain more regularly, but for clients who want something a little bit different.
Simon and I started sorting through his leather accessories to see what we could use with the costume I was making. He pulled out one belt declaring that this would would work really well… and unfortunately it was broken.
See? Is broken.
No, I have no idea why M&S would make that bit in the buckle removable either, but apparently it fell out.
Doesn’t work very well as a belt without that middle bit.
Anyway.
The leather strap was still in good condition so I went on eBay, ordered a new 1¾” buckle for a couple of quid.
All I had to do then was unpick the stitches…
And then I used to waxed linen thread that I had for bookbinding to sew it back up again. I think you should really sew it with a double needle in order to hide the ends, but I didn’t have two needles I could use and I didn’t really care too much since otherwise Simon was going to chuck it away.
Not too shabby, eh?
So I got started on the kimono that’s going to go under the yellow robes as a base layer. I dug out a nice khaki muslin fabric from the stash and worked out that I had more than enough. I followed these instructions, or so I thought, and was feeling dead pleased with the finish on it. Below you can see how it’ll look under the yellow robes – notice the matching stitching?
However what I actually managed to do was use his half chest measurement rather than his shoulder to shoulder measurement, resulting in a garment that fit my mannequin rather than his mannequin – as you can see above. Fail. At least I have enough fabric to cut another.
What have we learnt from this little problem? Well, it wasn’t the only problem. Earlier this morning I cut a set of sleeves that were wrong too. We’ve learnt that four days post surgery is too soon to be trusted to draft patterns and make garments.
So there’s like… five weeks until Mythlore and it starts to become a race to see how much I can get done. Unfortunately work, LRP and surgery keep getting in the way of working on the costume parts so progress has been slow.
However, if I could complete everything I wanted to complete, I’d have these elements:
So here we go!
The robes are almost finished. They just need hemming but I can’t do that without Simon being here to put them on. Hopefully we’ll do it this weekend and he can wear them at Odyssey to start wearing them in on a dusty field.
Here’s a shot with the armour pinned over the top to start to see what it looks like as an outfit.
And some detail shots. I’m considering adding much more elaborate work around the shoulders and the (three meter!) hem, but that can be added if I have enough time.
I’m taking a break here half way through the set of base layer robes, because I want to revel in the neat and tidy seams – you’ll see later. 😉
But here’s the process so far. I decided to dye my own fabric for various reasons. Mostly that I’m not going to get up to Coventry to go shopping any time soon, but also because the muslin I liked was very narrow and I wanted to be lazy with my cutting and seaming in order to make it nice and neat inside.
So above you can see the white Ikea Ditte cotton fabric in the dye bath. I had to go on eBay to find the colour that I want, since Dylon have reduced their range considerably. Old Gold is the name of the colour, and I have another ten pots of it since I managed to find someone selling off old boxes of shop stock. When I say old… these aren’t even in the plastic pots that I remember as a kid. They’re in little metal pots that try their best to cut your fingers off. Anyway.
I decided to cold water dye it. Well, warm water dye. Partially because my shower is the safest place in the house to do these things – I didn’t really want dye in my little kitchen, I don’t have an outdoors area, and I didn’t particularly want to use my washing machine to dye. But also because if you’re “careful” you can get a streaky, mottled effect. OH GOD IT’S WONDERFUL. This fabric looks like it’s come right out of the end of the dye bath – perfect for someone cursed who can’t afford better. The only annoyance is that where the fabric is damaged from being stored on the fold line, it’s taken up more dye at that point. Nothing I can really do about that except buy wholesale on unfolded bolts – but that’s not going to happen. It doesn’t bother me too much.
So here’s the fabric as it was drying.
The robes are basically the same pattern as my own Odyssey robes, but modified to be bigger (because Simon is bigger than me – however only really in height terms, not in chest or hip terms) but also to have a Kimonoish style front. If you recall, this was the look we’re going for:
So I got to cutting the pattern out. I didn’t photograph the front, but I had to cut it in two pieces. The main body/arm and the gore. If I had more fabric I wouldn’t have done that, but I had to in order to squeeze it on. No problem.
Here’s the back piece, to be cut on the fold. The sleeves are short. I quite like them short. I think we’re going to add a piece to make them longer, maybe in blue. Mostly I just wanted to be able to curve the poxy underarm seam.
And here it is with the side seams sewn together.
It looks insanely yellow in that shot courtesy of my iPhone. It’s not. It’s more creamy, almost like a mustard.
The entire robe is french seamed throughout. I like making things super neat and tidy inside and mathematically working out the best way to do that.
Here’s the outside of one of the gores:
And the inside, where you can see the construction…
I’m pretty pleased with myself. Terrible pictures though.
The leg armour has affectionately become known as the battle skirt.
Here’s something resembling a step-by-step of what I’ve done so far.
So first of all I draped the fabric on the stand so that I could just draw the pattern onto the fabric and cut directly on that. I’m using the calico for the middle layer anyway so there wouldn’t be any wastage. Initially I planned to make the battle skirt in just two pieces so I’ve pulled the fabric up over the hip to cut the waist in a curve so that I didn’t have to add darts to the quilted layers.
And here it is cut out… At this stage I decided to split each one down the side and create the skirt from four pieces instead of just two. Just in case it was a bit stiff and he struggled to sit down.
I worked up some samples with the double needle – I wasn’t sure how well it would quilt with the walking foot, but as you can see it appears to work just fine.
And so onto the actually quilting… *insert boring in progress shot*.
This is where it starts to get interesting. Well, I think it’s interesting anyway. Here’s one of the back sections of the skirt after it’s been quilted. You can really see the nice blue-grey colour of the fabric in this one too. My iPhone is not great at colour reproduction.
And then the really interesting bit happened. I started to add studs.
Those white lines are just the chalk marks where I lined everything up.
The back looks something like this at the moment, it will eventually go blue and neat.
But this is what the finished section looks like on the mannequin:
The drape of this ‘new’ fabric is just beautiful. It’s stiff, but not so still that it doesn’t still drape and move nicely.
In fact you can see that here in these pictures how different the sections are in various stages of assembly:
I had to take a break there and wait for more studs and more thread to arrive in the post. But now I have these things so I guess I will start again!
I treated myself a few weeks ago. I bought myself a pintuck foot and some double needles because I had this crazy idea that I could add texture to the base layer robes for S’s costume.
This morning I decided to try a sample piece. Unfortunately I have no matching thread, but you get the idea. I photographed it in different lights so that you could see how subtle the texture is.
It worked like a dream. Wonderful. This is going all over the robes.