Eowyn's Blue Robe

During the Christmas season, my favorite thing to do is to curl up in a chair in front of the tree with Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic quartet, a blanket, a glass of sparkling grape juice (okay, who am I kidding - I call it "kids' wine"), a hunk of cheese (I highly recommend "Ewephoria" from Whole Foods) and a Hawaiian bread roll.

My husband and I have a New Year's Eve tradition of watching The Lord of the Rings Extended Editions back-to-back-to-back (yes, twelve hours straight of LOTR).  Therefore, after Christmas, my nightly reading ritual moves upstairs into a little nook in the loft above our bedroom, and I substitute tea or hot chocolate for the kids' wine, cut out the snack, and replace Tamora Pierce with Lord of the Rings.  When I have clothes on the line, I feel like I'm completely closed into a perfect little hiding place, and I just get lost in Middle Earth every night for the remainder of winter.

When The Return of the King extended edition was released and I saw the added scene with Eowyn in her blue robe, I practically drooled over that robe.  It just looked so warm and cozy, and I could just imagine how nice it would be to curl up in that during my wintry reading sessions.

So finally, I pulled it together.  This robe is never meant to leave the house, so I didn't worry too much about making it accurate.

I started out with Simplicity Pattern 5840, which I've used before for my Luthien robe.  I love it - it's very large, the sleeves are quite big, and when you wear it you just feel like you're completely enveloped in fabric.

The outer part of the robe is blue wool, and because I am highly allergic to wool, I used Cotton Poly Velour Baby Blue from fabric.com.  I even got it on sale during their 12 Days of Christmas sale.  I bought 8 yards because I wasn't sure how much I would need - because it's velvet, the nap has to go the correct way, and that means you always need more fabric than you would if you were able to lay the pattern down the way that it shows you in the diagram.  Plus, I wanted to make the sleeves much bigger than the sleeves in the pattern.

I used my trusty graph paper and extended the sleeves quite a bit - I just drew out diagonally from the shoulder in a straight line, and also made the sleeves a few inches longer.  This worked out great!

I had purchased just white fleece for the lining, but after cutting it all up, I decided I didn't like it after all.  It just felt cheap to me.  I have this gorgeous blanket that I got from Bed, Bath and Beyond last year.  I love the texture, it's double-sided, and I felt like it was the right color, so I headed over to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy it.  But when I got there, I found I liked something else much better.



I could only fit two pattern pieces on each blanket, so I ended up buying three of them.  Luckily, I was able to use 20% coupons for each one, but it just goes to show you that I can never stick to any kind of budget when it comes to costumes.

I cut out the front, back, sleeves, and yoke, but not the hood.  Oh, and by the way, cutting that blanket was like murdering a stuffed animal.  By the time I was done, the entire living room, dining room, and sewing room were covered in a snowy layer of blanket fuzz.  We've barely had any snow this winter, and at the time, there was more "snow" inside the house than out!  I then sewed the entire robe together, the velvet material and the blanket lining, so I had two robes.  I then sewed the right sides together around the neck and down the front, then tucked the sleeves of the lining into the sleeves of the velvet.  I then turned the fabric down about 1/2" on the edges of the sleeves like a hem and then sewed the edges of the sleeves together like that.  Somehow, though, the material didn't match, and I had more velvet than blanket, so I kind of gathered the velvet before sewing it to the lining.  The same happened at the lower edge of the robe, so I just hemmed both the velvet and the lining and sewed them separately.

I had to use my 6'1" husband as a model when cutting the hem, because I totally did it the wrong way.  There was SO much material that I was having problems measuring the hem on my dressmaker's dummy, and it wasn't any easier on my husband because it just drapes in so many folds, so I just had him turn slowly while I eyeballed it and cut it freehand.  I was totally sweating bullets, but it turned out really well.  Even if it is uneven, you could never tell unless you looked REALLY hard.

I had some fur leftover from my Belle costume so I was going to put that on the collar, but because it's white, it just looked horrible next to the blanket.  I couldn't find any dappled or beige faux fur, so I just used scraps of the blanket and cut it out of that.  It didn't quite work out the way I would have liked, but this is just a robe for me, not a costume, so I decided I didn't care enough to try to remake it.  I sewed the right side to the lining so that it would turn out (I also tacked down the bottom edge to reinforce the turn).

So, here it is.  It's not totally accurate (the beige fabric is only on the edge of the sleeve, and I think the blue lining is textured), but honestly, I'm only wearing it while I read, and I wanted maximum comfort.  It's certainly not my best work, but I don't care - it's SO warm and cozy!!!  Also, I didn't make the accompanying dress - the one I'm wearing under the robe is my Aqua Georgette from Star Wars Episode II.

See, the collar isn't quite right.  It is even, though.  I don't know how I didn't catch that when I was photographing it.

You can see how long the sleeves are here.

Behind in Blogging

Hello, followers!  I've been working on a ton of stuff lately, but I haven't gotten around to blogging about them.  Just know that I'll be getting to them in the next week or so.

That's all!  Bye!

Torchwood Costumes

So Matt is thinking about making a John Hart costume from Torchwood, and I'd like to come up with a cool Torchwood costume as well.  Gwen's costumes are all totally boring; plus, I don't like her.



So I was thinking of a few that I could possibly do:


Alice Guppy - Torchwood operative from the early 1900's.  She and Emily are the ones who originally found Jack; after torturing him, they recruited him as a freelance agent.   After John Hart buried Jack, Alice is one of the agents who discovered him. So that's kind of appropriate.  However, someone has already done a TERRIFIC Alice Guppy, and I hate doing repeats of really good costumes.  Although, honestly, I really want to do a costume that can be photographed at the Peabody Mansion, and this would be perfect ...



Then there's Diane Holmes, who appeared in Out of Time.  Owen fell in love with her, but that's not why I like her.  I absolutely love her jacket!  I think this is the costume I'm leaning towards the most, just because I think it will be the less stressful one to make!


I could make Emma-Louise's costume for the same reason - I just adore her clothes!

Or, I could do a Buffy crossover and go as Drusilla ...

More of Belle's Cape

Tonight I was working on Christmas stuff and watching Prince Caspian, and I really felt like doing my favorite thing in the whole wide world - ripping.  So, I took Belle's cape off the dummy, grabbed my seam ripper, got comfy, and ripped the sides of the capelet while Disney took massive liberties with the second Narnia film.  Not that I mind that as much as the horrible ice river collapsing scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which was just bloody awful.  I have less issues with the liberties taken in the second film because I'm not a huge fan of Prince Caspian.  I kind of don't understand the point of bringing the Pevensies back, they play such a tiny role in the book.

Also, I really love Susan's dresses.  I can't wait to remake the leather corset and assemble new maile.

I digress.

I ripped and refitted the capelet, so hopefully it now will less ginormous.  While it seems to sit pretty well just with the pins, I probably won't get around to sewing it for a few more days.

Also, I purchased 8 yards of baby blue velvet (closest color I could get within my price range, as this isn't a "real" costume) for my Eowyn robe.  It was on sale for $4.79/yard, regularly priced $7.89/yard.  I had budgeted $60 for the costume, and so far, I've only spent about $39.  I won't have to buy more fake fur, as the only fur is really around the collar.  I'm trying to decide what to do for the cream lining - fleece?  Flannel?  I'll probably wait until I have the outer layer done so I know exactly how many yards to get, since I estimated on the velvet (those sleeves are HUUUUGE).

I'm excited to be working on costumes again.  I've been getting inspired by The Ornamented Being blog.  Check it out if you've never heard of it.  You'll be saying, "I want to make that ... and that ... and that ... and that ..."

I really should be working on Christmas gifts ...

... but I have gotten the cosplay bug again since leading the Costuming Basics panel at ChicagoTARDIS, and now I want to research some Lord of the Rings costumes!  Someone please drag me away from the computer!  Since I'm a brunette, it makes more sense to make an Arwen costume, but everyone has done her costumes to death.  Plus, there aren't any of her costumes that I just absolutely love.

I'd like to do Arwen's riding outfit for the sole reason of having photos done on my friend's horse, but Kate from www.silivren.com made it perfectly and way better than I ever could.  Check out all of her other LOTR costumes here.  The detail that she includes in her work is breathtaking!

Nadine from Celtic Ruin's Costumes made a gorgeous Elrond costume.  This photo does not do it justice, but here is some detail from the back.  Nadine and Kate lead a LOTR Costuming panel at Dragon*Con each year, and I was just drooling over the detail on all the costumes that they create.  They do a fantastic job on their panel, too, so if you're at Dragon*Con, be sure to check them out.  You'll learn so much, even if you're an experienced costumer.

This year their friend Dustin was there in his Aragorn outfit, and I again was drooling over the level of detail that was put into the leatherwork.  I'm so mad that the shot wasn't in focus, but you get the idea - this costume is absolutely gorgeous.  I don't even want to know how much money it took to create the entire thing, as I know that my Queen Susan costume was hundreds of dollars, and I didn't even use real leather.

If I ever do a LOTR dress, I'd probably want to do this Eowyn dress.  I absolutely love it, and I prefer dark colors to anything too light.

However, the thought of making Eowyn's armor makes me want to jump up and down.  If I did this costume, I know that Matt would want to make Eomer's costume to compliment it.  He's wanted to make Eomer's armor from the first time we saw the film.  Again, both costumes would require extensive leatherwork.  I wonder if we can take classes in leatherwork around here?

I also love this robe, which Eowyn wears in the extended edition when she dreams about Numenor, and I would love to make it, but only to lounge around the house in!  Doesn't it just look so comfortable?

For now, these are just dream costumes.  I'll have to get more freelance jobs before I can even start to seriously think about making any of these!  In the meantime, I'll be ordering new rings to remake my Queen Susan chain maile.

I love this dress ...

I had to post this -  I absolutely love this dress!  It's in the commercial for the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

Shadow Weaver

I often run across costumes that I'd like to make, and one that I've been considering for a while is Shadow Weaver, one of the villains on She-Ra.  I think I may make this for Dragon*Con next year!