Mars - Washington, USA
Elf
and Man of Gondor
In June 2004, a group of artists in Seattle, Washington rented an
old Safeway building and created sets from Middle Earth for the
purpose of three masquerade balls with a Middle Earth theme. The first
was in June, the next is to be in October and the last will be at New
Years'. The first was a blast and it was great to see how many people
came dressed (nearly everyone).
I made costumes for myself and a friend. Since I had a limited time to
get it done in (two weekends), I chose the simplest characters I could. I
went as an elf and he was a Gondor soldier. Attached are some shots of the
outfits. I'm a mediocre seamstress but the coat took me about six hours
only, which isn't too bad. The dress my sister Tess made in about three,
most of which was the embroidery. I don't think she used a pattern but she's
ten times the seamstress I am. 
The elf dress was made by my sister of inexpensive cream crepe and is a
very basic loose shift with hugely belled sleeves and a cowl neckline. She
machine-embroidered blue and silver leaves around the hem and cuffs. Since
it's not seen much, an evening gown could've worked but I like to do things
as thoroughly as possible and she did a nice job on it.
The jacket was made of discount fabric in a greyish-blue polyester with
nice heavy swing and a very organic texture using a standard
Mandarin/Chinese dress-coat pattern, two sizes bigger than I'd want if it
were a dress (I'm about a twelve so I sewed a 14). I extended the collar by
about two inches and backed it with very stiff interfacing so it would stay
standing, and I sewed the side slits shut. The sleeves are from Butterick's
wizard cape pattern 4050, slightly shorter but just as wide, with the
shoulder-hole trimmed to fit closer to the Mandarin pattern, because the
difference was too great to just gather while sewing the sleeves in. The
design on the cuffs and the collar are glittery puff paint. The clasp is a
purchased clasp, painted silver with hammertone spray paint and "antiqued"
with acrylic (because the original was brass and I needed silver).
My ears are home-made also. I tried the store-bought ears and they are
either too huge or the wrong color. So I picked up a pair of the Lord of the
Rings movie licensed "Hobbit/Elf" ears, which come in bubble packaging
shaped like ears, threw out the ears and poured latex into the package. It
took about three layers of latex, but once done, they took standard grease
paint stage makeup beautifully and even dried to the touch on the surface.
These were applied with spirit gum or eyelash adhesive; they're light enough
that either works fine. They don't look too bad, as long as you ignore the
seam, which is not very visible in low light situation, and I did get a ton
of compliments.
The Gondor costume was much less work this time because the surcoat was
already done from a past project. No pattern was used for it, in any case.
It's a front and a back panel of black bridal satin with appliques of purple
and blue shark-skin (I don't recommend any of that fabric to the novice.
It's terrible to sew on and slides all over. Try cotton. Much easier) with a
slight scoop in the top end.
The
shoulder seams are sewn, then the whole thing hemmed. A satin belt was sewn
on that is permanent and open on one side so you can shoulder into it; then
it's safety-pinned shut. For the rest, I sewed the collar underneath on a
standard black cotton men's shirt and he's wearing black jeans and leather
motorcycle boots but in the dark, no one could tell. The sword had to be
plastic because it was a public party, so it was a cheesy $2 kid's costume
sword spray painted black, with the White Tree of Gondor painted on and some
silver acrylic aging.
The Tree on his chest is also plain black fabric with the Tree painted on
using a stencil I made from an image found on the Internet. I used regular
printer paper, cut it out with scissors, taped it down with masking tape and
put in white acrylic. The edges were of course a little blobby, so I had to
then finish them by hand with a small brush but acrylic is fast, easy and
dries in only an hour or so. That was just pinned to the tunic. The sword
belt is a long satin sash with a loop tied in it to stick the sword through.
Really, really easy . All the sewing on this costume could be accomplished
using a stapler, tape and safety pins if someone wasn't needle-and-thread
savvy.
Over all, we got excellent reception and many compliments. Can't wait
'til Halloween!
I'll included a cheatin' easy drawing of the tunic that could be
interpreted as a rough pattern, length to be determined by the knight's
height.
More costumes in the Nasties section.
Middle-earth Groups | Middle Earth Group 2 | Middle-earth Groups 3 | Middle Earth 4 | Middle Earth 5
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This page was last updated
11/21/09
