Blog Twelve: Happily Ever After? The White Rabbit

The following costume took hours and hours of labour and gave me nightmares. In fact, trying to get my head around how to tell you about it is giving me a waking nightmare right now... so let's try!

First off, I'll tell you about Happily Ever After. It was the 'flagship' LARP for Chimera 2012 and it was amazing. It was basically a fairytale murder mystery. Yep, it was that awesome! I played the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. I played it kind of androgynously, and also totally hysterically. Most people remember me for running around trying to deliver a package to someone non-existent, and squealing when I cried. It was good fun.

Sadly, I don't have any pictures from the actual night! My camera ran out of battery. My makeup was much better on the actual night.

Anyway, let me break down what you see here. On my legs and arms I'm wearing white tights. Underneath the red coat I'm wearing my own creation, a kind of "fat leotard". Then there is the red coat itself. Now for how I made it...

Materials: leotard: white fleece, thick elastic, oversize white buttons
Coat: black felt, red brocade, oversize black buttons
(Sorry, there aren't any good pictures of the pleating, it's hard to photograph because it's all the same colour... but it looks really good! You'll just have to take my word for it)

The only thing I wasn't very happy with was that the four black felt pieces at the bottom weren't very obvious. But if you can't tell, it's the four suits of cards! (except I forgot clubs is supposed to be a three leaf clover, not four... but four is cuter!!)

I had the time of my life at Chimera and had so many compliments on both the costumes I made (and the one I didn't make, LOL...). I can't wait for next year! I'm going to be at Teonn for the weekend in December, for those of you not in the know that's another LARP, medieval fantasy themed. I can't wait! But I'm not sure how much sewing I'm doing for that one... I may be a bit sewed out after Cait Sith...

Blog Eleven: more costume... Bear Tribe!!!

Okay, more posts, as promised.

Just recently I have taken up LARPing. I've been having the time of my life and can't recommend the experience enough. My first start was Chimera, Auckland's annual LARP convention. The first game I played I actually hired out the costume for, one, because I had a voucher for free costume hire, and two, because it was pre-French Revolution styles, and I soooo did not have the time, money or skill to sew a gown for a pre-French Revolution courtesan...

So this is my costume for Iya, midwife and cook of the Oso (Bear) Tribe, a tribe of Aztecs who, many years ago, were visited by a lone Viking warrior who took over and changed them forever. Yep, totally made up, but kinda cool when you think about the fact that the Vikings may have found America first!

So I sewed the brown dress, won't get into that though because it was just a boring, generic shape so I can re-use it for all sorts of costumes. I then tied that printed fabric around that, and then belted it. Obviously though, the most interesting part was the hood/shawl!!

Materials: brown fur, coloured beads, earthy pendants, and FEATHERS!

The hood, obviously, was a little too big, but still, I was quite happy with this, and since we were the Bear tribe, I had to have ears!! The beads I just sewed straight on, but the feathers I hot-glued and sewed on because I was pretty scared they'd come off (and in the end, only one feather came off!!)

In the end, pretty proud of how this costume came out. And we ALL looked awesome!! Go Oso Tribe!