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A Cosplayer's Tale by Irony-chan Updated 25/06/04  Smaug appears courtesy of BoingDragon PROLOGUE: Concerning Cosplay, and Other Matters CHAPTER ONE: A Long-Expected Pattern CHAPTER TWO: The Shadow of the Lining CHAPTER THREE: A Short Cut to Velvet CHAPTER FOUR: A Solution Unmasked CHAPTER FIVE: The Old Grommets CHAPTER SIX: In The House of Finishing Up June 8/04 PROLOGUE: Concerning Cosplay, and Other Matters In case you don't know, 'cosplay' is short for 'costume play', and is just a cute way of saying "I dressed up as soenso". It originally applied to dressing as one's favourite anime character, but can really apply to any costume worn to a convention. I love making costumes... the more elaborate, the better! For Anime Central in 2004, I made myself a copy of Padmé's pastel dress from Attack of the Clones, with a little help from The Padawan's Guide to Star Wars Prequel Costumes (Here's me and a friend in our costumes). I also managed to put together a fairly nice Vorphede from Lost Universe (here I am with a Rail and a Nina) thanks to some advice from a friend. For 2005, I decided to tackle something a bit different, and took on Arwen's red dress from Return of the King. This website happened because last time I made costumes I had a habit of annoying all my friends with running commentary on all the problems I was encountering. So this year I figured I'd put it online where they can read it or not at their leisure, and where my commentary might well help somebody else who's trying to make the same outfit or something similar - or, at least, provide someone with a few yuks. Arwen wears three different gowns in Return of the King, but all are made from the same basic template. Only the colours differ, so if you can make one, you can make the others... thus this page will be instructions not only for making the red and black gown, but for the blue one and the green coronation gown as well. So here it is: Arwen's Gowns, a Cosplayer's Tale by Irony-Chan. Enjoy, and look for updates soon! June 9/04 CHAPTER ONE: A Long-Expected Pattern Basically the first thing one needs to keep in mind when tackling any cosplay project is that the finished product is not going to look as good on you as it does on the original wearer. This is because the original wearer is either an anime character or a movie star - in the first case, they are not bound by the laws of physics, and in the second... well, let's just say that if I hadn't seen her in other movies first I'd swear Liv Tyler was a product of Weta Digital. As it is, I think she's a real person. Orlando Bloom is another story. Anyway. Once you've dealt with that, the second thing you need to think about is that you can't sew without a pattern, and the third is that you will never, ever find a pattern that looks exactly like the costume you want. If you're lucky, however, you can come darn close and generally get there with a minimum of modification. I looked around on SewingPatterns.com and chose to use McCall's 4491. This is about as close as I could get to matching Arwen's dress precisely - a few changes will still have to be made. The number four thing you need to know is exactly how you're going to change the pattern, before you cut anything out or even buy the fabric. This one is really a very good approximation of Arwen's - the only thing I should need to change is the neckline. Before I can do anything else, I need to figure out what I'm doing with that. If you look at a close up of Arwen's neckline, you see that (a) her bra strap is showing, (b) she's about to fall out of that dress, and (c) she appears to be wearing two seperate garments. Underneath is the embroidered gown with the sleeves, made of a lighter material, and overtop is the velvet dress, which has a sort of 'spaghetti strap' thing going on. The interesting look of the neckline is accomplished by the way the two overlap. I want to make just one dress, so I'll have to play with the neck to simulate this doubling-up. I decided that the best way to simulate the layering is by sewing the dress as in the pattern and then adding two seperate layers of trim. I may have to cheat a little with the placement in order to make it look right, but it ought to work something like this. The first layer of trim is higher up and further out, to look like a wider, shallower neckline. The second overlaps it and should disguise where the bodice attaches to the sleeves. The end result should look pretty close to Arwen's two-layer outfit. So it looks like I won't be making any major changes until after I'm done most of my sewing. Great! Now I can figure out what to do about fabric. June 11/04 CHAPTER TWO: The Shadow of the Lining For some obvious reasons, this dress requires a lot of fabric... but not as much as you might imagine. I pulled out the pattern pieces and ironed them, then did some measuring and worked out how much fabric I was going to need... if you want any hints at doing this yourself, my advice is study the cutting layouts that come with the fabric carefully. They are put together by people who know what they are doing. I worked it out for the red dress, of course, but for all I know you might be using this page to help you make a different one, so I'll list quantities for all three. If you need a larger size, you might want to add a few inches... but if you arrange the pattern pieces closely, you can usually squash things into a bit less fabric than the pattern claims. Here's a quick-and-dirty colouring job showing how each gown will end up looking, and yes, I did screw up on the sleeves of the green one, don't tell me. Assuming that we'll worry about trims and lacings and all that jazz later, You Will Need: Black velvet - 6.2 metres Red velvet - 2.7 metres Red and gold patterned fabric - 0.5 metres Black lining - 0.8 metres Red lining - 3.0 metres This translates pretty directly into stuff for the blue gown, except for some small differences in how the sleeves are put together. Actually, I don't think the sleeves on the blue one are velvet... if I were making it, I'd probably use heavy crepe satin for them. Blue velvet - 6.2 metres White satin - 2.7 metres Blue and silver patterned fabric - 0.5 metres Blue lining - 1.1 metres White lining - 2.7 metres The green coronation gown is a bit more complicated because of the double sleeves... if you take a good look (I'm afraid the only decent picture of it I could find online was of the royally creepy Arwen Barbie, which will haunt my nightmares forevermore), there's a white layer inside the outer, green sleeves. I think you could put this together the same as you would the normal sleeves, you'd just have to sew through the extra layer. I think the outer layer is supposed to be velvet, and for the inner I'd use georgette, which drapes really nicely. Or if you can't be bothered to put in the extra layer, leave out the georgette and line the sleeves in white instead of green. Green velvet - 8.9 metres Green and white patterned fabric - 0.5 metres Green lining - 1.1 metres White georgette - 2.7 metres I don't have the funds to do this all at once, so I took it step by step. I bought the lining first because I knew where to get it for cheap... finding velvet that won't beggar me is going to be much more interesting. I've never bought lining fabric before - I've made things that needed lining, but most of them were self-lined, so I'm learning a few things. The first is that lining is either damn cheap or damned expensive, with no middle ground, and you have to look very carefully at the tags because it's impossible to tell by looking at the actual fabric. I think I really annoyed the woman at the fabric store by changing my mind two or three times about what I wanted. Then when I finally decided, this happened: IRONY: *puts bolts down on counter* I need one metre of the black and three of the red, please. FABRIC STORE LADY: *starts cutting* IRONY: By the way, when do you get your christmas fabrics in? FSL: We've still got some of it in the back, actually. IRONY: Really? Can I root through it a bit? FSL: Er... no, I'm afraid not. What did you need? IRONY: Something red with gold in it. FSL: Metallic gold? IRONY: Yeah. And a pattern that isn't too Christmasy. Look, have you seen The Return of the King? FSL: ... you mean the movie about the teacher in Siam? IRONY: *boggle* No, I mean the third part of Lord of the Rings FSL: Oh, that! No. IRONY: *boggle* No?! FSL: I live in a Harry Potter household. IRONY: *boggleboggle - what, are they mutually exclusive and nobody told me?* FABRIC STORE LADY #2: *walks over to put a bolt away* IRONY: Hey... she's never seen The Lord of the Rings! What cave has she been living in? FSL2: Same cave as me. IRONY: *boggleboggleboggle* five minutes later: CASHIER: That everything today? IRONY: Hey, d'you know you have two people working here who have never seen The Lord of the Rings? CASHIER: You're kidding me! Which two? IRONY: The skinny lady in the striped sweater and the redhead in the jean jacket. CASHIER: Oh, them. Okay, that does it - when I get off tonight I'm tying them up and dragging them home to watch it! That shouldn't be allowed! IRONY: When you do, point out Arwen's black and red thing and tell them, 'that's what the crazy girl is making.' CASHIER: *double-take* Hey, I remember you! You're the chick with the Star Wars costume! Dude, I'm famous. Anyway - got fabric home, cut out bodice lining while watching Teletoon Retro, which is something I might just have to make a habit of - it is unspeakably amusing stuff. In the process, I learned that lining creases really easily, that you can't tell the front side of it from the back, and that it frays like FCUK. Seriously, I have the bodice lining pieces sitting here in front of me as I type... they had nice, straight edges when I put them down a moment ago, and now they're frayed all to blazes. This fabric is literally fraying before my very eyes. Scary stuff. The patterns says to cut the 'gusset', which is a little triangular piece that goes under the arms, out of the bodice lining, but I decided to use the red stuff. This might make the 'double dress' thing easier to pull off. By the time I'd done all this and typed up this much of the update, it was 11:30 PM. I'll finish this in the morning. Since I'd cut out the lining, I figured I might as well start sewing it together, and I was a bit surprised to learn that actually you do sew pretty much all the lining together before you attach it to the other layer. Whoo. I also realized that since lining and outer layer are more or less identical, it's probably a good idea to do the lining first. That way you can make all the mistakes on the part that doesn't show, and have some better idea what you're doing when you get on to the part that does. The lining went together without incident, although the gusset was darned hard to get in there. Now before I can do anything else, I need the rest of the fabric. Before I sign off, though, check out the sewing machine I'm doing this on - my grandmother's Singer Featherweight. Coke can and beanie baby for scale. Isn't it cute? June 13/04 CHAPTER THREE: A Short Cut to Velvet I couldn't find the velvet I needed, or something for the upper part of the sleeves, at the Fabricland near my house, so since I was heading up that way anyhow I decided to stop at the one by Chinook to see if they had anything suitable. They didn't. So since it was nearby, I stopped in at Fanny's Fabrics... and they not only had good upper-sleeve fabric, they had red and black triple velvet on sale for ten bucks a metre! Score! So I came home with this huge bag of fabric. If I ever become rich and famous, I will use scraps of velvet to stuff my pillows with, because it is seriously the cushiest stuff on earth. The first part I decided to put together was the sleeves, just because I had less to cut out from the red velvet than from the black. Those went together okay, except that when I got to the part where I have to understitch the seam (to keep the lining from rolling to the outside), I discovered that the base of my little sewing machine is too wide to do the understitching - it won't fit through the little hold of the sleeves. Dang. Will have to acquire another sewing machine. My mom says she knows somebody willing to sell hers. I set the sleeves aside for the moment and went on to the dress. That, too, was pretty easy to put together, even though I messed up on cutting one piece. I had to stop before putting the lining in, however, because the bottom of the lining needs to be either serged or zig-zag stitched to prevent further fraying, and again, this little old anachronism of a sewing machine I'm using will only do straight stitch. Nevertheless, by this time this thing is actually starting to look dress-shaped, so I tried it on. In so doing, I discovered two rather unpleasant things... the first is that it's only just floor-length on me, meaning I will only be able to give it a very narrow hem. The second is that it's a bit tight across the shoulders. After all the time, money, and effort I've put into this thing, it had better not turn out to be too small. Though if it does, it won't be by much. Next update when I find another sewing machine. June 15/04 CHAPTER FOUR: A Solution Unmasked Found a solution to the edge zig-zag problem, if not to the understitching one. Instead of zigzagging or serging the edge of the lining, I put this stuff called 'fray-check' on it. The fray-check is just some kind of fast-drying liquid glue used to keep fabric from fraying, and it works well... I just had to be careful to let it dry completely before letting the fabric touch the velvet. So I got the lining in. The neckline tends to roll to the outside, but I can fix that in place when I add the trim. And I don't think it's too small after all... I'm just used to wearing clothes with more stretch in them. Since it laces up instead of having a zipper, I think it should be fine. The only complaint I'm left with is that it's still not going to be able to have much of a hem. Next up, lacings and trim. I'll save the rest of the sleeves as long as possible until I get a sewing machine that can understitch them. June 18/04 CHAPTER Five: The Old Grommets I needed more black thread to hem the gown, so I stopped in the fabric store on the way home from work. Ended up spending over twenty dollars on thread, grommets, lacing, and some jaquard I'm going to make the trim out of, since I can't find anything that really resembles the trim on Arwen's gown. This ought to be an adventure. When I went to make the bands to put the grommets through, I found that I'd forgotten to buy interfacing. This was probably a psychological thing on my part, since I hate interfacing with the fire of a thousand burning nuns. So I figured that it wasn't correct for the period anyway and went ahead without it... seems to have worked fine. This is also the first time I've ever installed grommets, and it turned out to be lots of fun. Next time I sew something that requires them, I'll save them until I'm frustrated... nothing quite like whacking something with a hammer to make you feel better. June 25/04 CHAPTER SIX: In The House of Finishing Up Well, it turned out that when I actually tried the gown on, the grommets were crooked. I thought about fixing it, then reconsidered and instead decided screw that... I'll just put in a zipper and have a dress I can actually put on without assistance. This will mean taking the bit with the grommets off... which I will procrastinate about, because I don't feel like doing it right now. To make the trim, I made pattern pieces using the top three and one quarter inches of the patterns for the gown itself... using three and one quarter because the pattern package called for two inch trim and 5/8 inch seams. So I cut that out, turned under 5/8 inch and hemmed, then sewed it on... it was pretty straightforward, and the results looked way better than I expected. With that done, all that remained were the sleeves, which are easy to sew on but I wanted to address them seperately because I have a theory (thus far untested) about how to do the extra layer if you happen to be making the green gown. In that case, what you do is sew the main part of the sleeve according to the pattern. The extra layer, since it's not lined, will need a French seam - sew a very narrow seam with the wrong sides of the fabric together, turn the whole thing inside out, and then encase the raw edges by sewing a second seam overtop them. Then sew the loose edge to the fabric to keep it out of the way. To hem it, do the same very narrow hem as the instructions say to do on the bottom, then baste the whole thing to the sleeve at the top edge, so the whole mess can be sewn in as a unit. I'm going to be making a gown of my own design with embroidered organza sleeves in order to test this... I'll let you know how it works out. Nothing left now 'cept to take the grommets off the back. When that's done, I'll have photos! |
