Trust Cover Costume

With the release of Trust fast approaching (I’m planning on a November release date, if all goes well), it’s time to start sharing things such as the cover, synopsis, book trailer, and all that good stuff. To start it off, I wanted to share a little about the costume that will appear on the cover. This one didn’t have nearly as many pieces as the Courage costume, but it’s a costume I’ve wanted to make for quite some time.

 

First we have the shirt. I’ve wanted to make a dress or shirt this color for a long time. The pattern I used was New Look 6179. It was a wonderfully simple shirt to make. I chose it because the drawstring neckline reminded me of a historical shift, and I thought it worked well for a fantasy outfit. The only modifications I made were to the sleeve length.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we have the overdress. This was another piece I’d wanted to make for a long time. This was quite the project. I used a grand total of 350 metal eyelets! All put in by hand. It took about three days of working hours at a time to attach them all. But I love the result. It turned out just like I hoped. The skirt of the dress has eight separate panels, which I can either lace or leave open, obviously for the easy of riding, combat, and other such activities. For underneath I have a matching pair of khaki pants. Like my Truth dress, I used McCall’s 5499 for the pattern. I again modified it to lace up in the front instead of the back, and I removed the sleeves. It is made out of 100% linen in it’s natural color, which is gorgeous and really adds to the historical feel of the outfit. It smells very natural too. :)

 

 

The primary inspiration for this costume came primarily from this outfit worn by Marian in BBC’s Robin Hood (the first two seasons are fantastic, by the way). I LOVE the aqua shirt and how it goes with the gray.

 

 

 

 

Inspiration for the construction of my overdress came directly from this dress (another Marian outfit). I just loved the idea of all the skirt panels lacing together. It was very out of the ordinary.

So there it is, the Trust costume. Now all that’s left is to release the cover. Are you excited? Fantastic, because I’m setting the official release date of the cover and book synopsis for this Friday, October 5th. Make sure to check back! I can hardly wait to share this new cover.

Courage Cover Costume–The Vambraces

I love the whole Courage costume, but the vambraces have to be close to my favorite piece. This is something I had wanted to try for a long time, but this was the first costume where I had definite need to do it. 

What are they made of? Craft foam. I came across this ingenious way of making fake armor quite a few years ago (again during our Lord of the Rings obsession phase). If you put “craft foam armor” in Google, you’ll come up with all kinds of results. This is the first page I ever looked at concerning how to do it: http://entropyhouse.com/penwiper/costumes/helmsdeep.html It’s amazing what you can do, isn’t it? This is the page I read through when I was making my vambraces: http://www.jedielfqueen.com/lotr/costumes/Boromir/vambraces/vambraces.htm 

It was sort of trial and error for me at first. I printed the design I made and used the end of a mechanical pencil to “trace” it into the foam. After I was happy with the result, I applied the Decoupage to seal the foam. I tried painting it first, but it just soaked up the paint. Once it was sealed, I gave it a couple coats with glossy black spray paint and used a tiny paint brush to apply silver paint to the designs.  

Each vambrace is actually two pieces as you can sort of see in this picture. Once I was finished with the painting, I glued the pieces together to keep them from shifting, and then sewed around the edges by hand with thick, black quilting thread. Then came the eyelets. This was tricky because it’s really easy to accidently leave marks in the foam. I used a hole punch first and carefully worked the eyelets in. After that, I applied glue around each one to make the foam stronger and not as likely to rip when the laces are tightened.

Overall, the vambraces turned out looking exactly as I’d hoped. Combined with the rest of the costume, you really can’t tell they are not real leather. The greatest thing about them is how ridiculously cheap they are to make. The foam sheets cost less than a dollar each, and most of the other supplies I already had. It’s certainly something I’ll be doing more of because it’s really a fun project and you can come up with all sorts of designs.

That pretty much does it for the look at the costume, which leaves only one thing, seeing how it all looks together. By now, I hope I’ve been able to raise your anticipation level because, on Friday, I will officially release the cover of Courage. I, for one, can hardly wait. :)

Courage Cover Costume–The Chain-mail

And here it is, the chain-mail. I procrastinated this piece for so long, even going so far as to contemplate going without it.Certainly glad I didn’t do that, because, you will see soon, it really adds a lot. The thing about the chain-mail, is it felt like it was going to be harder than it really was. Once I got into it, I really enjoyed working on it. It’s killer on your hands, but it’s really fun to craft something like this. Now, as you can see, I didn’t make a full shirt. I didn’t have near enough time for that, but I will someday. For this project, this worked just fine.

Besides what you need for making the coils (which I will get into), there really isn’t much you need to make chain-mail. This is everything I worked with. The only thing not showing is the fingerless gloves I wore after the first day and the bolt cutter I used to cut the rings.

 

 

 

Once you learn what you are doing and get into it, it’s actually really easy to make. You get into a rhythm and it comes together pretty quickly. As you can see in the picture, you need both open and closed rings.

 

 

 

For the rings, I used fencing wire. Now I can’t remember what gauge it is because I actually made the coils years ago. I first learned how to make chain-mail around seven years ago with my brother while we were going through our  Lord of the Rings obsession phase. We started using PVC pipe like they actually did for the movies, but shortly upgraded to wire. We learned how to put it together from this website: http://mailleartisans.org/weaves/weavedisplay.php?key=6 (I can’t believe I still had the link after all this time!) The tutorials and diagrams made it so easy to figure out and I’ve never forgotten how to do it.

As for for making the coils, I also found the original video we watched to learn just how to do that. (Amazing how this blog post as brought back so many memories. :)

Chainmail

In all, the front piece and two sleeves took me about three solid afternoons to complete, and I used about five 16-20” coils. Despite how I put it off, it all came together perfectly in the end.

Now on Wednesday, I’ll get into another piece of armor and the last piece of the costume—the vambraces. I tried something I’d never done before with those, and I am thrilled with the results.

Courage Cover Costume–The Vest and Overskirt

This is a part of the costume I’ve had in my mind for a really long time, ever since I wrote Truth. I had wanted to make it for just as long so it was a lot of fun to see it finally come to be. There are technically two versions of this outfit that Makilien wears in the trilogy. The first time you read about it is in Truth. It’s Makilien’s ceremony outfit. That’s the first version of the outfit. The second version Makilien wears to battle in Courage. The battle version is a bit less decorative than the ceremony version, and it’s the battle version that I created here. I made the entire thing out of a very nice black suede. Originally it sold for $25.99 a yard, but I waited to buy it until I could get it for 50% off and had an additional 20% off coupon. I had been thinking of getting something cheaper, but I am glad I waited because this particular suede is so soft and was nice to work with.

 

 

 

The vest was something I debated about for a long time. I wanted something very specific so it took a while to find the right pattern. I ended up settling on Simplicity 2633 and it really turned out nicely. It was a simple, easy to use pattern and had just the fit I was looking for. Another debate was whether to use buttons or clasps. The ceremony outfit I described as having silver clasps. However, I never did make that distinction about the battle outfit. After a lot of going back and forth for a while, I finally settled on buttons. One, they are much more budget friendly, and two, it seemed to me buttons would stay much more secure during a battle than clasps. So buttons it was.

 

And I do LOVE the buttons. They look very fantasy/medievalish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second piece to the outfit is the overskirt. It is actually sewn with four separate panels making it open in the front, back, and along the sides. This is a style I’ve gone with for most of the dresses and skirts in Makilien (the wearer than has on a pair of pants underneath). It makes moving, running, riding, and fighting easier. For this I used Simplicity 9825. It is an excellent pattern that made it really easy to modify in order to have the separate panels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The one other modification I made was removing the zipper and instead having laces to give it a much more authentic fantasy feel. This was really a very simple process.

 

 

 

In all, aside from cutting out the pieces, it took me two and a half days to sew this part of the costume. Both of the patterns were simple and went together quickly. In the end, I am very pleased with how it turned out and how it looks altogether with the rest of the outfit.

On Monday, I’ll be sharing the creation process of the most challenging piece of the costume, the chain-mail.

Courage Cover Costume–The Dress

The first piece of the Courage costume is one of my favorite pieces. It was a type of dress I had wanted to make for a long time. I’d never before made one that laced up in the front. For the pattern, I used McCall’s 5499. At first, I was pretty leery about using it. These types of patterns that contain all sizes from girls’ through women’s in one package usually are not the highest quality patterns. Let me say, I was very pleasantly surprised. It turned out to be one of the best patterns I’ve ever worked with. The finished dress not only fits perfectly, it is also much more comfortable and wearable than most costume dresses I’ve created, which makes it feel much more authentic. Now, I did do a fairly major alteration to the pattern, though I don’t think that affected the fit. The dress is actually supposed to be laced up in the back. Thank goodness I had the experience of making a few dresses before this. That made the altering pretty simple since I had a good understanding of what needed to be done.

The fabric of the dress is 100% linen in a sort of navy blue. I can’t say enough about linen. Having worked with it quite a bit while making reenactment clothing, I’ve found it is so nice and easy to work with. It does wrinkle easily, but I love the look of the weave and it gives added authenticity to a historical/fantasy outfit.

The inspiration for the dress came from the dress worn by Cate Blanchett in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. From the moment I saw it, I fell in love with it and knew I had to recreate it. It’s so simple, yet beautiful.

It’s not so much fun actually wearing it, but I love all the layers of historical clothing. Being this dress opens to the front as it does, you have to wear a shift underneath (in the movie she was actually wearing two). I have yet to create a shift specifically for this dress, but it was easy enough to use the cotton shift I have for attending buckskinner reenactments.

This is actually the same dress on the cover of Truth as well. I considered making a new one for Courage, but little of it actually shows this time so I thought it prudent to reuse what I already had. Unfortunately, as much as I love it, linen is not the most budget friendly material.

So that is the story behind my Makilien dress. I’ll certainly be using this pattern again one day. Most likely it will be used to create a dress for the coming cover of Trust as well.

On Friday I will share the creation of the next layer of the costume—the vest and overskirt.

Courage Cover Costume

A few of the supplies I used.

In the past couple months, one of my focuses has been working on the costume that will be on the cover of Courage, the second book of my Makilien Trilogy. It was one of the biggest things left to complete on the way to publication. It has also been one of the biggest costume projects I’ve ever undertaken. There were so many pieces involved, pieces that really took a lot of time and effort to put together. I tried a lot of new things with this costume as well. At times it was frustrating, but on the whole, it’s been a very enjoyable process. I love to see a costume I’ve designed come together. Now that I’ve successfully completed it, I wanted to begin a little series of upcoming posts on the creation process. Over the next couple of weeks you can expect posts detailing the creation of each piece of the outfit, including photos. All this will lead up to . . . *drum roll* . . . the very first look at the cover. The costume itself consists of the dress, a vest and overskirt, chain-mail, and a pair of vambraces. First up will be the dress. Be sure to check back on Wednesday to get a closer look at the foundational piece of the outfit!