I finished sewing the basic outfit. Need to hand-sew the hems of both the under- and overgowns. Need to sew the placket into the overdress and sew on the hooks and bars. Next weekend, I’ll start the sash. I am going to try to embroider the design — very ambitious for me! I’ve been practicing
I started with the underdress, which has long darts in the front and back to give it a fitted shape. It had been years since I’d made anything with darts (I’ve been loving princess seams for quite some time ;-). This was a bit of a challenge, and I mucked it up. Even transferring the
This is the purple brocade outfit that Arwen wears as the Fellowship bids farewell to Rivendell. This costume is seen on the extended DVD of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring and in a flashback sequence during Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I got the amazing opportunity to make this costume
Photos taken at Oak Hill Cemetery in San Jose.
Finished the crown. I printed out tiny versions of the White Tree of Gondor and practiced painting over the print with dimensional gold paint. Had to trim a lot of branches from the tree so the details didn’t blur together with paint (what kind of sacrilege is that, to lop off parts of the White
Started the crown and veil. Got sidetracked by Valentine’s Day and my birthday, but I finally had a half a day free to work on these pieces. A while ago, I made a paper template of the crown and cut it out of buckram. Because I didn’t have a long enough piece of buckram in
I finished sewing the gown! This must be a record time for me, especially since I spent so long fiddling around with the trim. Today I spent six straight hours hand-sewing the hem and the final parts of the trim. Also this weekend, I bought the black chiffon for the veil. Went with the dirt-cheap
I gave up on the trim embroidery idea. Here’s the sordid, stupid story of this gown’s trim… Because I couldn’t find any trim that really looked like what’s on the costume, I tried to improvise. I bought two yards of unbleached, cotton, crocheted lace and used fabric medium and acrylic paint to turn it an
Finished sewing the main gown, except for hemming it, sewing on the buttons, and the trim. All praise the Mighty Walking Foot!!! I finally got one for my sewing machine, and I’m kicking myself for not buying it a decade ago. Makes sewing velvet much easier. There’s still some side-to-side shifting, but none of the
I used Simplicity 9891 for the body of the dress and McCall’s 3663 for the sleeves. Luckily, I discovered that I had enough black velvet in my fabric stash already. Also had enough black lining in my stash. Only fabric I needed to buy was the silky dark red fabric for the sash and the
Immediately after seeing The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, I decided to recreate Arwen’s Mourning Gown. It was the one costume that really stood out to me, even among all the gorgeous costumes in the movie. Partly, it’s the most classically gothic outfit in the two movies so far. Of course I wanted
For the 10th anniversary of our Famous Dead Person’s Ball, I decided to indulge myself with a costume I’d dreamed of doing for years — a somewhat historically accurate Cathy in Wuthering Heights from the early scene where she’s a ghost scratching through the bedroom window. It’s the scene that Kate Bush‘s wonderful song “Wuthering
Currently, all I have of my 18th-century costume is a plain white cotton shift which I whipped up yesterday in a rare non-headachy moment. Wow, I actually sewed something, ain’t that a hoot? That barely counts, although bias tape was involved which made it slightly less than moronically simple. Or does it? Hmm. I’m still