“Historically Accurate” Merida: Progress

drawingI love Disney princesses, like… woah. I’ve always wanted to be one, and I finally did it for AWA! But of course I had to complicate things and made an original, not accurate, version for my first one. :P

There’s a lot to say about this costume. It started out with me loving Merida, and loving crazy red hair and freckles, but not wanting to do a costume that’s so incredibly overdone right now. Her everyday dress is okay, but its actually kind of boring (blasphemy! I know). One day I was at the ren fest, and I saw this gorgeous red rabbit pelt at the fur stall, and I thought, wow, this is so Merida! I knew then that I had to do some kind of alternate version of her. The other princesses had “historically accurate” fanart, why not Merida, too?

I started out trying to research the time period of the movie. No luck, and apparently other people had the same problem. The architecture and dresses and materials and just everything in the movie is a mish mash of time periods, so I had to make something up. I also had a difficult time pin pointing specific Scottish fashion. Seems that they wore the same clothes as their European neighbors and nothing super specifically Scottish. (My sources are Google and Wikipedia mind you, I’m not part of the SCA or anything like that to get super secret historical accuracy information, maybe one day). So I left it alone for awhile.

lucrezia_borgiaThen I saw the show “Borgia: Faith and Fear”, and I beheld Lucrezia Borgia. She has curly red hair and immediately reminded me of a proper Merida. And her dresses are very similar if you look past the fine fabric and poofy sleeves. Just looking at this picture, I thought, this is it! This is my version of Merida! And that time period is 15th/16th century, the clothing Italian. And since the Scottish at this time wore whatever generic European fashions were around, this could have been something Merida would have worn, assuming Brave takes place somewhere in the 1400-1500s.

danielle_everafterStill not convinced? Look at this picture of Danielle from Ever After. Yeah, that is almost the same exact dress Merida wears, and its from the same time period.
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Chibi Chibi Schoolgirl: Progress

chibi-chibi-schoolgirlI made a super duper last minute decision to attend J-Con, a new small convention hosted at KSU. It was the weekend after AWA and I was feeling super post con blues, and also really wanted to get back to sewing! I knew I wanted to do Chibi Chibi’s casual schoolgirl outfit at some point, and this was a perfect opportunity since it was such an easy project.

There’s not much to it since its so simple. I did take a few progress pics, but honestly its not far off from my Sailor V costume, just much simpler. I didn’t bother finding a pattern or making a mock for it since I just wanted to crank it out ASAP. I cut out a square of fabric out of convenient leftover kona cotton and somehow crafted a basic shirt shape out of it. I used the same poofy sleeve pattern I use for everything. The collar is white cotton sateen I already had because I ran out of kona. I accidentally made the shirt too short (lol boobs) so the extra wide bias tape lining the bottom was an attempt to lengthen it an inch.

The skirt is exactly the same as my Sailor V skirt, but with larger pleats and a center pleat in the front. The bottom edge is clean with no hemming because I used the natural fold of the fabric, basically doubling the fabric. Doubled kona cotton pleats well! Plus I added the bow in the back.

The red bow is the same one from Chibi Chibi’s fuku. The heart broach is the one that I meant to use for her fuku version but got knocked under the couch by my cats and couldn’t find for Dragon Con. I reused her wig, but couldn’t take off the odango shields… because glue! :P Sorry for so few progress pics, I was working too fast to remember to take more!

Sheogorath from Oblivion: Progress Part 2

Finishing the embroidery on this was such an amazing and relieving feeling. *_* Now I could finally start putting it together and seeing progress! I carefully sewed the embroidered pieces together, making sure to check how the seams were done in the source. Some had satin stitching along the seam to hide it (shoulders, sleeves, etc) and the sides actually had gold satin covering them. I added thicker interfacing for the collar pieces.

I chose baroque gold Casa satin as my gold secondary fabric. I really REALLY hate satin, but in the end I felt this was the right choice. Story time! Back in high school when I discovered how to manipulate HTML and CSS, I used to make terrible websites. I would go to background swatch sites and use those everywhere. I remember that the satin swatches had the same odd ripple to them as Sheogorath’s gold parts. So yeah, that’s how I made the connection. :P Turns out satin was a bad idea because it already started snagging during Dragon Con. Oh well. x_x
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Sheogorath from Oblivion: Progress Part 1

SheogorathI have been wanting to make Sheogorath’s regalia ever since I first played the Shivering Isles expansion for Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV). It is obviously very complicated and a huge undertaking, so I could never really give myself an excuse to do it. However last year when trying to figure out what my big costume would be for Dragon Con and the Friday Night Costume Contest, I remembered this awesome outfit.

I wasn’t sure at first since he is an old dude, and I’m not old, or a dude. But then I envisioned myself wearing a long flowing silver wig and fancy makeup, and I finally decided to do it! This costume is technically “genderbent.” However it is also kind of canon to the Elder Scrolls lore. I’m not super into genderbending characters (I really enjoy when other people do it, but I feel kinda odd doing it myself), so it was important for me to tie it in with the lore. Every now and then in the games it is mentioned that the daedric princes choose which gender form to take on, and sometimes switch between them [source]. I thought who better to try being a lady than Sheogorath? If you know him it TOTALLY fits his character xD. I did want to create the outfit accurately so the only thing I really changed was my face and hair, the rest of the outfit is exactly the same as his.
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The Comstocks from Bioshock Infinite: Progress

comstocksWhen I played Bioshock Infinite I thought I was totally going to cosplay Elizabeth. I took lots of ref shots as I played, but I was also fascinated with Lady Comstock’s outfit as well. Her’s is similar to Elizabeth’s, but in a more classy Victorian lady kind of way. Eventually my boyfriend, Andrew, said something like “Hey I should cosplay Comstock because I have a beard.” And it began, I was determined that we would be the Comstocks!

These costumes are pretty straightforward. I rushed most of the pieces and didn’t remember to take as many progress pics as I usually do, sorry! Funnily enough, I actually busted my butt to make a grey suit for Comstock, and I ended up hating it. The fabric was polyester, worst decision ever! I couldn’t press it without it melting, ugh. So I re-made the whole thing out of a bottomweight black cotton fabric, and I think it looks soooo much better. I did this the week before my shoot so I had even less time to take progress pics.
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