Elf Winter Coat, part 2

Well I cut out the sleeves (no true news there) and designed and cut out the hanging sleeves. But somehow I wasn't alltogether hapy with them. I almost cut them out again to make them bigger but then I decided to pin them in place and see what they look like first.. (smart, eh?)

And now that I've seen at least one of them in place (albeit without it's light-blue lining and without the bias tape that'll go around it) I think they're big enough (and look rather pretty).

The bias tape has been added round the edges (and looks quite nice too) and I've decided how to make the closures (I'll make them in two layers instead of just sewing the bias tape onto them).

I also found this wonderful tutorial on how to make hand-sewn button holes (it's in German, but easily undersandable with all the pictures and the only one I found that really makes nice eyelets). I've never done that before (and am somewhat dreading it) bit I have the feeling that it has to be done on this coat (and I'm not alltogether sure, that my sewing machine will be happy sewing buttonholes through about 5 layers of cloth).

Also, just now my sister came along and gave me a wonderful idea for the embroidery on the back. I've been thinking aboutr very stylised wings but somehow I really couldn't find anything that fitted (Google, you've failed me!). Simple, line drawings of stylised celtic knot wings.. apparently I'm the first one to want something like that.

So I sat down and made this design, but somehow I didn't thing it was very "wingy":

My sister said it was the wrong way round (so I stood it on the head). Then, looking at me slightly strangely, she took a pair of scissors, cut it up and pasted the two halves together thusly:

Et voila! Not only does that look a lot more like wings than my previous design, it also solves my problems of what to do with the sides of the coat as I can now extend the bottom of the design to continue onto the side panels.


Tonight I'll have a sewing free evening (I'm performing in a concert and will be drinking lots of wine afterwards), but this weekend I'm meeting with some friends to finish stuff we want to wear/use/carry-around-nonsensically next weekend and I'm hoping to get a lot done there.

Elf Winter Coat

It's often terribly cold out there when you're hunting the undead, being pursued by orcs or simply had one too many to drink and happened to shave off a dwarf's beard (it was an accident, really) and now have to hide in the snow. So, for this winter's LARP-season I decided that my high elf needs a warming coat. Consequently I bought two different fabrics (and enough for about three coats).

Te one is cotton velvet in a very light bluish-green colour (which, however I try , always turns out whiteish in pictures because it's just so light), the other sky blue wool. Since the first time I'll wear one of the coats is in two weeks time (insert freaking out noises here) and I'm hoping that it won't be too cold then (hahaha) I've decided to start with the velvet one.

The two fabrics

Basically what I started with was this pattern (because I already had it). It's basically a straightforward, flared coat with a stand-up collar. But I had already decided that I wanted a rather large hood so I knew I'd have to change the pattern  quite a bit, and stumbled over this wonderful coat from which I decided to take the double-breasted idea (because then it's easier to add my already existing immense-hood pattern) and then, to give the whole thing a touch of my high-elf's style, ca. 1600's hanging sleeves.


To make the double breasted look I simply added to the front pieces of my pattern. I admit I wasn't completely sure that would work, but it did. perfectly.

I cut the entire thing on sunday, sewed together the body and hood of the coat (both the velvet and the cotton lining) and now I'm sewing bias tape around the entire thing (which is slightly annoying since I've had to remove half of it once already because I only happened to be sewing the front half on...). I'm still thinking about how to embroider the coat. I want to add something on the back between the shoulders and maybe around the edges and on the hood.

Well anyway. This is what the coat looks like at the moment.

The coat as it stands. Binding pinned on, no sleeves yet.

A Look at my Past, Part 1: The Steampunk Dress

It all started with an invitation.

To be exact it was an invitation to my second Steampunk-LARP-Ball. Last year (mostly due to a lack of time to make a new outfit) I had worn a dress that I'd made some years ago. Since I wanted to come as the same character another dress (and not the victorian suit that's been hanging around in the back of my brain for some time) was needed.

I startet browsing the internet and found WAY too many possible ideas. But what I mostly liked was the Idea of a ballgown in several tones of red and a leather shoulderguard (which a friend of mine was wonderful enough to make for me. Check out his blog here his stuff is really amazing!). So I went out and bought vast amounts of red fabrics.

My less-than-perfect costume sketch

The basic idea (as you can probably deduce from the drawing) was bodice with three-tiered ruffles on the sleeves, a skirt with a ruffle at the bottom and an overskirt held up by bands of leather. The entire thing was to be draped over a bustle I've made a couple of years ago with this pattern.

Let the sewing begin.

(Note: Since this is a done-and-finished project I can only show a small amount of process pictures. Luckily enough I've made some so I can at least include those.)

I didn't really have a pattern for the bodice. Instead I worked out the pattern I wanted with my dressmaker's dummy (an incredible help to almost any project. I just wish I had room for a male one too. I'm sure there are lots of tutorials on how to work with a dressmaker's dummy, but at some point I'll check and maybe think about making my own one). So far so good. But then I made the mistake to go back to one of my favourite fabric shops with a friend. I didn't really find anything much. But I did find a small piece of grey satin embroidered in dark grey and another small piece in dark red embroidered in shades of brown and beige. I immediately fell in love with those and decided to incorporate them in the dress (I wanted to use a couple of different fabrics anyway so I thought it would work out.) but upon coming home I found that the rest of the fabrics didn't really go well with the new ones in colour (nor in fact did they match each other. What in the world had I been thinking??)

I started making the bodice out of the grey satin (that was rather straightforward, since the grey fabric went well with all the others) and the dark red satin (because it was so beautiful that I just had to use it). I also started embridering the neckline and the front with glass beads.

Close-up of the bodice at a later stage

Introduction and Outlook

How it all began

Let's start with the beginning. I'm male. And I LOVE sewing. I don't know when it started, how it started, WHY it started... I think I just always liked the idea of making clothing myself, ever since I saw my mother doing it when I was a little boy.

I've been making costumes (for a wide variety of occasions, from costume balls to theatre productions) for more than ten years now. I wouldn't say I'm perfect though. My seams still aren's always straight, my technique often needs improvement and quite often I'm sewing something for a certain occasion and find myself with a 3/4 done costume on the night before the event, hurriedly finishing what I'm doing, making mistakes which I decide to correct later before I wear the costume again (and never getting round to doing that). I'll post a couple of my old costumes soon (if I ever get round to doing that).

For the longest time the one occasion on which I would go in costume was a large costume ball in my home town and since you can't wear the same outfit twice there, most of my costumes ended up being worn only once (which is quite sad, considering that I spent a lot of time making them).

Then I discovered LARPing and everything changed just a little bit.

Suddenly my costumes had to be more durable, washable, wearable for more than one occasion and (to satisfy my personal ambition) look as good as I could possibly make them.

My main character is a high-elven priest of light (whose sad story I will not go into here). So I started developping an idea of what he should look like and what his (an his people's) style is. I ended up with clothes that aren't really historical but have a renaissance-y feel to them (winged sleeves, drooping sleeves, long coats breeches, ...) and have some detailing (though that's something where I want to expand in the future).

So.. Why all of a sudden a blog? Because I felt like it. I guess that's the main resaon. And also because I hope that I'll get some input on how to improve my costumes, what details I could add (or maybe just the occasional "well done".

I hope you'll enjoy reading this, I certainly hope it will be worth your wile.

Some of my recent and future projects

What's coming up?

Right now I'm working on a winter coat for my elf. I just bought rather nice, very light blue cotton velvet for that. Also I'm making a coat for a friend, I guess the best description of the colour is plum. I also want to add another pair of breeches for my elf and a friend asked me if I could make her a steampunk skirt. I also bought some black fabric with dark blue stripes that should be made into a ca. 1630 outfit for a ball in Febuary (which I'm basing on a ca 1770 desingn (re-enacters please don't kill me) and am already worried about finishing the embroidery on that one), and fabric in teal with black stripes and chiffon in white with black stripes that both want to (eventually) become voctorian/steampunk dresses. Also I recently inventoried my fabrics and found out that I own some 150 metres of fabric in all varieties which all need to be put to some use (there's almost everything from dark blue cotton velvet to white synthetic chiffon and some very interesting (and incredibly expensive) fabrics thrown in which I'll probably have to feature here at some point since I have no idea what to do with them).

Well, that's about it for now. I'll add some pictures soon (I promise) and then I'll start documenting my past and present projects.