It’s been a year since I started working on my Elizabethan Whovian costume. During that time I’ve worked on it on and off, but progress on it has been slow partly because I ran into more problems with the bodice of the dress, and partly because my day job has kept me very busy. Despite this, I was able to work on and off on the hat for the costume. I recently finished most of the hat, so here is how I made it!
As with the past few years, I’ve been working on a complex dress to wear to the 2015 Arizona Renaissance Festival. This year is another Doctor Who dress: Clara Oswald’s Robots of Sherwood dress.
Despite making progress on the dress in October, progress was slowed down due to all the hand sewing I needed to do on the dress. It’s been frustrating, but as of this post I’m almost done with my dress.
I’ve been making posts on my Tumblr about the progress I made on the dress, but I felt sad I never mentioned the dress or the progress I’ve made on it here on my main, formal blog. So, here’s some progress pictures and notes about the dress! Continue reading “Clara Oswald’s Robots of Sherwood Dress- The Work in Progress Post”
This past month I’ve been sewing a lot. So much that I feel bad because I’ve been ignoring my art! Originally I planned on sewing my costumes for Taiyou Con and the up-coming Renaissance Festival and nothing else, but a few weeks ago my vehicle got hurt so badly I couldn’t drive it anywhere. I know this is old news (I talked about it in my last post), but because I couldn’t drive anywhere, I was stuck at home on my weekends with nothing to do. I did have a lot of sewing projects built up for months that I just didn’t want to work on, so I pulled out as many as I could find and then began finishing or repairing them.
One of the first costumes I pulled out was the bodice for my Miku Hatsune Cantarella dress. Since I made the dress back in 2011, I fixed the back of the bodice in 2014 so it would fit my growing bust better. Now that my bust has finished growing, the bodice was too small. When I fixed the bodice, I thought I’d grow an inch at most so adding some ribbon to make the bodice lace up was the best option. I ended up not growing an inch. I grew a few inches. So, in order for the bodice to be fixed so I can continue to wear it, I needed to add more fabric to the back of the bodice. I ended up adding so much fabric to the back of the bodice I could add a zipper instead of making it a lace up.
Here’s what the bodice looked like after I sewed the zipper in and before I pressed the seams…
After I found that bodice, I found another Miku Hatsune bodice, this time for the 7th Heaven Dragon 2020. Here’s what the artwork looks like…
Continue reading “Sewing (And Costume) Work-in-Progress Mass Update- The January 2015 Edition”
About two months ago I decided to work on my Tudor dress again. The next piece I had to work on was the “fore sleeves” or under sleeves as I like to think of them as. While I was working on the sleeves, my sewing machine broke so I was left to decide if I should wait until the machine was fixed or sew the whole thing by hand. After a week of no sewing, I became too stir crazy and ended up sewing both sleeves by hand. Continue reading “Tudor Dress Foresleeves Progress”
Well, a while ago I talked about making a Tudor dress from Simplicity pattern 2589. I’m happy to say that I have finished the outer gown and took photos of it on my dress from! I really like how it turned out and am very excited about finishing the whole costume.
Excuse the messy room in the photos. I’m afraid I still haven’t cleaned it up yet.
The whole gown with petticoat underneath….
Close up of the bodice top….
Thanks to my sewing machine breaking a few weeks ago, I haven’t been able to sew finish the underskirt of the costume. (I’m NOT sewing that thing by hand) So instead I began to work on the under sleeves. I’m currently sewing ribbon onto the edge of the sleeves (The pattern wants bias tape sewn onto the edge of the sleeves, but I like the way the ribbon looks) and making the sleeves by hand sewing methods. It’s very time consuming, but it gives me something to do while I watch TV shows. (I find hand sewing and hand embroidery very relaxing)
This is as far as I got with the under sleeves….
It might be a while before I can complete the whole costume, unless I use my mom’s sewing machine until my sewing machine can be fixed. ^_^
I’ve been attending the Arizona Renaissance Festival every year since 2010 and every year, I made a costume to wear there. The first costume I made and wore in 2010 was based off Eowyn’s “green” dress from the movie Lord of the Rings, Two Towers.
Back then I wasn’t very experienced in sewing without help with my mom and my mom thought I needed to try to make something myself with very little help from her, so when I made the costume it didn’t turn out just like Eowyn’s dress. It was similar, but not the way I imagined it.
After I wore it, I put it away so I could one day use the costume for scrap fabric or fix it so it would look the way I wanted it to. A few weeks ago, I took out the costume from storage and began to fix it up. I adjusted the skirt so it would be open in the front like Eowyn’s and I took in the sides as well. Since I made this costume back in 2010, I grew taller so the dress now hits my leg mid calf instead of at the top of my feet. Because it’s not as long as Eowyn’s dress, I decided to pros pone my goal of making an accurate dress until a later date and use the 2010 dress for a new, original costume for myself.
I’m planning on making the costume inspired by the clothes female characters wore in the movie Thor, such as Sif and Frigga.
Because they’re not on screen very much, I had to make do with costume concepts and my own imagination. My master plan is to make a costume that looks like something Sigyn (Loki’s wife in Nordic mythology) or a Valkyrie would wear. This includes making a circlet crown inspired by The Metropolitan Opera’s production of The Ring Cycle with Deborah Voigt as Brunhilde…
So, that’s the plan. Making the circlet scares me pretty badly because I’m more of a seamstress than a jewelry maker and working with metal isn’t my favorite thing to do. In spite of that, I still plan on making and wearing this costume to the festival in 2013. I’m optimistic I can finish at least the fabric parts of the costume by the end of this year, but my life has become more and more hectic over the past year so my time for sewing has been rapidly decreasing so the costumes and clothes I planned on wearing to an event don’t really get finished by that time. Still, I designed this costume to use sewing patterns I already own/worked with and used fabric I own/are currently on sale so I the only thing I have to study how to make is the circlet. 🙂
So, I decided a while ago to make a Tudor dress. I’ve been wanting to make one for a while now, even bought the fabric to make it, but I just got around to sew it all together. The dress is made from Simplicity pattern 2589 with raspberry red/black taffeta. (Outside gown is made of taffeta only) The color scheme is red/black/gold, but I originally wanted it to be blue, green, or purple. I ended up going with the current color scheme because I liked the fabrics that were in these colors. They were too pretty not to use. Plus they were on sale. (50% and 60% off fabric!!! YAY!!!)
Anyway, here are some in-pictures of the dress….
Top of the bodice without the sleeves. Here’s the raspberry red/black taffeta I mentioned before. It has embroidery on the fabric and it really look pretty….
More taffeta, only this time it’s black and the designs are fuzzy velvet! This is going to be what the inner sleeves are going to be made out of. The lower part of the sleeves might be made out of black velvet, but I’m not sure yet. I’m still doing research on Tudor dresses so we’ll see…
Underskirt front panel fabric. It’s upholstery fabric and is really heavy….
The top of the gown with the gold rhinestone trim. I debated over what to use for the trim because I like the way pearls look on these dresses, but I didn’t want them on my dress. So this is my way of getting the look of the pearls, but made them look the way I want it to….
I hope I can wear this dress at the Arizona Renaissance Festival 2013. There are many costumes I’m making (I’m currently up to three different costumes) that can be worn at the Festival, so I might have a hard time picking what costume to wear. 🙂 Still, progress on this costume is going faster than I thought it would so I hope one day soon I can get photos of me wearing the dress. YAY!!!! XD