Fabric Shopping Haul London and a trip to the V&A

I had an amazing day in London today taking the tube first to the V&A and then (a few hours later) to Goldhawk road for fabric shopping.

Starting with The Victoria and Albert Museum, it is much much larger than I expected! But I was probably a little too hyped for the historical costumes. A disappointing amount. So in the V&A there is an are called Fashion where they show the progression of fashion from the 17th century to present. It was honestly a small display and I was quite annoyed there was nothing from earlier periods in time on display. Luckily there was a display on the 4th(?) floor on theater and performance which had twice as many costume even if they weren’t historical they were amazing to look at.
Europe Display Photos

This display was really interesting with all of the costume on display being originals except the dress which was a miniature replica. The photo of the room was called a ‘Room of Mirrors’ it looked cute so I snapped a photo of that too.

Fashion Display Photos

I don’t think that last photo was from the fashion display but Oh Well. I think this display has so much potential if they just got rid of half the most recent clothes on display and just filled the museum cases with historical garments. But no lets focus on plain boring clothing. I’m hoping when I visit the Globe theater in a week or so there will be more historical garments on display there. And no I was not able to find the original dress that I’m working on replicating in any displays. It likely got moved to a different site since the first publication of Patterns of Fashion 3.

Theater And Performance Costume Display Photos

That silver dress is just gorgeous and my photos haven’t done the finer details justice. This costume is for an opera called Iolanthe and the character the would have worn it is the Queen of the Fairies. That was the last display I looked at before I decided it was best to go and get my fabric before any stores closed.

Fabric shopping on Goldhawk Road FABRIC HAUL

You only need to go to one store

Goldbrick Fabrics

 

This shop is amazing!!! I didn’t need to go anywhere else! This shop is like descending into heaven if my local fabric store (Spotlight) were hell. The walls are stacked with fabric of all colors, textures and prints. I spent a good 10 minutes just wondering around looking at everything before I started looking at my list. You could say I very quickly made friends with one of the staff members (who is a fellow cosplayer). She was so helpful with deciding what fabrics would work best for my Elizabethan dress. Showing me the most perfect burnt red brocade fabric for the cloak with hanging sleeves matched with a slightly lighter red fabric (I can’t for the life of me remember what it is but it is historically accurate)

The dress fabric is darker I took these as soon as I got home so the lighting wasn’t that great. 6m of the dress fabric and 4m of the brocade fabric used for the cloak and hanging sleeves.
UPDATED Natural lighting

Next on the list was the dress fabric for Sansa Stark. The staff member who was helping me squealed when I showed her the photo immediately showing her co-worker who was also just as happy! We weren’t able to find any lilac fabric with a gold pattern on it so we settled on just the lilac fabric. I think it was a silk blend… possibly.

Again, poor lighting equals shoddy looking fabric. The fabric is a little shiny and a rich lilac in natural lighting. I bought 5m 50cm of this fabric all in one bolt of course.
UPDATED Natural lighting

I also got fabric for the caped cowl to go with my Demongaze Death Knight armour from WOW. Finding fabric for this at first was difficult as we were just wondering the store looking for the right coloured fabric which was a dirty purple color from photo reference. We then found a heavy weight lining fabric in a dark purple that would drape perfectly.

I think this is the only photo of my fabrics that the lighting hasn’t effected. It looks amazing and it think it is perfect for the cape and cowl on the Demongaze Death Knight armour. I got 3m of this fabric and it was given to me! I am so thankful for the people at this store they are so lovely and kind!
UPDATED Natural lighting

And finally I got some black faux leather for my Queen of Midnight cosplay. And its the thin stuff! Not the thick rubbery faux leather you get in NZ. The inside is soft and I don’t think I will need to make a lining for the corset I am making from, unless there are a lot of seams in which case I will. I bought 1m of it and am really hoping that will be all I need..

Best photos despite the awful lighting I think. Its really nice and lightweight too which means I shouldn’t get too hot wearing it at conventions and for its photo shoot.
UPDATED Natural lighting

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And that concludes my fabric haul, I can not wait to get back to NZ and start on these costumes! I will be ordering my black worbla in the next week or so and hopefully it will have arrived by the time I get home.
I will be buying all my lining material as well as corset material when I arrive back in NZ. And hopefully get some trims for my Elizabethan dress.

Thank you for reading
-Nivera

 

 

 

 

 

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Historical Costume making books, my collection

I don’t have any books just for sewing however I do have a large-ish collection of books for making historical costumes. I thought I would share them because I know that when I first started trying to finds books on historical costume and books on making them it was extremely difficult.
Starting off with my favorite book which is apart of a series (of four) written by Janet Arnold. I have the whole series which I was given for my birthday and for placing 1st in drama for my year level (shameless self boasting I know) My favorite is ‘Patterns of Fashion, the Cut and Construction of Clothes for men and women c1560-1620’, I have referenced this book in earlier posts about the Young girls evening dress I am making which appears in this book. I adore the clothing of this era and with the skill and time I plan to make more dresses from this book.
The other book from the series are,
‘Patterns for fashion 1 Englishwomen’s Dresses and their construction
c1660-1860′

‘Patterns of fashion 2 Englishwomen’s Dresses and their construction c1860-1940’
Patterns of fashion 4 The cut and construction of linen shirts, smocks, neck wear, head wear and accessories for men and women c1540-1660

I do adore the other books but they really are self explanatory based on their titles. All fantastic reads.
However, I wouldn’t recommend these for a novice sewer or someone who hasn’t drafted/scaled up or draped a pattern before. These books do come with patterns but either have to be scaled up or draped drafted making it a difficult task for someone relatively new to sewing. I have decided to drape and draft my patterns from theses books as at the moment I don’t have the materials or patience to scale the patterns up and then adapt them to my size. But again I will see how my  mock ups go making sure to TEST EVERYTHING.

‘Historic Costumes and how to make them by Mary Fernald, E. Shenton, Eileen Shenton’

 This book was first published in 1937 but was re-printed in 2003. And no my copy is not an original. I revived this book for Christmas this year and was pleased to find that it is full of pictures and diagrams of the costumes it offers patterns for. Again this book requires you to scale up patterns or drape and draft them (or any other method really). All patterns are labeled with each ‘raw edge’ of the patterns being labeled with a letter which then corresponds with the instructions on the previous pages. Which is a fantastic system which the ‘Patterns of Fashion’ series lacks which requires you to actually look at the patterns and figure out what goes where with the somewhat brief descriptions. The only negative thing I have to say about this is that I really wish the pages were bigger. I don’t have a problem with reading anything in the book but I just feel like it was a stupid size to be made into. If I had the book open on my work table and just needed to glance at a pattern to see how it needed to be pinned I wouldn’t be able to without squinting. And that’s all.

‘Seventeenth-Century Women’s Dress Patterns: Book 1&2 (Dress pattern 2)’

I received these books for my birthday and decided to write about them together because I haven’t really looked into them that much. The books are divided into two parts: theoretical and practical then later going into patterns as well as drawings similar to Janet Arnold’s books.
These books also take a lot of note of the embroidery on garments often offering the original embroidered pattern on the pages in amazing detail which I found very interesting. The patterns are very clear and these books are well worth looking into.

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And there you have it, my historical costume book collection. I do also have access to the books at my college library which are also helpful for inspiration and I found a particularly good one which clearly goes through the movement of historical men and women’s costume.
Apologies for the lack of ‘real’ updates on my costumes as all my recent posts have just been what I’ve been up to (along with that embarrassing story)  so I’m happy to announce that I will be going to London this Tuesday for fabric shopping ! Goldhawk Road here I come! I will also be going to the Victoria and Albert Museum before shopping because I recently figured out (according to Patterns of Fashion 3) That the dress I want to make, the young girl’s evening dress is on display there! I am a little doubtful as the book as published a few years ago but I will go there with hope and I’m sure I will leave feeling extremely inspired regardless if the dress is on display or not.
Tuesday night I will start work on my fabric haul post from the days shopping and if its not up that night I plan to have it posted Wednesday.

And that’s it for this blog post, I hope you have enjoyed reading.
-Nivera

 

Fabric shopping in London: The list

I did attempt to go shopping earlier in the week for the fabrics I need for my upcoming costumes. I wanted to go to Goldhawk Road first but my mother insisted that we go to this in her words ‘really great’ fabric market… that was dodgy as hell. I can’t really remember where it was but basically the town we were in had one of its main roads closed off for this market (it was not just a fabric market) and it stretched off down the road. So we walked down the road looking at all of the stalls selling rip off items, poor replicas and and some items that didn’t look all that legal only to find disappointment. Apart from the fabric being really poor quality, none of the sellers had anyway of measuring or cutting the fabric.  So I decided rather than being ripped off I would promptly leave.

The plan now is to go to Goldhawk road after Christmas possibly the same day I go up to Wimbledon College of arts and if there is enough time to go up to the Victoria and Albert Museum we’ll do that too. If not I will just go another day.

So what am I buying for and what is my list?

Costumes I am buying for

Demongaze Death Knight Armour
(yes I finally worked how to get the hood onto the 3D model)

Sansa Stark

Young girls loose gown (Elizabethan)

The fabric list

Demongaze armour

• Bodysuit fabric, dark purple scaled pattern would be ideal in a stretch fabric. For this I will be using Yaya Han’s body suit pattern (previously used in my Dark Brother hood cosplay)
• Cowl and cape will be made from a midnight blue medium-heavy weight cotton fabric.
• Cowl accent could possibly be faux leather or craft foam. I will probably make this decision based on what I can find in the fabric stores.

Sansa Stark

• Iris purple fabric with an ornate pattern
• Iris purple lining fabric
• Buttons similar to the ones pictured
• I will be using the Simplicity pattern 1487 for this dress

 

Young Girls loose gown (Elizabethan)

• I think the colors of garnet red and mahogany red would look really nice together. I want one of those fabrics to have an ornate pattern. The effect I want is for either the dress to have the ornate patterned red and the cape to just be a simple red with out a pattern or vise versa.
• I also want to get trims for this costume to go on the dress and the pecks of the shoulders ect.

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I think that is everything but I’m sure I will add to it if I have forgotten anything.
And that’s what I will be buying in London, I really look forward to making these costume next year and sharing them on this blog.

Thank you for reading
-Nivera

Pepakura Tutorial

So this is a tutorial I posted to my Cosplay Amino page and decided It would be cool to have a copy here. I have changed a few things but 90% of this is just copy and pasted into the blog format here.
This tutorial covers the ‘How To’s’ up until the point where you construct the pattern pieces. Essentially this post is/was an introduction into Pepakura for those who hadn’t used it before, giving general tips and advice on how to start and what Pepakura actually is.
Hope you enjoy and I’m happy to answer questions to the best on my knowledge.

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Pepakura is a paper craft program which allows the user to download ‘pep patterns’ or if you’re using the designer version you can make your own patterns. But before I get a bunch of sighs and moans from people who aren’t interested in ‘yet another cosplay technique’ I’ll show you what you can make!!

The Dawnbreaker (Skyrim)

Featured in my most recent photo shoot (November 2015) 

Dragon Priest Mask (Skyrim)

Those are the two files I have made so far and the Dawnbreaker looks pretty complex but it’s really simple! The program makes it so easy!

A lot of Halo cosplayers use Pepakura and their main site is 405th.com which doesn’t stop t just Halo armour it has a lot of other contributors from other series.
Personally I find all of my files on Deviantart from a user called ZombieGrimm who has a great selection of Skyrim files from full armour sets (yes ladies in the female variants too) to weapons and even a scale model of a dragon skull!!!
But how does Pepeakura work Nivera I can hear you asking..

First you will have to download either Pepakura Viewer or designer. It’s good to have both but I will go into that later.

Say you want to make Auriel’s Bow from the DawnGuard DLC from Skyrim, I’m currently working on this anyway so it’s convenient right!

 

You get this image on Deviantart I’m not so sure about the 405th. Hit the download button and you’re away!
I personally create a folder for all my pep files on my main desktop for convince. So save your files there. Once saved open Pepakura designer or viewer then open your folder containing your pep files and drag and drop the file you want into the Pepeakura program of your choice. (One file at a time, if you try do two at once it will replace the original)

Once you have done that the previous image will show in which ever Pepakura program you used to open the file. (of course it will be showing the file of your choice)
Most weapons are ALWAYS scaled to size, which means the maker of the file scaled it up to human size by going off in game models. BUT don’t rely on me telling you that, always cheek to see if the person you got your file from does this. ZombieGrimm can be trusted with your life on this one.

BEFORE YOU PRINT!!

Pepakura is an American based program which means all paper is in lettering paper size. So if your printer doesn’t do that or you don’t live in America then change the paper size.

Above is the safest print settings. The lines are kinda think but that’s a good thing for beginners so use that if you’re unsure before printing! Personally I find the line-weight set at size 8 to be the best, 0 is invisible and 10 is very think. I wouldn’t go much smaller than 5.

However, when changing the page size to A4 the program sometimes will scatter the pattern pieces (seen on the right) which means manually clicking and dragging them onto the page without going over the margin. So check that before you print!

Once all your patterns are in the page and you’re happy hit print! The best paper to use when printing I find is 160GSM. It’s heavy,tough and durable which is good for props and armour. Dawnbreaker was made from normal printing paper which is something I do NOT recommend. It took ages to reinforce and make sturdy enough for the con + photo shoots.

Tada!! You have your pages! The best way to cut out the patterns is with a craft knife that way you’re more likely to stay to the lines and not cut things you shouldn’t. Scissors do also work but I always find myself cutting over the lines and it seams to be more time consuming.

Pepakura uses a system of line dotting called Mountain Folds and Valley folds this is to indicate how to fold the lines. Personally I have never followed this process (I’ve just folded everything both ways) and all my projects have turned out fine. But if you are interested here is a link Pepakura Folds.

Cutting out your patterns

My secret is to use a clear file to keep my patterns in when cut out. Some people use boxes but they are uneducated!!!
You’re pages should have a page number down the bottom, cut that and put in in a clear file slip, then cut all the patterns from that page and put them into the same slip. And repeat until all your patterns are cut and put away.

Crafting your patterns

Most patterns will have numbers along the edge and all you do is find the pattern with that number and tab and glue them together. Sounds easy until you look down and see you have over 100 patterns and over 1000 tabs to glue together!
So that’s where the two different programs come and help. If you have Pepakura viewer you can hover over the pattern you want to join to another and a red line will appear connecting that pattern with another showing you where they connect.

Genius right! Now you can see why I keep the pages together, it makes everything a lot easier when matching!

Pepakura design doesn’t do this. So that’s why you need viewer.

And then you piece together the patterns and boom! You have a weapon/armour or something!

Differences between Pepakura Viwer and Designer.

Viewer can~

•open files

•print files

•give guided lines to connect patterns

•let you move pattern pieces

And that’s it

Designer can~

•Let you scale everything to your size and change the size of patterns

•more printing options (I ALWAYS print on designer)

•make your own Pepeakura models

•open files

•print files

•move pattern pieces

You can see why it’s useful to have both. Neither cost any money to download and on get updated every month or so but its not necessary.

And that’s my Pepakura tutorial!

Link to the original blog post on Cosplay Amino is here.

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That link is to my Cosplay Amino page if you couldn’t already tell by the similar (EXACT SAME) usernames. The point I’m trying to make is that I am the author of both the blog post on Cosplay Amino and the blog post here featured on (you guessed it) my blog. Because I am the author I have the authority to post it where ever I want, you however don’t. Feel free to share this post but do not re-post (copy and paste) it somewhere else without my permission and credit.

Thank you for reading I hope you have learned something
-Nivera

Final Dragon Scale Armour Photos

Costume Status: COMPLETE
Below are links to each individual post in order. 
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Final Work In Progress Photos, Cosplay Competition Overview, Final Photos (2015 Photo shoot)

Its been almost a month since I lasted posted here and I can honestly blame that on my laptop which deiced Google Chrome was suddenly inferior and just crashed every time I opened it…

But I’m back!! and will have a post each day up until Christmas.

Here are the final photos of my Dragon Scale Armour as it has been retried and put into storage now.
All designs are based off those from The Elder Scrolls Skyrim.

These are my favorite images from the photo shoot and my favorite photos over all. All other photos can be found in earlier posts (hopefully).

Onto the next project!