You've Been Scratched by a Woman!

Porkchops in the oven. So famished am nearly see-through. Protip: Drinking a venti double-bagged Awake Tea from Starbucks is NOT a good lunch substitute.

But onwards ho! Dr. Jacquin was finished up last Thursday and debuted at the Museum Gala Saturday night. Here's the second half of that story.

When we left off last time, the cuffs and collar were patterned up and I was on the verge of starting the embroidery. If you placed your bets on things ending in despair, you're probably a few dollars richer right now. This was the product of three nights' work: 

If Dante's Inferno described an eleventh level of hell, it would probably feature metallic embroidery floss. The ladies at the shop made rage faces when describing the difficulty of working with this specific floss and I blissfully ignored them until I was two or three stitches in and found I was spending ten minutes per stitch untangling the damn stuff. So any notion of a fancy padded satin stitch, as per the historical examples, fell by the wayside. Instead, I seized upon a embroidered trim bought out of Turkey for Giovanni Auditore's lapels that looks passably enough like Napoleonic embroidery. eBay turns up a LOT of good trims if you search for "medieval trim" or "renaissance trim" or even "vintage sari trims." Oddly enough, this particular trim is also used on one of Henry VIII's costumes in the fourth season of The Tudors.

Not sure why everything is getting flipped tonight. Before the trim could be added, it needed to be a bit more gold so I grabbed the left-over gold paint from Marius' armour details and gave it a light going-over. I didn't want to coat it too thickly because that would clog up the individual stitches. In the image above, the first four segments are painted and the last isn't, so you can see the difference. Not huge but enough to make it jive with the gold buttons and aiguilette* a bit better.

The trim came with adhesive backing but I tacked it on with a few stitches here and there just to be safe. It was a lengthy process but not as lengthy (or rage-inducing) as embroidery.

Then I only had to get the cuffs and collar on for good and add the buttons. This is how it looked Thursday night - only had to add the shoulder knot and get my boots sorted out.

The shoulder knot should normally grow out of the aiguilette up towards the collar but this one, being current military issue, didn't have that feature. So I hashed something quickly together with some generic cord from Fabricland.

Not perfect but enough to "do the look" until I find a cord that matches the aiguilette better. Attaching this was a bit tricky - to hide the stitches, I had to make sure they fell parallel to the twists in the cord which let me lay them down in those little crevices created by the twists.

On to the boots! The second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century were all about those sexy brown-topped riding boots and that's what Jacquin's wearing in The Duellists (go figure). I've got a bit of a thing for riding dress boots (versus field boots, which lace up around the ankle) so I had a spare pair I could modify for this costume. The basic pattern looked like this:

I drafted it up quickly by taping a tube of pattern paper around the top of the boot, tracing the top line and then adding a couple of extra cms for the bit that would fold to the inside, and then cutting it to shape. The bottom lip had to be folded up and glued and the center back seam had to be stitched up which made it a bit bulkier than predicted. Nevertheless, it did the trick. Gave them a bit of a polish while watching the movie for the three hundredth time.

And that was it! No really decent photos yet but how about a super-classy one taken in the lieu halfway through supper?

Note the careful inclusion of the bag with two bottles, one corkscrew, and a flute. As you can see, the front is pulling downwards a bit from the weight of the aiguilette, which Jacquin's doesn't do in the film. I'm still debating whether I'm going to add a layer of extra-heavy adhesive interfacing behind the buttons on the right side to fix that. The maroon sash is temporarily covering the gap between the top of the white riding breeches and the bottom of the coat until I get a proper pair of period breeches made (where the waistline will be somewhere in the vicinity of my armpits, thereby eliminating the problem.)

And that's another project crossed off the list, minor alterations aside! This isn't going to hit a Con floor until early Spring 2013 but I'm working at lining up a decent photoshoot in the interim.

Lastly, on the topic of Cons, the roommate and I popped up to Edmonton for the second day of the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo. I wore Marius for that one and I think there was a moment where I may have put the wind up some Legend of Korra cosplayers. Going over to chat with them briefly, I asked if they were going to Pure Spec and told them I was working on a Korra costume. They were looking at me askance and confused the whole time and continued to do so after we parted ways. I only realized a day later that it might have been another case of unintentionally bending the gender, as they say. I still don't understand why my voice doesn't give it away but there it is.

Ah well. Currently halfway through Korra, who is coming together beautifully. Just have to get a bit more ripped, a bit browner, then we're almost there! Stay tuned for an update this weekend.

*'Aiguilette' is surely the hardest word in the world to spell correctly.

Dr. Jacquin: Word Goes Round

Have my pork chops in the oven and a big fist o' peach-orange juice, so let's get this party started!

Jacquin's coat is progressing well. Between last weekend and today, I've got the tails sorted, the collar and cuffs sized up and basted together, and some vague idea of how the embroidery is going to go.

However, due to the entirely shoddy quality of my... er... "internet-acquired" copy of the film (is this the part where I go to jail?), it's hard to see specific details. However! Because Ridley Scott is awesome and pays attention to historical details better than most directors, it's quite easy to trace the origins of Jacquin's uniform back to this chap here:

Dominique Jean Larrey was surgeon-in-chief in Napoleon's army between 1797 and 1815.* Even better, some of his uniforms have survived:

 

Not quite the same as Jacquin but enough to give a general idea of cut and embroidery.

Now the tails were a pain in the arse as they always seem to be with men's garments from this era. I took the initial pattern from the Single-Breasted Tail Coat in Men's 17th and 18th Century Costume, Cut, and Fashion by R.I. Davis - a terrific book if you're after easy-to-follow patterns from this era. The tails with Davis' pattern were slightly more involved than Larrey's tails above with knife pleats at the side and a vent in the back. I had sort of winged it on the pattern draft and didn't pay as much attention to Davis' directions as I should have and spent the majority of last Saturday fixing my earlier sins. 

The collar was an adventure unto itself. I did a quick mock-up out of some left-over blanket wool and the fit was good enough to give me a starting pattern. I initially drew it up as a straight rectangle but once I got it basted on the coat, it was really obvious something had to change.

Just... just no.

The fix turned out to be incredibly easy: just slope the front backwards (bottom to top) by a few centimeters and then it looks FAR less like the popped collars on the orange volleyball boys from high school.

Fwew! That was close.

The cuffs were done the same way: start with a basic mock-up from excess wool to get the sizing down and cut the real version out after. Now a word about this red melton... It's not melton in the traditional sense but rather a luxurious, $120/meter sort of melton/doeskin combination - the stuff they make officer's dress uniforms out of. It's easily the most expensive material I've ever worked with and I must give a bit of a shout-out to one of my co-workers who donated it for this project (he's got a whole bolt of it left over from his mess kit, the lucky bastard).

The cuffs are double-lined: a double-interfaced layer for the outside and an un-interfaced layer for the inside. Hint: When sewing the edges together on the latter, give yourself a bit of extra seam allowance because it will stretch more without the interfacing.

So here we are with the collar AND cuffs basted on:

And the desired effect..... Where you can't really see much of anything beyond Tom Conti's extreme hotness.

The secret to this coat is in the interfacing - the more, the merrier. From the movement of the jacket in the film, the front panels are heavily interlined so I went the same route here. Two layers of light-weight iron-in and then an extra strip of blue wool along the front edges on the inside to support the buttons and button-holes. And it captures the look and hang perfectly. 

Embroidery is the next step. Bought the gold embroidery floss after work today and have quelled my nerves enough to have a go this weekend. It may end in despair. Place your bets now.

*I had an entirely bizarre dream the other night where we were discussing this project in detail. He didn't have much to offer beyond faint suggestions that I was out of my mind.

Quickly Now!

So Calgary Expo starts this Friday and predictably time isn't something I have a lot of (this is also due to the myriad of work left to do on the museum exhibit that's slated to open next Thursday AND on-going joust practises for the tournament in Texas).

Sort of weird - it's the first time in three years I haven't been rushing to finish a costume (for myself at least). It's actually entirely disheartening and will certainly be rectified next year. I do have a commission in the works that'll be finished up by Thursday night for my good bro Cil - she's being the Marquis of Guy Davis' excellent comic of the same name. Would post WIPs but it's just a whole lot of black 1770s clothes and hey... there are patterns out  there for that.

That brings up a good point, actually. I need to start steering this blog more towards actual sewing tips and tutorials. That will be the goal for this summer while I'm working on my three mains for San Diego.

Those, to set the record straight right now, consist of:

Marius Leitdorf (Warhammer) New molded leather armour and new pants
Malfatto aka The Doctor from Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

And, coming lately to the fold, I give you Dr. Jacquin from the Duellists. Yeah, I know he turned up last post but GAIZ IT WAS INEVITABLE! Dark hair, wicked clothes. And let's face it, kids - he's pretty much Marius in Napoleonic form but without the crazy. I also need something relatively light to wear down there - not sure how a frock coat of melton wool and silk is going to be light but there it is.

 

So that makes two doctors and a madman. Should be iiiiiiiinteresting....

Speaking of mad, I did a quick test-run with Herr Leitdorf two nights ago since I wanted to do the makeup at least once before Con and try it with the new wig from Arda Wigs. They're absolutely GREAT by the way - REALLY decently priced, excellent quality, very thick hair, and huge wig caps to fit massive noggins.

Things might be a bit tricky at Expo this year - the weapons regs have tightened up A LOT and I really hope my runefang and dagger look "fantasy" enough to pass inspection because I'm going to be a hella lame Elector Count without my bloody runefang. Might give me a good excuse to practise my sporadic raging. Oh wait, I do that at work....

Anyways, weird and shitty regs aside, I still made a sheath for the dagger tonight. Have some before and after photos:

Wine is key to the creative process, don't ye know?

Aaaaaand half a bottle, two hours, and six million expletives later, I give you the following:

I'm going to pick up some burgundy/purple dye at Tandy tomorrow and spruce it up a bit with some gold scrollwork. As per the feeble education component of this blog, I used Noctiped's excellent scabbard tutorial. His work is absolutely immaculate!

And on that note, my stomach full of Wendy's should be tolerably digested so I'm off to bed to convert the rest of it to permanent love-handles. See you on the other side of Expo, kids!