Eowyn, Shieldmaiden of Rohan

If there were awards for "The Movie (Series) That Spawned the Most Cosplayers/Costumers," I'm pretty sure that Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy would be a strong contender. Goodness knows, it was instrumental in getting me started on my own costume-making journey! I remember when we first heard that FotR was coming out, I made "elven" capes for my best friend and another friend to wear to the movie. Because I was a poor college student who had no idea what I was doing, I bought a couple yards each of two different colors of the wispiest acetate lining fabric, then sewed two half-circle capes with unfinished, fraying seams, the rippliest, most uneven hem in the world, and I was so proud. 

But these capes made it to NZ, to the actual filming location
of the Nazgul riding past the hobbits hiding under tree roots!

In the years since then, I've made myself a number of Middle Earth-related costumes: a green Eowyn dress (from sheets), a hobbit maiden (from sheets), a Galadriel dress (not from sheets), an Eye of Sauron/Barad-dur headdress (from a balloon), a Party King Thranduil costume (that Lee Pace then tweeted!), a Smaug fancy dress outfit, and a Denethor + Pippin look with my daughter, and that's not even counting all the costumes for other people or Middle Earth crafts I've done. But the unifying theme for all of these costumes was a lack of screen-accuracy. Don't get me wrong, most of them were certainly recognizable as their characters (except maybe Smaug), but my modus operandi is very suited to community theater costuming: get the idea across as cheaply as possible, and assume that the audience will be standing several feet back. Also, using recycled/thrifted/secondhand materials means that finding screen accurate fabrics is nigh impossible. 

But since this is the Year of the Ring, I wanted to make one of my dream cosplays, Eowyn's camp dress, as close to screen-accurate as possible, while still keeping to my not-new-fabrics pledge as much as I reasonably could. 

From the invaluable Costumer's Guide.

I started with the inner layer, her cream-colored "chemise." I reused the bodice of a toile I made for my pirate coat as my base, since the unbleached muslin worked color-wise. For the neckline that would show above the brown bodice, I used a cream-colored jacquard with swirls that I had leftover from a millinery class. I then treated that fashion fabric layer like a facing but flipped it to the outside instead of the inside, effectively finishing the neckline edge, then zigzagged the raw edge down since it won't be visible. Rather than sewing the tiny tuck lines, I opted to keep things simple and just sewed parallel lines in gold thread. I think it works fine visually while saving myself the annoyance of trying to actually make such tiny tucks and keep them even.

It fits better on me than Cecily.

How many shortcuts can you spot in this picture? ;)

The sleeves were essentially really long bell sleeves with a slit cut up the center to the elbow (see this diagram, except my slit went up higher and the overall triangle shape had a wider base) that I narrow hemmed by machine. I made them out of cream-colored crinkle cotton that I inherited from a friend's stash. For the braided ties, I ended up purchasing new trim from Jo-Ann Fabrics, but they only had bright white so I had to coffee-dye them. I accidentally left them in the coffee too long, so they're darker than I would like, but oh well. The cream-colored underskirt is a half-circle skirt made from, surprise surprise, a thrifted cream-colored sheet. The opening for this whole underlayer closes with hooks and thread loops down the front. 

Here you can see how dark the braid turned out, as well as how nicely lettucey the crinkle cotton hem is. 

For Eowyn's brown bodice and corselet, I used a thrifted dark brown cotton sateen sheet from my stash (basically if I'm at the thrift store getting kids' clothes and I see a solid colored cotton sateen sheet in good condition, I'll buy it for costuming purposes) as the fashion fabric. The bodice from Simplicity 4940 (now sadly OOP) was a good starting point, although I had to draft my own cap sleeves. For the bodice neckline and corselet trim, I toyed with the idea of custom embroidery, but ended up going the easier route of machine-sewing a line of decorative stitching and then hand-sewing gold braid to dark brown bias tape, which I then used to finish the edges of said garments. The cap sleeves had the same decorative machine stitch + gold braid combo and were self-lined, then the armhole was finished with bias tape. 

Dark brown bodice, made with Simplicity 4940. 

Close up of the trim. 

Inside: I lined it with more sheeting and used black bias tape to finish the armhole.
You can also see my hand stitches at the neckline securing the braid.  

The corselet was drafted according to the instructions on Koshkathecat's absolutely invaluable costuming page; I first used those instructions for my Bellatrix corselet and mentally bookmarked it for the day when I would actually make Eowyn, and now I have! I cut one layer from cotton canvas and boned it with zip ties, then cut two more layers: from the dark brown sateen, and from quilt batting remnants. I quilted these last two layers together to get the distinctive diamond pattern, then basted all of it together and finished it with the trim pieces. I was so glad to have borrowed a tabletop grommeter from AJ of Confused Kitty Sewing, which made the whole last step so much easier than hammering everything in by hand! I did have to purchase brown rattail cord for the lacing as well. 

I'm so pleased with how the quilting came out! 

Secret secrets revealed to you: I had to add a little bias tape patch at the top of the back opening so as to wedge in a tiny piece of (ziptie) boning since my original piece wasn't long enough, and I'd already sewed on all the trim. 

All the pieces together!

The (slightly lighter) brown outer skirt was again made from a thrifted sheet, in a half-circle using my TNT pattern, Simplicity 5006. Seriously, I use that skirt pattern for EVERYTHING, from Mulan to Ursula to Weaver Girl to theater costumes. Then it was just a matter of scouting an appropriate location; Coyote Hills Regional Park, with its eponymous hills and giant mounds of rocks, was absolutely perfect. My photographer, @captured.by.shirelle, did an absolutely fantastic job of capturing the whole mood and look of Eowyn, White Lady of Rohan, "fairest lady of a house of queens...standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily...as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel."

Summary 

Pattern: Simplicity 4940 for the outer bodice, Simplicity 5006 for the skirts, self-drafted for the sleeves, chemise bodice, and corselet

Fabric: Two twin-sized cotton sateen sheets for the skirts, half of another one for the outer bodice and corselet. Also 2 yards of 60" crinkle cotton for the sleeves, and half a yard of muslin for the chemise bodice, remnants of rayon jacquard for the neckline of the chemise, and remnants of cotton quilt batting for the corselet.

Notions:  Seven yards of gold braid, four yards of white braid, five yards of brown rattail, three packs of dark brown bias tape, a handful of brass grommets, a separating zipper, and several hooks.

Techniques: Uhh...self-quilted fabric using a walking foot? Does that count as a technique?

Hours: Well, I started working on this last December, then took a break to finish up Weaver Girl, so all in all I'd say it was two months of my kind of work hours, which is to say an hour here or there after kids are asleep, if I don't have other work to do for school. There was also so much hand-sewing of trim that I did in five minute snatches while kids were playing-but-not-arguing-yet, so it's really hard to say. I want to say at least 35 hours based on rough estimates of how much time similar pieces took pre-kids. 

Total cost: $65, but that includes $20 worth of gold pens for the flag, and then all the new trim I had to buy was pretty costly even with coupons. The main fabrics, though, cost less than $10. 

Final thoughts: I've always loved strong female warrior characters, from Mulan to Alanna of Trebond to Aerin Firehair, so it was pretty much a given that I was going to love Eowyn the first time I came across her. It's just a nice bonus that her costumes in the movie were brilliant. Eowyn is also extra meaningful to me because of where I was in life when I first read LOTR. Growing up, it was always drilled into me that going into STEM was the only acceptable career path, and my passion for art and making things was not something to be celebrated or pursued seriously. When I got to college, for the first time I was away from home and somewhat free to make my own choices; I switched from a biology major to an art major just as The Two Towers came out, and I was struck by her fear of being caged, her desire to make her own path, one that was different from what was expected of her, and ultimately her seizing the opportunity for glory in battle as Dernhelm. I saw her act of secret rebellion as akin my decision to choose my own major, but unlike Eowyn I did not kill a foul dwimmerlaik. Instead, I saw that a huge public research university was probably not the best place to get an art degree if I wanted to actually learn skills (and not just do weird avant-garde pieces), so I switched back to biology. I did, however, decide to be a science teacher instead of a researcher, which ultimately meant that I had the opportunity to get my theater costuming feet wet via high school drama productions. Later, once I became a more seasoned teacher and didn't have to spend every waking hour thinking about lesson prep or grading, I was able to make time for actual sewing, drafting, and costuming classes at a local community college. In a not dissimilar arc, Eowyn was able to make peace with her role and place in society and chose to be a healer. Both of us found a compromise in our lives that eventually brought peace and joy, not a feeling of being caged. All this to say, making and wearing this Eowyn costume was a dream come true, and a fitting conclusion(ish beginning to a new story). 

Oh! And the flag of Rohan! That was a ridiculous process of experimentation that I documented on my IG highlight, should you care to see all the wibbling I did about making it (and the rest of Eowyn). Tl;dr if you don't want to watch the story: I did an Elmer's glue resist in the outline of the Rohirric horse on a pillowcase, then painted it with watered down acrylic paint and used various gold paint pens to outline the horse. I used vintage bias tape to secure the flag to a spear (made from foam, duct tape, and a wooden dowel) leftover from a drama production. I hadn't even really planned to make it, but when I was planning for the photo shoot I realized that I didn't have a sword and I really need some kind of prop to hold or else I don't know what to do with my hands...I'm so glad it turned out as well as it did!

I Left With A Quilt, I Came Back With A Quilt (Or Four)

So ummm, last time I blogged, I was very pregnant and had just finished a quilt for SHB#2...two years later I have birthed the SHB#2, made a whole bunch of random things (plushies! a tiny hut on chicken legs! art! more than 250 nativity figurines!) and a few costumes. Due to said SHB#2, who is less inclined to play by herself than SHB#1, I've opted to do save my me-time for making things instead of blogging, relying on Instagram to quickly document most of my finished projects. I do miss the more detailed, longer form of blog entries though, and always meant to get back into it. Now that the new school year is starting and I have cosplays to finish before SVCC next weekend, this is the perfect time to procrastinate with a blog entry, y/y?

Since my sewing area is accessible to the kids, and I don't really need more clothes (more on that later), I haven't done much sewing until recently, when SHB#2 got old enough to (kind of) understand that she needs to leave Mommy's things alone. And even then, I was so brain-dead most of the time, I couldn't handle complicated things like fitting or figuring out new patterns, so I've defaulted to making quilts, which are not easy per se, but at least once I have the pieces laid out, it's more or less mindless sewing of straight(ish) lines.

I made this from florals that I inherited from the school drama teacher's mother-in-law's stash. All straight lines, and can you tell that I really didn't think too hard about the placement of my blocks?

I mean, look at how haphazard all the piecing on the backing is!

After the stashbusting quilt, I made a few quilts for important babies in my life:

Very simple, vaguely sportsball field-esque look. 

A dear friend's baby had a difficult start in life, spending time in the NICU and then working hard to recover for the first year of his life, but now he is a healthy, thriving boy who outweighs my own little girl, despite being almost a year younger! Maybe one day he will play sportsball for one of his parents' alma maters, you know, because the quilt I made him is so inspiring...j/k.

The back was fleece (no batting inside, since San Diego weather doesn't require a lot of warmth).
 I'm glad the school colors don't clash. 

Another dear friend had her third daughter, and I wanted that little girl to have something special of her own that wasn't a hand-me-down from her older sisters, so I made a Harry Potter and Star Wars mashup quilt so that she would have both of her parents' fandoms to wrap her in love. And then because those are also two of my big fandoms, I made an almost identical one for SHB#2. Like her big brother, Chewbacca is her first favorite SW character (SHB#1 has since moved on to Darth Vader, mostly because his lightsaber is red), so she enjoys pointing him out.

This was a challenge to design (even though it's all just rectangles) because so many SW fabrics are so dark, and HP fabrics are so bright, so to put them together in one quilt and have it look somewhat cohesive was tricky. I'm inordinately pleased with what I came up with!

This is the back of the one I kept. The one I gifted had a border of Hogwarts house crests instead of the spaceship blueprints shown here. All of these licensed character fabrics are from Joann's. 

And lastly, one of my college friends struggled with infertility for many, many years, so when she found out she was expecting, I knew I had to make something for her baby. She and her husband are huge LOTR nerds (they previously attended my LOTR birthday party and her husband won the trivia contest), so I wanted to incorporate that somehow into a quilt that also illustrated their story. While googling LOTR-themed quilts, I came across this amazing art quilt, but I knew I wouldn't be able to replicate something like that, nor would it really be baby-friendly. More googling of landscape quilts yielded this one, which seemed much more doable with its pieced strips (yay straight lines!). I decided to try to combine these two ideas to make my own take on an "Into the West" quilt; the more I thought about it the more I was set on it as the perfect representation of their journey. They had walked through the wasteland of Mordor in their quest for a biological child, and now after all that exhaustion, they were finally getting to sail into the west, into the rest and peace and hope of the Undying Lands. Not that having a newborn baby is at all as restful as I imagine Valinor to be, but you get the idea.

I had purchased a sizable lot of quilting cottons in various colors a year ago from somebody else's destash (some of the pieces were used to make up the rainbow blocks in the HP/SW quilts), and I tried to use those as much as possible in this quilt. I figure elves and hobbits would be all about being green and not purchasing new fabrics, right? The only new fabrics I had to buy were some browns for the cliffs and the backing fabric. Anyway, I started by laying out my fabrics in a semblance of the final image, then I got to all the tedious cutting and sewing of sky and water strips.

I initially wanted to have hobbit boles at the bottom, hence all the green bits. After doing some measuring, though, I realized it would end up being too long of a quilt for its width. 

Figuring out the cliffs and greenery was more fun and challenging. I wasn't sure how to attach them, so after more googling I treated them as appliques, folding the edges under and hand-stitching them down. The little boat was done the same way, but I interfaced the pieces since they were so tiny and fiddly to work with.

I chose a neutral gray, vine-y backing fabric; I wanted a fabric with some kind of busy pattern to disguise my inevitable quilting errors, and vines seemed appropriate for the elvish theme of the front. For the binding I went with a plain solid navy blue since I figured the edges would get dirty fastest and I didn't want to take away from the design. The quilting was all sort of haphazardly done; I didn't mark any of my lines beforehand and just sort of sewed with a vague plan in mind. I think it turned out pretty well, all things considered. One day I'll take a quilting class and figure out how to do things the real way instead of just winging everything...

This quilt took a month's worth of nighttimes and naptimes, but since AP exams were over it was mostly a relaxing way to wind down after a hard school year. We were even able to make it down to San Diego as an entire family to deliver it in person at their baby shower; it was gratifying getting to watch them unwrap it. This is why I'll probably only ever make quilts for people I love a lot -- I don't think most people would be willing to pay for the hours and hours it takes to make one, but this is the best way I know how to show how much I care. I may not be a baby person, but I'll be a sewing-for-your-baby person as long as it's my idea and not an outrageous request that belongs on @canyousewthisforme!

These last two pictures taken by the mom-to-be's sister. 

My Other Miscellaneous Geeky Fangirl Doings

Besides working on fashion illustrations and sewing plushies, I've also been crafting my fandoms and doing some cosplay-lite. I wanted to chronicle these, however briefly, before SHB#2 arrives, since this blog is supposed to be a record of my haphazard (and some are definitely more haphazard than others) projects.

I was late to jump onto the Hamilton bandwagon, but I console myself that once I jumped on, I jumped on hard. The soundtrack has been on repeat in my car for oh, more than half a year now, and SHB knows and enjoys a good half of the songs (his top requests: anything sung by Aaron Burr or King George; not his favorites: cabinet battles, anything having to do with Maria Reynolds). Although I'd seen it recommended by basically every blogger I enjoy and many real-life friends I love, I didn't get into it until my best friend's girlfriend got her into it. As a thank you to the two of them for finally getting me into my favorite musical ever (sorry Les Mis, you've been relegated to second favorite, although you'll always have the distinction of being my first love), I drew/painted these two pieces:

I took all of Alexander Hamilton's and Aaron Burr's best lines and turned them into a ham (A Dot Ham!) and a burr (A Dot Burr!).

Time is such a theme in Hamilton, so it seemed appropriate to make a clock. "Why do you write like you're running out of time?" 

Bonus LOTR-themed clock that I pyrographed for Elaine:

I love the new craft kits that Target is putting out! 

It's really thanks to my fashion illustration classes that I even did the first two pieces; I had all my nice pens and paints at hand already and felt empowered to use them. I also drew this little illustration based on my best friend's cat for her husband, who is a Toothless the dragon fan.

Cactus the cat looks a lot like Toothless the Night Fury, don't you think? Color pencil and pastel illustration.

It's been hard to find the time and energy to make proper costumes this year, thanks to pregnancy and a busy schedule, but I'm proud of myself for still managing a couple of less-involved outfits. Elaine and I went to see the next installment in the HP symphony series at the Silicon Valley Symphony, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I originally planned to make a Fawkes costume, but time and a baby bump got the better of me and I went for a much more low-key and goofy costume: the actual Chamber of Secrets! I'd seen all those Buzzfeed-ish "articles" about ridiculous uses of a baby bump in cosplay (Krang! the Death Star! an alien/parasite bursting out!), so it seemed to follow that my incubation chamber should hold a basilisk. I painted some painter's tape to make a quick "sticker" because I didn't want to paint directly onto a perfectly good black tee, then painted the door to the Chamber of Secrets onto a piece of craft foam and fastened it over my belly.

I put a bunch of painter's tape onto a piece of waxed paper and used acrylic to paint the basilisk, then cut out the shape. 

I considered stressing about the not-quite-symmetrical door design, then decided it wasn't worth it. Same goes for the scale pattern on the snakes. 

My crowning glory, though, was the tiny Moaning-Myrtle-in-her-toilet headband I made to direct people to the chamber:

Don't ask why I have a tiny pink plastic toilet readily available in my house. 

Elaine was a great sport and let me slap a printout of the blood-painted warning wall on her dress, so that we could go together like we did at the first symphony, where we were McGonagall and her silver cat Patronus.

I'm hoping to get my act together post-birth and make a Snape-boggart costume for the third movie/symphony...we'll see how that goes.

Shortly after the symphony was the second Silicon Valley Comic Con; I wanted to dress up as something, but with AP exams coming up I had no time to make the pregnant Princess Serenity or pregnant Zoe Washburne costumes I originally envisioned. When my sister Emily told me she was going as Imperator Furiosa, though, I knew I could pull off a quick pregnant Splendid Angharad costume. Can you even call it a costume if you're just wrapping white fabric around yourself and throwing cinnamon and coffee grounds at it to dirty it up? At any rate, it was a very comfortable costume to wear and certainly easier for toddler-chasing than my original ideas. Just FYI, if you bring a two year old to a convention and you're pregnant, it's very helpful to also have the best aunts along to help chase and wrangle.

The orange convention wristband kind of ruins the whole look though. 

Right after we took this picture, SHB squirmed out of my arms and took off across the exhibit hall to point at a Batman display. I guess I was asking for it by dressing him in his caped Batman shirt. 

I was really excited for the Wonder Woman movie coming out, but sad that there was no way I was going to make either of my two preferred costumes from the film: the wool suit, which is actually quite historically accurate for a superhero movie, and the blue dress with the sword down her back, which is just awesome. I still want to make both, but they'll have to wait. In the meantime, I'm still pretty pleased that I managed to spray-paint my own maternity Wonder Woman top and make a quick craft foam tiara. Emily went as Doctor Poison, who, although a villain, still has a tiny piece of my heart as a female chemist.

Yes, I succumbed and bought the toy sword. 

So that's what I've been up to this spring! I still have to blog SHB#2's quilts and then I'll be all caught up. Minus those Antigone costumes, of course.

This Year's Christmas Projects

I knew the holidays would be busy this year, so I started my Christmas crafting early. As is tradition, there was LOTR-related crafting, this time in the form of painted and wood-burned ornaments:

The Eye of Sauron, painted on a papier mache blank sphere from Michael's (this makes three eyes now in my living room, all ominously watching everything), and JRR Tolkien's monogram and the White Tree of Gondor. 

Things got kitschy and punny real fast when I used the free Sewaholic Stanley Tree pattern to make a chemis-tree out of leftover science-y fabric:

SHB really enjoys hitting it because all the bells jangle madly.

I also made little felt ornaments for my brother and sister:

For my sister, a paramedic in training: a Gumbulance (ambulance on one side, her crazy orange cat Gummy on the other). For my brother, a car enthusiast: a Fenxibaru (the Subaru logo on one side, and his sleeping cat Fenxi on the other). There were many hours of meticulous cutting and blanket stitching. 

And then my mother-in-law unexpectedly passed away and all plans got thrown out the window. While I had the fabric purchased for several weeks, I didn't get around to making Mr. Cation's and SHB's matching Warriors jammies until a few days after Christmas. Thankfully, elastic waist pants are just about the easiest thing to sew, so I was done with both pairs in an afternoon. I'll wager it took longer to actually get a decent picture of them together, because SHB was having a hyper morning. Oh wait, that's every morning. And afternoon. And evening. And unfortunately, sometimes night. 

"Could you stop running around for just two minutes?" 

"Maybe it's easier if we just get Walnut into position first."

"No, this is not easier, because I can't chase him down with a cat in my lap."

I place toddler in Dad's lap. He chooses that moment to imitate a fish flipping out on the line, fighting for its life.

Let's try this again. "Look, I've got a basketball! Don't you want to come get it?"
(Also, check out my not-thought-through pattern placement on SHB's butt. The two Warriors logos slightly overlapped make...a butt. Good thing he's a toddler and nobody will care.)

Toddler tries to ram his head into Daddy's armpit, cat leaves. 

"Okay, sit in Daddy's lap. Walnut, come here."

"Try to look happy, everyone! Dangit, Walnut, I can't see your face."

Toddler seizes the ball, cat decides he's done.

Thankfully, he settles down not too far away. I think this is as good as it's going to get.

Attempts at a brothers' photo work slightly better because Daddy can help wrangle both boys. 

I had plans to make more LOTR-themed gifts for SHB, but those will have to wait until I have time. Let's just hope that I get to make them before he gets too old to enjoy what I have in mind! 

In the meantime, SHB continues trying to bug his older brother into playing ball with him. Typical little brother.