Margaery Tyrell cosplay pics and a maxi skirt to dress refashion

In my last post I posted about the cosplay I made for this year's Ropecon. Here are some better pictures of said costume:

(Both photos by Kyuu Eturautti.)

Also, here's a picture of the hairdo, because I think it turned out pretty nice (considering Natalie Dormer wears a massive wig to play Margaery and I only had my own hair to work with...) :P

I did a slightly modified version of this YouTube tutorial. And by "modified" I mean "simplified". :D Meaning I didn't bother to take the bobby pins out of the twists and tie them into a small ponytail; instead I just left the bobby pins where they were and added the second ponytail on top of them and twisted it around itself once. But I rather like the way it turned out. :)

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So, I managed to finish a skirt-to-dress remake today, and about time, too. This one had been waiting for its transformation for about a month.

I started with this thrifted maxi skirt (I think it was handmade by someone, I simply loved the pattern and the colors):

Sure, it would have been good to use as-is, but I'm not a fan of maxi skirts since they are always a bit too short for me and look rather silly.

So I measured from hem up to get the desired length for the skirt part of the dress and sliced the skirt:

Then I cut the top part:

I decided to make a side cutout dress, so I chopped off small triangular pieces from both the front and the back pieces, then sewed a lining all around the pieces and turned them the right way round. Sadly I forgot to take pictures of this...

Then I sewed basting stitches around the lower part and gathered the fabric until it matched my waist.

I added a waistband of plain black fabric and attached the top pieces together and then onto the bottom part. Lastly I added a zipper, and lo and behold, maxi skirt turned into dress:

Here's how it looks on me:

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So, what do you think? :)

love,
scoundrel

Ropecon 2015 cosplay: Margaery Tyrell (Game of Thrones)

Hello everyone,
Every year my husband and I go to a Finnish convention called Ropecon (the word "rope" there refers to role playing which in Finnish is roolipelaaminen, so the convention has nothing to do with those kinds of ropes you use to tie someone up. Well, unless bondage while in a costume is your thing I guess?)

I usually dress up for Ropecon:

2010: the theme was horror (so I was a generic something horror-related :D); 2011: Chell from Portal; 2012: Renate Richter from the movie Iron Sky; 2013: steampunk; 2014: TARDIS.

This year, I decided early on that I wanted to be someone from Game of Thrones. And well, Margaery is pretty awesome, so why the hell not? ^_^

So I started out by scouting suitable fabrics for one of Margaery's dresses.

The inspiration:

The fabric I found for this project:

Note that all of the fabric is from a thrift store. All fabric, zippers and materials for the belt were thrifted, so the pattern of the fabric for the top isn't exactly how it's supposed to, but it's close enough. Altogether this cosplay cost me ~18 euros (~$20.50).

So, the lighter blue fabric with silvery streaks was actually a pair of curtains and they already had gathering with strings sewn into the top part, so I used that for my advantage to make an underskirt. I simply sewed the curtains together at the sides, added a zipper on one side, pulled the gathering strings to fit my waist, shortened and hemmed the bottom - and boom! I had the underskirt ready.

On the right you can see the gathering the fabric already had when I bought it.

Next I made the top part:

I designed the pattern on paper and then measured and cut the fabric twice, sewed them together right side to right side and turned the whole thing inside out... and if that piece up there looks a bit weird, it folds like this:

Looks more like a top when folded, doesn't it?

Then I had to make the shoulder parts and the piece connecting them at the back:

Top piece all ready.

I used the slightly darker blue fabric (that was on the top left corner of the fabric stack picture) for the shoulders and back, and the remainder of this fabric would be the actual skirt to be attached to the top. I would have used only this for the skirt part, but it was (also) a curtain and additionally a slightly see-through one. So hence the underskirt I made in the beginning was necessary. I simply sewed big darts (about 30 cm long and 20 cm wide) all over one side of the curtain until the fabric fit my waist comfortably. Then I attached this to the top part:

At first I thought I'd be all historically accurate and use hooks and buttons and whatnot, but then I got lazy and this hidden zipper happened:

Then I added hidden snap buttons and other sneaky stuff to keep the fabric in place and prevent the zipper from being visible.

Lastly I used a thrift-store found thick wire and a clay flower to make the belt. I covered it all in gold spray paint:

The belt is held in place with three pieces of string I sewed onto the waist of the dress:

Here's the finished dress hanging off of a coat hanger:

And since it's May and in Finland that means still very much freezing, I also made this scarf/wrap so I won't freeze to death:

All wrapped up and ready to go:

I will post better pictures when after I've actually gone out wearing all this :D ...but well, what do you think? :)

love,
scoundrel

Game of Thrones: House Targaryen sigil dress

Hey
So here's another refashion of an existing dress. Like with the Totoro dress, I made a silhouette, but this time I had to make slight modifications to the dress first.

I bought this red dress off of Goodwill for 6€. It was expensive (yeah, 6€ is expensive to me!) because apparently it's by some Finnish designer I'd never heard of. Anyways. I think the dress was originally meant to be maxi length or at least ankle-length. What with me being a giant, it fell at that awkward length that's not quite midi and not quite maxi either. You know, the length that looks awful on anyone and everyone.

Awful length, but otherwise a nice dress.
(My camera doesn't seem to get the shade of red correct, it's a really nice red!)

So I marked the hem at my knee and cut off the excess fabric...

...and snipped off the sleeves a bit as well:

Then I hemmed the sleeves and the now-shorter dress hem and set out to create my stencil. I placed a piece of self-adhesive book cover on the dress and roughly measured the size of my stencil.

I found a Targaryen sigil stencil over at Free Stencil Gallery and simply flipped it over, because the neck of the dress is asymmetrical and I wanted the picture on the right shoulder, as opposed to the left.

I drew the stencil and cut it out.

I then proceeded to attach and paint over the stencil, and voilà!

My new Targaryen sigil dress is pretty damn awesome!

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So, what do you think? :)

love,
scoundrel

The North Remembers - House Stark Sigil Dress (Game of Thrones)

Heya,
So, my husband's grandmother heard that I like sewing, so she gave me scrap pieces of fabric she had lying around. Or more like I got permission to rummage through her fabric cupboard and take whatever I wanted. She also told me that she has more fabric stashed away in the attic and I am welcome to rummage through that stash as well - suddenly visiting relatives doesn't seem so bad, now does it? :D

Anyways - New Year's Eve is here! So naturally I had to make something to wear (as if my closet wasn't already full of clothes...) My Lord of the Rings dress got such a positive response that I thought I could reach into the depths of my favorite fandoms once more and get some inspiration. And inspiration I got, oh yes. And I had just the fabric for this purpose, too. Something cold and blue, like the North...

It's one of the pieces that I snatched from my grandma-in-law's cupboard:

It's a nice blue/turquoise print fabric, and the only bad thing about it was that the piece was so small that I had to get creative, hence the other fabric lying on top of the print fabric. See, no matter how I measured and twisted the fabric, I couldn't get a long-enough half-circle skirt out of it and still have enough fabric for the top. So I cut a too short half-circle skirt and added a strip of fabric on the bottom to get enough length.

First, I found the sigil I wanted to use. I used this stencil from Free Stencil Gallery:

I put on a shirt with a high neckline to see the placement and measure the size of the sigil on the dress:

I cut out the half-circle skirt and the top pieces (plus linings for the top):

Then I attempted to make a cutout of the sigil on the front by drawing the sigil on the wrong side of the fabric, then placing the lining and the print fabric right sides together and sewing over the drawn line. I then cut out the middle part and pulled the lining through the hole, so the right side of the print was visible... then I tried to push and pull the sharp corners of the cutout in place. I tugged and shoved and cried and cursed - to no avail. The sigil as a cutout was a failure since the cutout image was too detailed and hence impossible to recreate on fabric in the way I attempted.

Above is the sigil sewn through the fabric and the lining, before I cut out the middle and tried to assemble the cutout image.

So I nearly gave up. I tossed the (now torn) top front in the trash, then dug it out of the trashcan a minute later because I realized I didn't have enough fabric for another top front. So I cut slivers of the print fabric and sewed them together to create another top front.

Then I set out to try another way of creating a cutout of the Stark sigil.

I lined the top pieces as I normally do (right sides together, leaving a gap at the bottom and pulling the whole thing inside out to reveal the right side) and then pinned the (slightly crumpled) sigil paper on the fabric:

As you can see it's on the right side of the fabric, and the lining is on the back. Then I simply sewed around the paper, through both the lining and the print fabric. It took ages, but finally I was able to remove the paper and reveal the sewed line on the fabric.

Then I cut the fabric in the middle out as close to the thread as I could, added fabric glue to prevent the edges from fraying and painted over with black fabric to cover up the edges of the fabric. If you have Fray Check or something else like that, it's probably better for this purpose than textile glue. I only had the glue and at the time it was so late I couldn't go buy anything else :D

So then I sewed the shoulder and side seams together to complete the top, top-stitched the armholes and the neckline, added a strip of gray fabric at the bottom to avoid flashing everyone, attached the top and bottom parts, hemmed the skirt and added a zipper. The usual stuff.

...And it was done. After seven or so hours of labor, it was finally done. (And I realized I had forgotten to eat, so I made dinner around 10 PM. Go me.)

This morning I realized I needed pockets, so I added them:

I cut out crest-shaped pieces, two of the print fabric and two of the lining. I sewed the pieces together, right side to right side, leaving a small gap. I then turned the pockets inside out, ironed them and top-stitched over the sides, closing the small gap. Then I simply attached them to the skirt of my dress and now I can have my cell phone in my pocket tonight in case I want to take pictures of the NYE festivities.

Rocking the new look:

I'm really loving how this dress turned out, even though it was a struggle at first with the cutout direwolf. Now I just wish I had an actual direwolf to go with this outfit ;)

So, what do you think of my Stark sigil dress? :)

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Have a geek-tastic New Year's Eve, and remember to dress warmly because Winter is coming.

love,
scoundrel