Costume-making 101: Part the Second – Design, with an
interlude
Greetings fellow enthusiasts of all-things creative, welcome
to the fourth part of my musings about one of my current fabrication projects,
the Assassin’s Creed meets the Wild West Comic-Con costume.
When we left the metaphorical action last time around,
serendipity had struck and I was ready and able to make some real progress on
the historically-inspired “duster” element of the costume. Little did I know however that my new-found
pride in my little design realisation would soon lead to a pretty big fall… Dramatic music.
So, I had my general design sorted and a good base garment
that I’d be able to adapt to fit my new brief.
For fans of repetition and for convenience sake, here’s that picture
again to illustrate what I had to start with:
Looking things over, the sleeves would have to go. I’d adapted them from the original pattern,
Simplicity 4059 (incidentally, the same one I used for a friend’s Ezio-inspired
tunic, more on that later…), which called for the sleeves to be hemmed along
the back seem and open towards the front, held closed in three or four places
with buttons. I’d re-designed them
slightly, created my on pattern and attached them to the shoulders, without
realising that I hadn’t included a seam allowance. School.
Boy. Mistake. Please remember folks that when you’re taking
measurements and creating new pattern pieces, you must include an allowance for
the seams – it doesn’t matter the size, just remember to include it, otherwise
you’re going to end up with wings rather than sleeves.
Sleeves going, that’s the first decision. I could unpick the shoulder seams and finish
the open shoulders with a strip of fabric bias, but this would leave me with a
fairly uninspiring hooded waistcoat.
Something else was needed. Looking
back through my reference photos and with some input from my old friend Google,
there was a common theme when it came to the “Old West” style dusters – a
shoulder cape. I knew that somewhere in
my Big Drawer of Stuff I had a
pattern for a long cloak complete with a shorter cape section (Simplicity 2513
for those keeping score), so I dug it out and set about cutting. Some cutting, ironing and sewing later, I had
this:
I then removed the sleeves, more to come on this in a mo...
After some consideration I’d decided not to alter the size
or shape of the cape section despite it being a few sizes larger than needed –
I liked the over-sized and dramatic nature of it, plus the shape and size sat
well across the shoulders of my mannequin and provided a good silhouette. I also like the way the thing moved when you
had it on and the off-white vs. white of the over-tunic/undershirt would be
subtle but there enough to make it interesting to look at.
Now, we have to skip around in time somewhat here to
appreciate my next decision. I write
these blogs retrospectively whilst continuing to work on whichever particular
project I have on the go. I’ll cover in
more detail things such as the shirt, sash, details, etc. next time, but for
the purpose of this entry it came time to start trying things on to get an
overall sense of the finished costume.
So then, what did we have?
Trousers – a stand-in for now, they aren’t right but they
are the colour I wanted and they were on hand:
Shirt – more on this soon, but for now it was almost
complete (having lost the collar pattern piece – there’s a lesson here people…):
Over-tunic – as per the above, it was now hooded, caped and
had the sleeves removed and shoulder seams encased:
And of course, the hat.
I had this laying around since my ill-fated and last minute attempt at a
work Hallowe’en party costume, Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead. I’d then planned to use it for my own take on
Freddie Krueger, which may still happen, but for now it worked well enough for
my Old West needs:
Plus of course a sash, which again I’ll cover another time,
along with a belt I’d found on a popular auction site:
I have to admit I was quite excited about putting the whole
thing on for the first time, mainly because if it all worked together, I had a
real chance of getting the rest of my little projects ready for Comic-Con in
May. The result..?
It looked terrible, to the point where I forgot to take a
picture of it on me. The sash and the
belt sat wrong, the hooded tunic didn’t gather properly around the waist, sit across
the shoulders as I’d hoped with the hood up (or down), the shirt bunched and
caught against the tunic and the whole thing looked shapeless and
underwhelming (I'll add a photo next time, it's late...).
Bugger. In fact, the
actual word I used was a little stronger, but I’ll go with that for the sake of
not offending the children.
Hopefully you’ll see why I still include this post under the
Design section of my project – sometimes things change on the fly, other times
your hand is forced to a new direction once you get further into a project and
sometimes, things just look plain wrong in reality when compared to your
initial ideas. I’ll leave you hanging
now until next week, suffice to say I needed a plan and I needed it quickly…
This week’s closing image/sneaky peeky? Well, remember somewhere above I mentioned
the adapted Ezio-esque costume for a friend of mine?
Check out his inspirational blog detailing his battle to
overcome cancer at the age of 28 and to go on to compete in obstacle races
across the south-east of England – much more worthwhile than my fabric-based
musings:
It’s been emotional
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