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Rhiannon's Examples California, USAClick on pictures for enlargements. Siraniël's Legolas Costume
First, the shirt: The fabric is Dupioni Silk in blue ice from www.fabricclub.com . The fabric is beautiful but frays terribly easily (since I don't own a serger, I used a zigzag stitch on the inner seams and also used a touch of FrayBlock by june tailor to help control the fraying). I should like a heavier version of this silk in the future. It was made from a combination of Butterick 5944 and the rolled collar that was suggested on list. A good piece of advice would definitely be to listen to everyone's
suggestions when it comes to the collar. Do measure your neck and how
high you would like the collar to be. When you are putting the pieces
together to sew, make sure that the sleeve and shoulder match up on the
collar side and not the sleeve side (I made this mistake on the shirt).
The sleeve edges can be clipped to match, but the collar will be puckered
if it doesn't match up properly. Also, it works best to sew one side of
the shoulder, attach the collar and then work on the other side. My
attempt at belled sleeves did not work very well and I plan to redo the
shirt. After I cut the overlay portion of the tunic, I painted the designs on. Fabric paint with a fine tip was used to create the design. First, I created the design on plain paper and made photocopies for production purposes (that way I keep a clean copy in case I wanted to do the costume again). To outline the design on the flatter suedecloth, I used pattern tracing paper to leave a fine mark and then traced over it with the fabric paint. I let it dry overnight and then sewed the pieces together.
I made the overlay and tunic as separate pieces (so it looked like 2 tunics almost). I made tiny seams in the outer portion and then sewed them together at the seams, just putting the overlay on top of the existing lower tunic. In retrospect, it would have been better to create them in one piece, it would avoid some puckering which was very difficult to even out. I attempted to make the sleeves a bit more feminine (more like rose petals) than the Legolas costume and modified the pattern a bit. I also flatlined the lower portion with the same material to give it a bit more weight as the fabric was a bit flimsy.
I made it from the Butterick 3084 pattern (very easy to make too!). I used melton wool in dove gray from www.fabric.com . The material is absolutely gorgeous! It was very easy to both cut and sew together. The advice I have for novices is pay attention to the notches they recommend that you cut out because they are very important in making sure that the seams lie flat and don't pucker. I'm an intermediate sewer, but hadn't sewn anything in about 10 years. This was a great first piece to get back into sewing, or for an inexperienced sewer trying to learn. The leaf brooch was purchased from the Noble Collection. The bracers were made out of heavy "latigo" leather purchased from www.justleather.com . The patterns were traced on in the same manner as the ones on the tunic and outlined using a gold marker. The bracers are unfinished as of yet, I used Velcro to keep them together temporarily but that didn't work very well as the Velcro doesn't stick well. The recurve bow I bought on ebay. It is a used youth recurve in oak. I simply "painted" it with a furniture touch up marker and used a gold marker to create the designs. Very easy! The belt was purchased on ebay, and the leggings were purchased from Spiegel.
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