Nina - Philippines

Lady Finduilas

There are only a few pictures of Finduilas I’ve seen, so when I found the link on your site which led to the pic of Eowyn wearing the starry mantle which used to belong to Finduilas, I was overjoyed.

So off I went to the market and found this nice dark blue chiffon cloth with a lot of sparkles on it. The sparkles are in a diagonal pattern, so it’s not quite like the original, but considering the effort it would take to hand-bead a plain blue cloth to come up with the desired effect, I had to take the easy way out!

The trim took longer to find. The girl at Carolina’s Lace Shoppe wasn’t very attentive, and I was losing hope of finding a suitable gold trim when I spotted this white trim with gold roses on it in one of the back shelves. For a long time I was debating whether to use the right side (white with gold roses) or the wrong side (gold with white roses) as you can see in the pic. But I finally decided to attach it right side out, and I’m glad I did. At a distance, the white trim actually appears gold!

I was glad that your site detailed that the mantle was a long narrow rectangle instead of the usual semi-circle. That made it much easier – I didn’t have to cut the blue cloth, just hemmed the sides. However, I bought only 2 ½ meters of it, since it was quite expensive so if you look at the finished product, the front is quite short, unlike the one on Eowyn where the trim in front reaches to the floor. I had to compensate by adding trim to the two sides as well, so I had three sides with trim. Although I used a sewing machine to hem the edges of the blue cloth, I wasn’t confident I could attach the trim nicely, so I hand-sewed it to the blue cloth. (That took me 2 sleepless nights!)

The mantle kept falling off my shoulders, so I decided to tie it in front. I braided some strands of thin silver trim (the store didn’t have anything better) and sewed two lengths on the sides so I could tie them together.

I had made a tiara out of thin jewelry wire inserted in thin silver trim and bought three blue crystals to decorate them with, but I forgot the tiara at a friend’s house. Since I still had silver trim, I braided some strips again and sewed the crystals in the front so that I had a silver circlet! My friends told me it looked even better than the tiara I made earlier.

I didn’t have time to make the white dress, so I had to re-use an old reliable in my closet, a long blue sleeveless dress. I didn’t have the time or the money either to buy nice shoes to match the outfit, so I had to make do with my black party sandals with the killer silver spike heels – not very comfortable for dancing, unfortunately.

Add blue contact lenses (I know Imrahil of Dol Amroth is supposed to have sea-gray eyes so I’m assuming Finduilas should have sea-grey eyes as well, but the blue contact lenses went well with the blue outfit!) a bit of shimmery eye shadow, and a long-haired wig (I have short cropped hair!) – my version of Finduilas!

Actually, I didn’t finish the costume in time for the Convention because I was working on our Tolkien booth - a little hobbit living room complete with faux fireplace! But I did get the starry mantle finished in time for the post-Convention celebration at the Hard Rock Café a few days later. Star Wars Philippines hosted this year’s Convention, which explains the Darth Vader & Stormtroopers backdrop in the picture.

Home | Up | Lee Ann | Nina | Tracy

This page was last updated 11/21/09