Captain of the Anarquendor - part 1
May. 30th, 2011 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzThe last week of July I will be attending a large live roleplay event in Germany. It is one of the largest events of Europe, and I have gone twice before with a different group.
This year, we will be attending with a group of woodelves called the Anarquendor en Eglerion and I will be their captain. The group plays, in a smaller and somewhat different composition, at a Dutch event called Omen as well, and I am captain there also. (This was decided democratically)
However, I can't just wear the same costume, because that would be a waste of a perfectly good excuse to make a new costume.
Preparations for this costume started very early on, but that has to do with the extent of the costume. Initially, I wanted to look a bit like Eomer did in the Lord of the Rings. The idea got a whole life of its own, though, and slowly transformed itself into something like this:
Costume sketch: padded gambeson, chainmail, samurai-esque overcoat.
However, first things first. I have this strange tendency to build costumes from the bottom up. Since pants are the least of my worries, I started somewhere else.
Let's have a look at Drachenfest itself. It's a long event, spanning more than four days. It's held in the middle of Germany at the end of July. Chances are, it will be pretty warm.
If I'm going to be wearing chainmail, I will be needing a padded gambeson to protect my skin from the rings. But if I wear a padded coat at the end of July, I'll be sweating profusely.
The bottom layer of the costume is a shirt. Preferably one that I can wash on-site, show up to breakfast in, and have multiple copies of. It will soak up the sweat, so the gambeson won't smell like a German Uruk-hai after two days of 25°C weather.
Well, shirts are easy. I drafted a pattern like I learned to do in school and bought fabrics:
These are very, very thin embroidered cottons. They were pre-washed and ironed dry. They're not very wide, but I bought 2 meters of each to make sure I had enough fabric for a shirt and some pattern placement.
I started out with the tan shirt first, since it was the fabric I liked least. Just in case it didn't fit. The pattern was drafted so that I could place the front-bottom on the embroidery and have a roughly "calm" top. A night of sewing later, I had this:
The placement of the embroidery is quite nice, and I used some extra bits as facing around the neckline. That all worked marvelously.
The one thing that didn't work marvelously is the size!
I drafted the pattern around ease of 1 cm, which worked quite well for a dress project earlier this year but doesn't work so well when you have to be swinging your arms around a bit. I had trouble getting in and out of the shirt and I couldn't even shoot a bow in it. The first top width (above the bust) is way, way too tight! You can see the wrinkling even as I'm standing still!
Back to the drawing table...
I re-drafted the pattern, according to my teacher's remarks, to a 4 cm ease. Cutting out the pieces (sorry for the blurry photo...)
You can see how I line up the pattern pieces on the embroidery (near the bottom of the picture).
The second shirt is better. Please excuse the wobbly neckline!
The extra ease hides all my curves, but at least I've got more room to move in. This time, the shirt (barely) passes the "can I shoot my bow in this" test:
The waistline snags a bit on my boobs, but you get the general idea.
I've still got the best of the three fabrics left, but I'm a bit hesitant to continue. I think there's still something I can better about the pattern. It's a basic block with vertical darts, so it's easy to adjust, and I'm hoping some of you might have some tips.
If I have two shirts that fit well enough, I can wash the one as I wear the other. There's nothing quite like putting on a clean shirt (or a clean pair of socks, for that matter) when you're at a larp!
Next installment I will show you the start of the gambeson!
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dressdiaries
This year, we will be attending with a group of woodelves called the Anarquendor en Eglerion and I will be their captain. The group plays, in a smaller and somewhat different composition, at a Dutch event called Omen as well, and I am captain there also. (This was decided democratically)
However, I can't just wear the same costume, because that would be a waste of a perfectly good excuse to make a new costume.
Preparations for this costume started very early on, but that has to do with the extent of the costume. Initially, I wanted to look a bit like Eomer did in the Lord of the Rings. The idea got a whole life of its own, though, and slowly transformed itself into something like this:
Costume sketch: padded gambeson, chainmail, samurai-esque overcoat.
However, first things first. I have this strange tendency to build costumes from the bottom up. Since pants are the least of my worries, I started somewhere else.
Let's have a look at Drachenfest itself. It's a long event, spanning more than four days. It's held in the middle of Germany at the end of July. Chances are, it will be pretty warm.
If I'm going to be wearing chainmail, I will be needing a padded gambeson to protect my skin from the rings. But if I wear a padded coat at the end of July, I'll be sweating profusely.
The bottom layer of the costume is a shirt. Preferably one that I can wash on-site, show up to breakfast in, and have multiple copies of. It will soak up the sweat, so the gambeson won't smell like a German Uruk-hai after two days of 25°C weather.
Well, shirts are easy. I drafted a pattern like I learned to do in school and bought fabrics:
These are very, very thin embroidered cottons. They were pre-washed and ironed dry. They're not very wide, but I bought 2 meters of each to make sure I had enough fabric for a shirt and some pattern placement.
I started out with the tan shirt first, since it was the fabric I liked least. Just in case it didn't fit. The pattern was drafted so that I could place the front-bottom on the embroidery and have a roughly "calm" top. A night of sewing later, I had this:
The placement of the embroidery is quite nice, and I used some extra bits as facing around the neckline. That all worked marvelously.
The one thing that didn't work marvelously is the size!
I drafted the pattern around ease of 1 cm, which worked quite well for a dress project earlier this year but doesn't work so well when you have to be swinging your arms around a bit. I had trouble getting in and out of the shirt and I couldn't even shoot a bow in it. The first top width (above the bust) is way, way too tight! You can see the wrinkling even as I'm standing still!
Back to the drawing table...
I re-drafted the pattern, according to my teacher's remarks, to a 4 cm ease. Cutting out the pieces (sorry for the blurry photo...)
You can see how I line up the pattern pieces on the embroidery (near the bottom of the picture).
The second shirt is better. Please excuse the wobbly neckline!
The extra ease hides all my curves, but at least I've got more room to move in. This time, the shirt (barely) passes the "can I shoot my bow in this" test:
The waistline snags a bit on my boobs, but you get the general idea.
I've still got the best of the three fabrics left, but I'm a bit hesitant to continue. I think there's still something I can better about the pattern. It's a basic block with vertical darts, so it's easy to adjust, and I'm hoping some of you might have some tips.
If I have two shirts that fit well enough, I can wash the one as I wear the other. There's nothing quite like putting on a clean shirt (or a clean pair of socks, for that matter) when you're at a larp!
Next installment I will show you the start of the gambeson!
X-posted to
dressdiaries
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-30 09:18 am (UTC)BTW love the pattern placement on the first shirt!
no subject
Date: 2011-05-30 10:09 am (UTC)They're calculated from the first chest width (1e bovenwijdte).
no subject
Date: 2011-05-30 09:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-30 10:08 am (UTC)