A Project and Shopping

One of my costuming projects for the coming convention season is Queen Sai (alt. Saiou) from the Twelve Kingdoms anime. She's a rather obscure character, appearing in only two episodes, but I like that - I'm not likely to see five other cosplayers as the same character. The anime is based in both plot and aesthetics on Chinese mythology, and her outfit is a much-simplified version of traditional Chinese robes.

I'm making her robes from silk habotai for several reasons:

• Light weight to fight the summer heat.
• Easy to dye and work with.
• It's silk! Love it, and it's reasonably historically accurate.
  

For those interested, I bought my silk (and dying supplies) from Dharma Trading Co., one of my favorite sources for costuming needs. I'll be decorating a silk paddle fan with silk painting, but I'm going to hand embroider the simple floral design on Saiou's outer coat/robe. I'm a casual embroiderer: it's a craft I've practiced off and on since high school, but it's never been a great passion. But I plan on this costume being a competition piece, so I've been gathering reference materials (such as Painting with a Needle: Learning the Art of Silk Embroidery by Young Yang Chung) and seeking out better quality materials than I normally use.

I plan to do the embroidery in silk threads and was pleasantly surprised to discover a needleworking shop near me that carries a fabulous selection of such supplies, Fireside Stitchery. I spent a fun hour this past Saturday testing all sort of color combinations and comparing different types of silk thread. Who knew there were so many? I finally settled on Soie d'alger in a range of pinks and greens since I'm going for a more naturalistic look than shown in the flat anime art, bringing home a precious little stash of skeins.

I have to draft a pattern, make a muslin (test garment), and dye the fabric before starting the embroidery. Also at issue is how to mount the fabric for doing the work. The size of the piece plus the rather fragile fabric are making for a tricky balancing act. While I'd love a slate frame (one day, one day...when I start that 18th-century gown...), I'll probably wind up with careful hooping. I might indulge and at least get a higher quality hoop than I currently own. I've considered doing the embroidery on smaller pieces of fabric and treating the pieces as removable motifs, but I'm not sure what that would do to the drape of the garment. I might at least experiment with that approach to see what happens - it would certainly make cleaning the costume easier!

Mad About Hats

I love hats.

I love wearing hats. I love looking at hats. I love making hats. When I found out that the Victoria & Albert Museum has a special hat exhibit going on right now, I took it as a sign that my trip to London was meant to be. I took a millinery course in college, and it remains one of my favorite classes these many years later.

I don't own a large number of hats, primarily because they tend to take up a fair amount of space. Most of the hats I wear on a regular basis are small, soft, and easily rolled up. But I do go all out for costume hats. My pride and joy is the silk-covered top hat I made for my Millennium Earl costume (from the D.Gray-man manga & anime).


I hand wove the checkered hat band from 1" (2.5cm) wide black and ivory silk ribbon, shaping it to fit the tapered shape of the crown. The hat lining matches the lining of the costume's waistcoat. I don't always go to such lengths in finishing costume pieces, but I get a particular joy out of fussing with all the little hand stitched seams and trims of a hat.

When making a hat, you're dealing with small lengths of fabric, small quantities of trim, so it's possible to work with higher quality materials than you might otherwise be able to afford. The Earl's very tall top hat required less than a yard of silk twill, so, even though I used about 12 yards of silk ribbon, the materials cost probably totaled about $50. Pretty good bang for the buck considering how much an accurate and well-made hat can add to a costume.

So don't shy away from millinery work. It's a bit fussy, but it's not particularly difficult. Most structured hats - as opposed to soft, unstructured ones such as berets - must be put together by hand. The Earl's top hat has exactly one machine-stitched seam (up the center back of the crown). But handwork is great for movie watching time! In future posts I'll talk about various categories of headgear, cover some basic techniques, and provide additional references and sourcing information.

Introduction

Hi, I'm Kris, and I'm a textile and handcrafting fanatic living in the Philadelphia suburbs. I'm just setting up my first public blog and am working on a number of ideas for the coming weeks. I hope to cover a range of topics related primarily to sewing, beadwork, knitting, crochet, costuming/cosplay, and other handcrafts.

Hope to see you here often!