Jen's Examples
Click on pictures for enlargements.
Galadriel - Mirror dress and Farewell cloak
Since we have been encouraged to share our costuming experience and
photos of our efforts, I'll shyly take you all up on that.
I wanted to wear a Galadriel movie-replica costume to the FOTR premiere
so I needed to find out what I could well before the movie came out.
II don't have much free time for sewing so I had to make guesses on the
costume before there was much good information (in October 2001, I was
doing my main construction). I decided to make what we now know as the
Mirror dress and the Farewell to the Fellowship Cloak.
Essentially
the best detailed pictures I had were the two from the student planner. So,
many mistakes were made :-), but I was happy with the 'feel' of it, and I'm
working on changing a few of the errors eventually.
I bought an inexpensive synthetic lace which is pinker in hue than I
would have wanted, but the pattern was pretty good, from a sari shop in
town. The lining is also a synthetic bridal satin type lining. I used
Simplicity 8946, making the sleeves entirely from scratch since this is a
sleeveless dress pattern. The other drawback was it's low back, but I
merrily went along with it since there was no evidence to the contrary.
Sleeves were a problem. Then, there were no pictures of her with her arms
down, she was always pouring water or holding her arm out in
farewell... once I saw the movie I could tell her sleeves hung all one
length when her arms were down - but you can see in the photos of me below
that I originally had different ideas about them :-).
I haven't beaded the dress (yet). Also, my dad and I fashioned a brooch
from silver-painted copper and marble (we had a hard time figuring this one
out from the stuff we had!), my dad was convinced there was some yellow at
the heart of the (what we now know is) mother of pearl piece, so we resined
some yellow glass there. The design of the silver branches is also somewhat
different from what we originally pictured. My dad, a quiet great sculptor
(tackling mostly religious themes in his professional work), has an untapped
ability at making replica props! You should see his leaf brooches and Naboo
blaster.
The crown is wire and telephone line spray-painted silver and gold. I
still quite like it.
The
robe I could tell was a lovely etched fine velvet - beyond my means and
abilities - enter the sari shop once again with cheap embossed with a
floral-type pattern velvet-like stuff can be found, so I compromised. I
didn't use a pattern for this one, just drew it out and played around with
the cowl and hood.
Little did I know she was barefoot for most of her appearances - that
would have been much easier. I looked everywhere for a second hand pair of
white boots, in the end temporizing by spray painting a cheap pair of brown
ones. I should really get a decent pair of white boots one day.
