Ropecon 2015 cosplay: Margaery Tyrell (Game of Thrones)

Hello everyone,
Every year my husband and I go to a Finnish convention called Ropecon (the word "rope" there refers to role playing which in Finnish is roolipelaaminen, so the convention has nothing to do with those kinds of ropes you use to tie someone up. Well, unless bondage while in a costume is your thing I guess?)

I usually dress up for Ropecon:

2010: the theme was horror (so I was a generic something horror-related :D); 2011: Chell from Portal; 2012: Renate Richter from the movie Iron Sky; 2013: steampunk; 2014: TARDIS.

This year, I decided early on that I wanted to be someone from Game of Thrones. And well, Margaery is pretty awesome, so why the hell not? ^_^

So I started out by scouting suitable fabrics for one of Margaery's dresses.

The inspiration:

The fabric I found for this project:

Note that all of the fabric is from a thrift store. All fabric, zippers and materials for the belt were thrifted, so the pattern of the fabric for the top isn't exactly how it's supposed to, but it's close enough. Altogether this cosplay cost me ~18 euros (~$20.50).

So, the lighter blue fabric with silvery streaks was actually a pair of curtains and they already had gathering with strings sewn into the top part, so I used that for my advantage to make an underskirt. I simply sewed the curtains together at the sides, added a zipper on one side, pulled the gathering strings to fit my waist, shortened and hemmed the bottom - and boom! I had the underskirt ready.

On the right you can see the gathering the fabric already had when I bought it.

Next I made the top part:

I designed the pattern on paper and then measured and cut the fabric twice, sewed them together right side to right side and turned the whole thing inside out... and if that piece up there looks a bit weird, it folds like this:

Looks more like a top when folded, doesn't it?

Then I had to make the shoulder parts and the piece connecting them at the back:

Top piece all ready.

I used the slightly darker blue fabric (that was on the top left corner of the fabric stack picture) for the shoulders and back, and the remainder of this fabric would be the actual skirt to be attached to the top. I would have used only this for the skirt part, but it was (also) a curtain and additionally a slightly see-through one. So hence the underskirt I made in the beginning was necessary. I simply sewed big darts (about 30 cm long and 20 cm wide) all over one side of the curtain until the fabric fit my waist comfortably. Then I attached this to the top part:

At first I thought I'd be all historically accurate and use hooks and buttons and whatnot, but then I got lazy and this hidden zipper happened:

Then I added hidden snap buttons and other sneaky stuff to keep the fabric in place and prevent the zipper from being visible.

Lastly I used a thrift-store found thick wire and a clay flower to make the belt. I covered it all in gold spray paint:

The belt is held in place with three pieces of string I sewed onto the waist of the dress:

Here's the finished dress hanging off of a coat hanger:

And since it's May and in Finland that means still very much freezing, I also made this scarf/wrap so I won't freeze to death:

All wrapped up and ready to go:

I will post better pictures when after I've actually gone out wearing all this :D ...but well, what do you think? :)

love,
scoundrel

Here's some stuff I've done lately. Also, a Marvel dress coming up soon (I hope)!

Hey everyone,
Sorry I've been absent, it's just gotten crazy with studying and such.

I haven't forgotten my blog or my sewing projects, but I simply haven't had time to do anything besides study.

...okay, now that's a lie. I have done other things, but mostly I really have done university stuff. Essays, group projects, exams, presentations... they all just keep on coming.

Two other things have happened besides studying:

1) I saw Gerard Way live! Which was awesome.

The show was amazing, and I'm not even that bummed that we froze our asses off and still didn't get autographs. I just hope he comes back to Finland soon!

***

2) My husband and I celebrated the 5-year-anniversary of our relationship. Whoa. It's really been 5 years?!

Anyways. We went for a coffee and ice cream. (Om nom nom ice cream!)

Then we went to see Jupiter Ascending, which was kind of weird and nonsensical but visually/musically very pretty. And, you know, Channing Tatum shirtless isn't a huge minus either (I couldn't find any pics of his shirtless scenes in this particular movie, though. Something is clearly wrong with the Universe).

After the movie we went and ate at a restaurant.

Nom nom.

The next day, we went to an escape the room game in real life. You know, those games where you wake up locked in a room and have to find clues and solve puzzles to get out. Well, this is just like that, except it's a real room! It was so awesome! I think we have to make an excursion to Tampere or Helsinki next, because they both have their own IRL escape games ^_^

***

So, I'm currently working on a Marvel themed dress. I have most of the pieces cut out and ready to sew and a print design in my head, but I haven't had time to finish the dress just yet. But once I do, I hope it's as awesome as it is in my imagination :D

Stay tuned for more!

love,
scoundrel

The North Remembers - House Stark Sigil Dress (Game of Thrones)

Heya,
So, my husband's grandmother heard that I like sewing, so she gave me scrap pieces of fabric she had lying around. Or more like I got permission to rummage through her fabric cupboard and take whatever I wanted. She also told me that she has more fabric stashed away in the attic and I am welcome to rummage through that stash as well - suddenly visiting relatives doesn't seem so bad, now does it? :D

Anyways - New Year's Eve is here! So naturally I had to make something to wear (as if my closet wasn't already full of clothes...) My Lord of the Rings dress got such a positive response that I thought I could reach into the depths of my favorite fandoms once more and get some inspiration. And inspiration I got, oh yes. And I had just the fabric for this purpose, too. Something cold and blue, like the North...

It's one of the pieces that I snatched from my grandma-in-law's cupboard:

It's a nice blue/turquoise print fabric, and the only bad thing about it was that the piece was so small that I had to get creative, hence the other fabric lying on top of the print fabric. See, no matter how I measured and twisted the fabric, I couldn't get a long-enough half-circle skirt out of it and still have enough fabric for the top. So I cut a too short half-circle skirt and added a strip of fabric on the bottom to get enough length.

First, I found the sigil I wanted to use. I used this stencil from Free Stencil Gallery:

I put on a shirt with a high neckline to see the placement and measure the size of the sigil on the dress:

I cut out the half-circle skirt and the top pieces (plus linings for the top):

Then I attempted to make a cutout of the sigil on the front by drawing the sigil on the wrong side of the fabric, then placing the lining and the print fabric right sides together and sewing over the drawn line. I then cut out the middle part and pulled the lining through the hole, so the right side of the print was visible... then I tried to push and pull the sharp corners of the cutout in place. I tugged and shoved and cried and cursed - to no avail. The sigil as a cutout was a failure since the cutout image was too detailed and hence impossible to recreate on fabric in the way I attempted.

Above is the sigil sewn through the fabric and the lining, before I cut out the middle and tried to assemble the cutout image.

So I nearly gave up. I tossed the (now torn) top front in the trash, then dug it out of the trashcan a minute later because I realized I didn't have enough fabric for another top front. So I cut slivers of the print fabric and sewed them together to create another top front.

Then I set out to try another way of creating a cutout of the Stark sigil.

I lined the top pieces as I normally do (right sides together, leaving a gap at the bottom and pulling the whole thing inside out to reveal the right side) and then pinned the (slightly crumpled) sigil paper on the fabric:

As you can see it's on the right side of the fabric, and the lining is on the back. Then I simply sewed around the paper, through both the lining and the print fabric. It took ages, but finally I was able to remove the paper and reveal the sewed line on the fabric.

Then I cut the fabric in the middle out as close to the thread as I could, added fabric glue to prevent the edges from fraying and painted over with black fabric to cover up the edges of the fabric. If you have Fray Check or something else like that, it's probably better for this purpose than textile glue. I only had the glue and at the time it was so late I couldn't go buy anything else :D

So then I sewed the shoulder and side seams together to complete the top, top-stitched the armholes and the neckline, added a strip of gray fabric at the bottom to avoid flashing everyone, attached the top and bottom parts, hemmed the skirt and added a zipper. The usual stuff.

...And it was done. After seven or so hours of labor, it was finally done. (And I realized I had forgotten to eat, so I made dinner around 10 PM. Go me.)

This morning I realized I needed pockets, so I added them:

I cut out crest-shaped pieces, two of the print fabric and two of the lining. I sewed the pieces together, right side to right side, leaving a small gap. I then turned the pockets inside out, ironed them and top-stitched over the sides, closing the small gap. Then I simply attached them to the skirt of my dress and now I can have my cell phone in my pocket tonight in case I want to take pictures of the NYE festivities.

Rocking the new look:

I'm really loving how this dress turned out, even though it was a struggle at first with the cutout direwolf. Now I just wish I had an actual direwolf to go with this outfit ;)

So, what do you think of my Stark sigil dress? :)

***

Have a geek-tastic New Year's Eve, and remember to dress warmly because Winter is coming.

love,
scoundrel

Unleashing my inner fangirl: Lord of the Rings dress

So, my local Goodwill had a holiday sale a few days ago. Everything in the store was -50% off. So naturally I attacked the fabric section and came home with a bagful of fabric - and no place to put it. The assigned spot for my fabric stash is, well, full of fabric. Well, then I decided I had to use some of the fabric I purchased right away, so it wouldn't take up space among the other fabrics. Logical, eh?

Denim is all the rage now, right? So when I found this very light blue (or light blue/gray) denim for 1.5€, I grabbed it:

Since it doesn't look like traditional denim (mainly because of the light color), I decided it would do well as a dress. It's not super thick denim either, but rather light yet non-stretchy.

So next morning, I sketched a rough pattern for a dress with a half-circle skirt as the bottom. I usually make full circle skirts because I like them best, but this time I didn't want there to be too much of fabric. See, I had a plan to add a stenciled picture on the hem, and if the skirt was full circle, the excess fabric would hide half of the picture in the folds when wearing the dress. So, half circle it was.

I found this awesome calculator for different circle skirt measurements. I mean, you can calculate them yourself pretty easily, but if you're lazy and suck at math like me, then this is your best friend. Essentially, I just needed the radius of the smaller circle (the waist part), and then I measured 55cm from the circumference of the smaller circle to make a skirt that falls just above my knees.

Here's a rough pattern of what I did, and please don't laugh at my Paint skills :D

Yeah, I'm aware that the sleeves are huge in comparison to the other illustrations, but meh. :P

I used an existing dress to measure out the top of the dress, so basically I just laid the dress I already had on folded fabric and cut out two pieces (with seam allowance) and then cut the front piece neckline into a V shape. I lined the neckline, added darts and sewed the shoulder seams together, but left the side seams open because I wanted to add sleeves.

For adding the sleeves, I used this amazing tutorial (the name of the tutorial is very descriptive): "How to sew sleeves without wanting to murder everything". Even I have learned to add sleeves without wanting to toss my sewing machine down from my balcony, and that's saying something :D

So, then I added a zipper and hemmed the sleeves and the skirt hem. And it was done:

So then for the stencil picture. As a background story to this, I just went to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies in the movies, and that was such a huge disappointment for me. So basically I ran back to my Tolkien books and wanted to hug them for comfort (maybe I did. Just a bit. Don't judge, okay?). And since the LotR movies were actually pretty good, especially in comparison to The Hobbit, I decided to pay tribute to them (but mostly the books. Oh, yes, the books.)

So I found this silhouette picture and figured it could be turned into a stencil:

So I measured the front hemline of the dress, enlarged the image, then drew the stencil in permanent market on self-adhesive book cover plastic. I actually held the plastic sheet against my laptop screen and drew it through. :D I had to adjust the stencil because the hem of the dress is curved, but that was easy - I just drew the hem curve on the plastic sheet first and then started from the middle and drew outwards, adjusting to the curve as I went along.

This is how the stencil turned out:

Then I just had to cut out the stencil. I used an X-ACTO knife and small scissors. When I was done, I peeled the book cover and attached it to the hem of the dress, then painted over it with black fabric paint. I waited a moment and then carefully peeled the stencil off the fabric.

Here's the result:

It turned out pretty damn awesome, don't you think?

Here's me rocking the new dress:

Really, really awesome.

So, that kind of a DIY project this time. :D

And the best part is, this dress was cheap.
- Fabric from Goodwill, 1.5€
- Zipper, 1.8€
- The thread I already had but can't be more than a few cents...
- I also had the self-adhesive book cover at home, but it's pretty cheap when you buy in bulk
- Black fabric paint, 5.90€/bottle. I used maybe like one fifth on this project, so ~1.2€
= 4.5€ plus thread and the self-adhesive cover, so maybe around 5€?

...still, CHEAP.

***

I can definitely see myself wearing this dress a lot. I don't usually go for the print stuff, but this is nice without being too aggressive. It's the perfect way to flaunt my adoration towards J. R. R. Tolkien. ♥

So, what do you think? :)

love,
scoundrel