Sarah's Costuming Blog

4 Costumes for Dragon*Con

This is the first costume I decided to make for Dragon*Con. The Childlike Empress from The Neverending Story. In my sheer stubbornness, I wanted to make a costume that almost no one ever makes. Unfortunately, that leaves me to figure things out alone and I've only recently started sewing...I will learn one of these days...really! The dress itself was really simple to make, I used Simplicity 7964 view C, and modified the pattern to have a scoopneck instead of a v-neck. White fabric found relatively inexpensively since I was working at Jo-Anns at the time of the purchase. Now if you take a look closely, you see there are pearls all over the bodice...yep handsewn pearls. This is the kicker. I'm actually giving up on a pattern and starting toput them on there randomly because it's going to save me time and energy and I don't have that much longer left to finish it and the rest of the costumes (Dragon*Con is Sept 2-5 2005). The drape will be a little harder to figure out because I can't figure out if she actually has SLEEVES or if its just a full drape. There aren't any really good reference photos. I found a trim for the neck that will work. Too expensive, but I didn't have to get that much of it. My friend Tara has a sodering iron so I'm going to see if I can find wire thin enough to string the beads on for the head piece and improvise the brooch type thing on the forehead and attach the pearls to it. Bobby Pins will hopefully help keep the head piece on. The hair is not difficult, it's a half pony tail and then at the bottom, a full pony tail.

This is a dress from Lord of the Rings that was never actually seen in the movie. I saw it on Maggie's Costuming Site http://www.costumersguide.com and fell in love with it. Fabric seems to be either a sheerish blue or a blue/purple cross dyed fabric. There's some gold embroidery at the neckline and on the upper sleeves along with a belt made of multiple gold strands connected in the middle with a type of knot or something. There is a pink lining for the sleeves and bottom of the dress. My theory (as wrong as it may be) is that the overfabric is translucent and that the color changing effect is mostly from the pink lining. Again, could be completely wrong. I bought some Shantung from Jo-Anns that's a cross dye light blue and purple that will work. Not the best, but it'll do. I also bought a pink lining from Jo-Anns as well as a Simplicity pattern which I'm going to have to find again. The problem with the pattern is that it's a front seam pattern, while the dress isn't. It has the upper and lower sleeve thing though so it makes it easier for me. Unfortunately while working on the muslin, I found the upper sleeves don't fit me and the pattern isn't generally true to size so I'm going to have to make it bigger. I don't know how to make a lining either, so that's going to be interesting...seam ripper will be my new best friend. I'm not good enough at modifying patterns to make the sleeves on my own otherwise I'd use the same pattern I did for the Childlike Empress except use the V neck this time. Not sure if I can take the sleeves from one pattern and use it on another...maybe I'll do another muslin and try. For the belt, I'm skimping on details again. I just bought a really fat gold cord trim and that's just going to have to do for now.


I spoke recently with my best friend, Misty and have gotten her to go to Dragon*Con with me. This will be interesting because she's a mormon and there's a lot of alcohol and debauchery there...although not essential to participate in. So after talking to her and to another friend of mine who has gone before (since I haven't) named Wendy, we decided it would be more fun for Misty to be in costume even though she's not as huge of a fan as I am. So I had her look at the Padawan's Guide (another site from Maggie) http://www.padawansguide.com and she picked out this costume. This was Padme's family gown from Episode II which was cut from the final movie, but shows up in the deleted scenes on the DVD. Maggie's site is a godsend people! With all the reference pictures and other people writing in their comments and how they made their costumes, I can actually make this for Misty. Thanks to Jennifer (Ferd) for the whole write up and pictures of the pattern modification! I bought fabric for this on ebay and bought dye as well. I also found labradorite strands on a link from the Padawans Guide to make the trim. This is one of those costumes that if I could pull it off, I'd want to wear it as well, but alas, I'm too fat. Still waiting for the fabric to arrive in the mail.




Eowyn's White Wool gown from The Two Towers...Misty liked it a lot, so I'm going to make this for her too. She said it didn't have to be exact so it's not going to be wool (she would fry, she lives in Arizona!) and no sleeve lining. I bought the trim for the neck and arms and am using crepe backed satin for the dress, except I'm using the crepe side because the white velvet is too sheer. For the belt, I found a ribbon that doesn't quite look right or wide enough, but it'll do and I'm using puffy paint for the embroidery at the neck (I'm doing the same thing for the embroidery on the Arch dress) Eh people will get the general idea. Same problem with arch gown...side seams, but the pattern I found has front seams and a zipper...don't know how to do those yet either so again, my seam ripper and I will get to know each other very well. I've cut out the pattern, have all the fabric, just need to get started on it.

posted by Sarah @ 4:31 PM