This black silk robe a la francaise is about 80% hand-sewn, more than I ever intended. I've retrimmed it 4x now!
Recreating the pink portrait of Mary Queen of Scots had long been a dream, & I finally did it for my birthday.
My drag alter-ego is Leonard Autie, hairdresser to Marie Antoinette. He sometimes gets a new suit for Carnevale.
This costume had been in my head since 1993. That was when I first saw Folkwear’s Victorian bathers pattern. I wanted to make it, but in a gothy fashion. That Halloween, I found a black and white skull-print cotton and promptly bought five yards. Some plain black cotton and a smidge of black PVC would
While I’d planned to buy the fabric from Repro Depo, I ended up buying the five yards of bright red cotton printed with rows of sushi and sashimi from an eBay seller. I’d had Past Patterns’ 1880s Polonaise With Walking Skirt pattern for years but never made it up. It seemed a good choice for
Photos of me taken at the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden. Screencaps from the Lord of the Rings movies added for costume comparison.
I’m done! I spent all weekend embroidering the sash, and, boy, was that a trial. I started Saturday, and I can’t remember the last day I said “f**k” quite so often. Machine embroidery is tough! And metallic thread doesn’t make it any easier — even winding the bobbin was a pain in the ass! The
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
