Costume Gallery

Maretak's costume

Together with a friend, Nathreee, I wanted to play a dryad. Our costumes would be elaborate, and we'd both be wearing a corset to go with the costume. We found the perfect fabric on e-bay: a quilting cotton with the same print in two different colour schemes. Her dryad - a firey character - would be wearing red and orange colours. My dryad - a pensive character - would be in greens and whites.
I started in November 2008 by making a deep green skirt and hand-sewing plastic leaves onto the hem. The twigs were metal with plastic, with green leaves, white berries and yellow flowers. It was a lot of work to sew them onto the skirt, but I had a few months as the event would only be in March the next year. I am also very good at sewing and watching tv together. I think the skirt was done somewhere in January.

I also had two and a half meters of a lovely white polyester, with a flowery countour woven into the fabric. I managed to squeeze two longsleeves from this fabric, extending the sleeves so they would fall over my hands (saving me 5 cm of make-up), and making the body part shorter (not even navel-length). Polyester would be fine for winter events and the second longsleeve would allow me to change during the weekend.

I drafted the corset pattern myself, pattern-matching all the seams, creating my own bias-tape. It is lightly boned with steel bones on each seam. For Nathreee's corset I used a gold busk, but hers was constructed the same way mine was and has exactly the same number of bones. I drafted her pattern also.

The coat is from the same pattern as my Beriadanwen coat, but I wanted different sleeves. One of the sleeves is pinned onto the design to see how it 'works'.

This gorgeous bag is not from my hand. It was created by Ruta Jasiuniene from Luthuania. I sent her a sketch, told her the concept, and she created pure art!
I'm a big fan of silly hats. This headdress was inspired by Tudor-like headdresses, amongst which the French hood. I wanted Maretak to wear something that would make her seem even taller, and more haughty than she already is. I am a tall woman myself, but with the long flowing lines, slim waist, and extravagant headdress I might seem a giant compared to some.
Wool and chiffon, mostly hand-sewn. Tiny beads added later.

Photo thanks to and © Josianne v.V. Please do not distribute.

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March 2009; © Jane Starz.