Thursday, November 27, 2014
This semester's masterpiece: I recreated one of Lady Margaery Tyrell's costumes from Game of Thrones.
She wears this ensemble in the episode "Valar Morghulis" and repeats the vest and skirt with a different scarf and no sleeves in a following episode. She also wears a similar vest made of a different fabric in a previous episode. So, generally a fairly representative Margaery costume!
Here was my main reference image:
She wears this ensemble in the episode "Valar Morghulis" and repeats the vest and skirt with a different scarf and no sleeves in a following episode. She also wears a similar vest made of a different fabric in a previous episode. So, generally a fairly representative Margaery costume!
Here was my main reference image:
And my version of it!
This costume was a labor of love, let me tell you! Here is some info about the different pieces of it.
Skirt: I dyed six yards of 55"
white rayon challis, using Evening Blue, Teal, and Taupe RIT dyes. I
cut two almost half-circles (I was conserving fabric so I could make the blue scarf for another time) with a waist circumference slightly bigger than
mine. I added a thin waistband and even thinner ties, let it hang
overnight, and hemmed. This skirt is based on the one from a
different one of her dresses, but I wanted to make them
interchangeable so I can do other Margaery costumes in the
future.
It's soooo twirly!
Bodice: Again, dyed with those three RIT colors after much swatching. This started out as a white denim. I draped the pattern based on the photo and it underwent MANY alterations. I also draped an interlining pattern (which also served as the lining pattern) and cut the interlining out of a hideous polka-dot denim. There is zip-tie boning in the interlining. The embroidery is all by hand, sketched out based on the photo. I made up the back embroidery based on the front! It fastens at the center with a skirt hook and bar, with a tie to cover it. All the edges are hand-finished.
Here's a picture of what I did on the back in case that helps anyone out:
Scarf: I already had this fabric (it was an old curtain) which is one reason I ended up making this costume. It was a sign! It's just two thin rectangles, French-seamed in the middle and hemmed on all sides.
Sleeves: I'm not happy with them, honestly! I wanted to use brown elastic cord to "lace" them up but I couldn't find any in time, so they are just tapered bias tubes with elastic at the top. They fall down all the time and I kind of hate them. But they serve their purpose, I suppose.
I wear it with a rose necklace that was an heirloom (another sign that I needed to make a Margaery costume) and silver ballet flats. In that scene where Margaery visits the orphanage, we see one of her handmaidens lift up her skirt to step over a puddle, and the maid is wearing a ballet-flat kind of shoe, so I figured that was plausible. I've never seen Margaery's shoes.
Probably one of my favorite pictures:
And, finally, I had the camera on continuous shot so I made a GIF of me twirling:
-Madame Taylor