Tardis details: Necklace, windows and a failed hat

 First, I'll get that fail part out of the way. :)

My original idea was to construct a wire frame for the lamp/hat, then cover it with fabric and trim and hopefully in the end put a light inside it. I've learned two things while attempting this: My thin wire is way too thin, the thick one is way too thick. Constructing a cylinder that isn't all wonky out of these two is near impossible.

Time to rethink! Spotting an old soap jar from Lush gave me an idea. I'll use that as a base and glue the fabric and trim onto it.

This will have several advantages. Firstly, it will be sturdy and keep its shape even if I accidentally sit on it or something. The wire one would have needed handling with extreme care not to bend out of shape. Secondly, with large flat surfaces it will be much easier to attach the trim to it neatly. Thirdly, if I handle this well, I'll be able to attach the lid to the headband in a way that allows you to unscrew the jar itself. This will prove very useful once I get to the point of attaching a light inside it, allowing me to turn it on and off as well as change batteries without having to deconstruct the entire thing. All in all, I think this is a big improvement.

I've also done some work on the dress itself.

Those two aren't finnish flags, but the future windows of the tardis. Due to their proportions, I opted for 2x2 windows instead of the correct 3x2. I'm fairly confident it will look good anyway. Next up is attaching them, but I'm not quite sure what the least complicated way to pin them on will be, seeing how the top front part of the dress isn't a flat piece and making them line up nicely is really important since it'll be extremely obvious if they're crooked. Since I don't own a mannequin, I think I'll have to try to pin them on while wearing it. I hope I don't get too many bloodstains on it as I stab myself repeatedly! XD

Lastly, there's the necklace!

The embroidery isn't anywhere near as neat as the embroidery on the sign is, but it's done in sewing thread and working on the small ribbon was rather fiddly. If it bothers me enough, I might take it out and redo it at some point in the future. Right now, I'm happy with it. The key is too small to be a proper tardis key, it's the spare for a padlock I found lying around. The shape is good enough though, and it's a good size for the necklace, so I'm happy. :)

Apron step one - complete!

I can't help but feel slightly guilty about using my grandmother's beautifully monogrammed bedsheets for sewing... But then again it is, as you can see in the top middle, worn out and ripped. Using old fabric that's already worn thin must be perfect for a garment that will be artificially aged to achieve just that look. :)

After comparing a few different pictures of aprons in the style I want, I put together a simple pattern sketch of one that should look nice but not require too much effort in putting together.

I'll admit that I didn't originally plan on crossing the ribbons in the back like that. I ended up cutting them too long, and rather than shortening them, I went for that solution instead. I think it also helps the apron stay on better than if they were straight down the back.

While sewing, I also took the time to try out tea dying a few scraps of fabric. I made two pieces. The first one was dipped in the tea for a while and immediately rinsed in cold water, while the other one was put down to dry still drenched in tea.

This is what they looked like once I put them down to dry. The one to the right is of course the one with the tea left in. Originally I thought it would end up far too brown, but when I later on rinsed the tea out and left it to dry overnight, it ended up a lovely brownish colour, while the one rinsed immediately was far too pale for my taste.

As I write, the apron is soaking in tea and I will soon take it out to dry. Photos of the entire thing will come once it's dry.

Next up: Experimenting with creating blood stains!

Yet another new project!

What's that? I'm supposed to finish what I start before picking up something new? Naaah! :D

This new one is for a larp outfit and will be one of the more ambitions things I've done in a while, as far as exploring a new era of fashion, new techniques and new types of accessories goes.

The new era
I was given a suggestion of aiming towards roughly the 1930's. I'll admit that most of my research has landed a decade or two earlier than that, but I imagine that the work uniform of a maid wasn't something that changed along with fashion very easily and it might look more or less the same in the 30's as it did in the 20's.

In short, it should consist of a black dress (possibly with some details of white lace, such as the collar) and on top of that a white apron and a small white headgear, either a cap or one of those lacy headbands.

For the black dress, I'm going to cheat and go for a long black skirt and a dark grey shirt. The main reason for this is simply that I already own them and my budget is somewhat limited, so I won't be making an entirely new dress when I won't have to.

Instead, I will put my efforts into making the apron and headgear nice, since they should attract the most attention anyway. I spent quite some time researching different models of aprons, and in the end I landed at this one as my favourit:

(Picture shamelessly stolen from http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/collections/liners/titanic/survivorsapron.aspx )

Granted, this one is from 1912, but I refer to my argument above about why that's probably okay. I like the way the top part of the apron covers enough of the chest, back and shoulders to almost give the impression of being a white dress and the lace details are beautiful but not over the top.

(Again, from http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/collections/liners/titanic/survivorsapron.aspx )

Another source of inspiration is the maid uniforms seen in the tv show Downton Abbey. The model is basically the same, only the trim differs.

I know that I have some old lace lying around that I bought for another project but never used. As far as I can tell, it's vintage and handmade, which is a neat bonus. It was also incredibly cheap, so I won't feel too bad about what I'm going to do to it next...


The new techniques
Not only will the costume look like a maid's uniform from the early 20th century. It will also have to look like the person wearing it has worn it since back then, while working and not taking particularily good care of it. There will have to be discolouration, old stains, wear and tear, hastily mended rips and plenty of blood stains (did I mention she's the semi-immortal servant of a slightly demented vampire count?).

I've never done anything like this before, but I think it will be a lot of fun! I've spent some time researching how to distress costumes in a good looking and not too impractical way (the ideal one of course being to simply use them until they are suitable worn out, but most of us won't have the time to do that.)

There are plenty of different ways to distress outfits, and most of the places I've found repeat them in one way or another. This page sums up most of them pretty well. I have a feeling it will be difficult to first spend time making a nice looking garment, only to proceed and start ripping and staining and ruining it, but the end result should be nice!

Blood stains turned out to be trickier. My first searches mostly gave me advice along the line of "I'm really cheap and in a hurry and want to make a halloween outfit". That is; blood stains that looked like fresh blood and probably not very realistic at that either. What I wanted was dried in blood, but preferrably permanent so that I won't have to worry about ruining it if it should get wet, or staining other clothes. I altered my search slightly, adding things about wanting it to be old blood and permanent. What do I get? Pages upon pages of stain removal advice. Argh!

At this point, I think my best bet will be to go for a mixture of red food dye and soy sauce, which I will then attempt to wash out. Hopefully this should leave reddish brown stains. (I will of course try this on some scrap fabric first) Then for the slightly fresher and not yet washed out, but still aged and dry, stains, I might just fall back on painting them on with acrylic paint. Not ideal, but it's my best idea so far. Got a better one? Do tell me!

New accessories
I'm buying a wig.

I've never bought a wig before. Actually, I've never even worn one. But it seems like fun. And a good way to alter your looks a lot. That in combination with wearing contacts, which I almost never do, should make me look a lot different in this costume.

Right now, I'm looking at Tradera (swedish ebay, kinda) for cheap wigs. I know that cheap wigs are probably bad wigs, but I don't really feel I can pay for an expensive good wig now that it's just my first time and little more than a fun experiment. If I like it, that can come later.

Since I know the selection won't be too big, I've kept my preferences rather wide. I want the hair to be dark, since I've always wanted dark hair irl, but never dared dye it. I think I'll avoid the completely black ones, I imagine they'll look more fake than a dark brown one. I want it long, mostly since I miss having long hair myself (I'm saving it, but at this rate it will be a few years before it's at the length I want), and I think I'll go for slightly wave rather than straight, again in the hope of looking slightly less awfully fake.

I've got my eyes on one wig that'll be sold tonight and seems promising as far as both looks and price goes. Once I have it and it's arrived, there will be a new post with pictures!

In the end, this is the concept sketch I arrived at:

I'm not 100% sure that's exactly how I'll place the trim, I'll most likely improvise that as I go and when I know just how much lace I have access to. I haven't decided what kind of headgear to make. The lacy headbands seem the most common, but in my mind that have too much of a gothic lolita/french maid halloween outfit wibe. For this reason, I'm leaning towards a mob cap style thing, possibly decorated with lace as well. This might also be helpful if the wig I end up with is ugly. It'll probably be best to wait until I have the wig to decide.

The joy of embroidery hoops

I have no idea why I never bought myself an embroidery hoop earlier. Working with it is wonderful! This makes me feel even more enthusiastic for future embroidery work. Making the Police Telephone sign has been a lot of fun, especially copying the lovely font of the top half of it. The lower part has a simpler font, without serifs and varying line thicknesses. To my surprise, the simpler font turned out to be the harder one to get to look good. With no frills and details, it's even more important to not have slanted lines that should have been straight and the letters the exact same size.

Still, making the sign has been a joy and I'm really pleased with the results so far.

Next up will be the little sign on the door, the one so many people seem to forget that it even exists. This one:

This will be an interesting challenge too. I'm not sure wether to work in black on white fabric, in white on black or do it with both black and white thread on blue fabric. Those tiny lions and unicorns will be fun to figure out! For those alone, I'm leaning towards white on black rather than the opposite.

Besides embroidery, I have also bought the fabric I'll use for the petticoat that will go with the dress, as well as a few meters of tardis blue satin ribbon, which will go on the sleeves and possibly the collar of the white shirt I'll wear under the dress. But back to the petticoat! Originally, I was thinking white for it. Then I saw this... 

How could I resist? I'm sorely tempted to use part of it to make a small hat veil as well. I imagine it'd look rather nice. It'd be a nice way to hint towards the shiny gold eyes people who interact with the heart of the tardis get. By all logic, the tardis itself if anthropomorphed would have them as well, but the real thing is kinda hard to do without CGI. :)

The Tardis in one piece

I've finally gotten the main part of the Tardis dress put together and fitted properly. It ended up being a bit too long, considering that I want to add a fairly wide ruffle at the bottom. But it will need trimming in order to make it even anyway, so I'll just cut away a bit extra.

I do apologise for the dreadfully flat and boring presentation of the dress. I do wish I had one of those fancy mannequins to display it on. (Would make fitting so much easier as well!) In the future, I will attempt to have photos of me wearing it instead.

Next up is mapping out where and how to attach the embellishments that will make it look properly like a Tardis. I've been debating with myself on how to do the panels best. The first one was wether to make panels, or strips of fabrics for the space inbetween the panels. The most accurate way would be strips of fabric, seeing how the panels on the Tardis are sunk in, not standing out. On the other hand, this is not a square shape, but a fitted dress. Doing this would basically mean sewing a second dress, cutting out holes for the panels and sewing them together. That does seem a little over the top! Instead, I'll cut the squares for the panels, and attach them to the dress. The one exception will be a strip down the middle front, which will help hide the zipper.

The next thing to decide was the shape of the panels. Sqaures, obviously. But the dress gets wider at the bottom than the top. Should I make the squares like that as well? In the end I decided not to, it might look too strange. There will be panels along the front and back, and they will be straight. (One might also add panels on the sides, seeing how the dress is probably wide enough for them to fit... But that might also look weird. I'll attach the front and back panels first, and then decide)

After some measuring, I've decided that 24x15cm(9,44x5,9inches) panels should be a good size. This in turn means that the "free for public use" sign must be even a bit more smaller. I downloaded a large one and put it in photoshop, shrinking it down to a small enough size. This picture I will then print, and use as a guide for when I'm embroidering the sign that goes on the dress.

One last issue remains this time. The black "police box" sign. Originally I was envisioning another pattern, one that closes in the back. That one would have enabled me to have the sign just attached across the front of the dress. Now I have the zipper in the front instead, and that won't work. I will have to devise another way to put the black sign in the dress. I've seen people who make a choker necklace or a scarf out of it, rather than having it attached to the dress itself, maybe that will be a good option for me as well. I will have to think about it. Luckily, it won't be needed in quite a while yet, there's still many other things to do.

The Doctor is taking shape

In fact, he's nearly finished!

All he needs to be considered finished now is his shoes, though I'm considering adding his glasses as well.

The doll isn't the only progress I've made either. I've also started on the Tardis project.

I'm basing the pattern for the dress on a medieval one for making fitted dresses such as cotehardies. To be honest, the primary reason I'm using this is that I own it, rather than any kind of superiority in style and shape for this particular dress. But I think it will work out well. The plan is fitted but not overly tight, a knee length skirt that flares out a bit more than the original pattern, which will later on be improved on by a nice petticoat.

Right now, however, it fits more into the "shapeless sack" category. It turned out a bit larger than intended, and I'll need som aid in pinning it so I can change the seams to make it fit better. I also need to figure out wether I can get my hands on a nice blue zipper, or if I should just go for a black one and hope to hide it. Nevertheless, progress has been made! Next up after fitting it properly will be to measure out the size for the windows and panels and start figuring out how I will construct those.

The Doctor doll

I decided that a funny detail to have with the tardis outfit would be a Doctor doll or two to store in my pockets. Since I'm not quite up to starting on the dress yet, I went and bought some skin coloured felt to get started on the doll. Since the 10th Doctor is my favourite, and I happened to have scraps of brown fabric lying around, I decided that a tenth in his brown suit will be the first doll. Not sure yet if I'll attempt the trenchcoat too, we'll see.

Since I wanted to sit sewing in front of the tv, I opted to do all seams by hand. I prefer that anyway when working with something so small.

As soon as I started sewing I realised some minor problems. I hadn't been careful enough when cutting the pieces, and he ended up a bit lopsided. Second problem was the realisation that this felt was rather thin and low quality compared to what I remember working with as a child (last time I made a doll like this), and it ripped and stretched in several places. I managed to stitch the rips back together, but he ended up looking even more warped. It also didn't help that I left the head for last opening for stuffing, rather than a sensible place like his stomach, so the head ended up even more stretched and warped. In short, he looked like a mess.

I decided to sew the shirt and pants onto his body. Both because it will be much easier than making a removable garment, and because it should help prevent the felt from ripping further. The shirt is made of pieces from an old bedsheet. All seems beside the one running along the sleeves is sewn into the doll, leaving the ends of the sleeves loose and giving the illusion of a removable shirt.

Next comes the pants, attached to him in the same way as the shirt, with the bottom hem of the pants the one exception. These are a bit tight though, and may as well have been completely sewn on.

The jacket is the one removable garment he will wear. So far, I've made the main body and sleeves. Next up will be detailing such as pocket flaps and lapels.

I have yet to decide what to make the hair out of. One option is to make a sort of wig out of brown fabric, another to make it out of brown yarn. I'm not sure what will look best, nor if either of them would allow styling it into something resembling his hairstyle. The face will definately be embroidered on, but I don't know if it will be with or whitout glasses.

The shoes are also likely to be a tricky part, I shall have to dig through my fabric chest and see if I find any inspiration there.

Pilgrim's bag finished

Last night I started out with cutting the pieces for the bag out of some scrap linen I had lying around. I used one of my other bags as a rough estimate for a good size for it.

Due to being old scrap fabric, it's all horribly wrinkled. I couldn't be bothered with ironing it first.

All the pieces are now put together. Still wrinkly, but looking promising. Next up is decorating it!

All finished! I found some green yarn in the yarn basket (probably the most exciting colour in there... I have to do something about my yarn supply some day). I decided to go for fairly simple decorations, since the bag won't be all that fancy. To make sure the tassels would be the same size, I wound the yarn around my mac remote for each of them, rather than just using my fingers.

And a small closeup of the button closure. I made the braided loop by first attaching three long pieces of yarn to the lid, tying them in place, and then braiding the ends. Once they were long enough, I tied the two braids together to form a loop and cut off the excess.

In conclusion I'm happy with how the bag turned out, being made in a hurry and with nothing but scrap pieces. The shoulder strap is a bit on the wide side. I'll see how it feels after I've used the bag for a bit, and might make changes to it, but for now I'll call the bag finished.

Pilgrims bag

I'll be going to the medieval week in Wisby next week. Today I realised that I won't have a handy way for carrying my things the days I wear an outfit that doesn't easily work together with my belt and bags. So I've decided to correct this, by making myself a pilgrim bag.

From my research, it's basically a shoulder bag of a more or less modern shape. I've chosen a slightly less complicated one, but not overly so, I should be able to put it together from only three pieces.

To make it more interesting, I'm going to add a few tassels, inspired by a number of smaller pouches I've seen and always liked the look of, such as this:

I'll probably stick to putting them only on the bottom of the bag though, mostly for practicality. Instead, I'll have a matching embroidered border along the lid to go with the tassels.

Now to raid the fabric chest in search of scrap to make the bag out of!

New beginnings

I've been toying with the idea of making a blog to document my various creative projects in, so here we go. In here you will find mostly sewing projects related to my larping and cosplaying, but there might occassionally be other things as well.

I will strive towards being informational, both showing off what I'm doing and explaining how so that others might attempt it as well, should they be interested.

As I start the blog, I am in the very beginning of a brand new project. Last weekend I went to my very first convention, and I returned inspired. All the glorious geekiness has awoken my inner fangirl and I find myself wanting to produce fanart and gush over favourite characters again. All of the amazing cosplayers made me want to do it as well, create costumes of the characters and shows I love most.

As it happens, one of my absolute favourite shows is Dr Who. And I also happen to have eight meters of Tardis-blue fabric lying around. The solution is obvious!

Tardis cosplay.

Here is the plan so far. The shape of the dress itself will be fairly basic, with a ribbon to tie in the back in between the windows and the signs. The panels will be big pockets to hopefully eliminate the need to drag around a handbag as well. 

The shirt will also be made (or altered from an existing one, haven't decided yet) for the costume specifically, white blue detailing around the sleeve hems and collar. I'm hoping to find satin ribbon of a matching blue colour, otherwise I'll make the ribbon myself from the same fabric as the dress.

I'm also thinking of embroidering the police box text as well as the sign, rather than painting or printing it. It will be a lot more work, but it should do a lot for the overall impression of the dress in the end. So many of the dresses I've seen while googling for inspiration have lovely ideas, but come off as hastily thrown together. I don't want that. I'd rather spend a lot of extra time on making it perfect.

The lamp hat I'm thinking of making similar to those mini top hats that are so cute, only shaped like a tardis lamp. I'm toying with the idea of actually fitting a lamp inside it. It would be a cool detail, but on the other hand the lamp probably wouldn't be bright enough to show up if you're inside in a lit room, which I'll probably be for most of the time when wearing this. Is all that extra work worth it for something people are unlikely to notice? Maybe. I haven't decided yet.

I'm also thinking of making the petticoat for the dress out of a gold coloured material. Another funny detail that most people probably won't notice, and even if they do might not understand... So many decisions to make. But before I can even start, I need to head out and by a new roll of paper to cut pattern pieces from, turns out I lost the old one when I moved to this apartment.