The Production Process: Sleeve, Skirt and Hood
This page demonstrates the rest of the production process for my Witcher costume. The constuction of the sleeves, skirt and hood are shown on this page.
The Sleeves
My sleeves were made from a shimmering navy fabric. Firstly, I traced around black poly cotton. I chose this fabric to line my sleeves because they didn't need lot of structure and I wanted them to be more flowy and flared.
I only needed two of the navy fabric and two of the poly cotton.
After this, I followed the same process I used when putting together the panels of fabric for my bodice. I added back on my pattern makings, tacked them together using a number 5 stitch on the industry machine then over locked all the sides.
Then I sewed together the seams the right and left arm then pinned them and sewed them to the bodice arm holes.
To make the sleeves fit nicer I added gathers to the the top of the sleeve.
With the sleeves I made the mistake off not flipping over my pattern so I had a left and right sleeve but this was realised before I started any sewing. To fix the sleeves I adapted my markings on one of the sleeves so I had a left and right rather than two right
How to: Use an over lock machine
To make the skirt, I cut out 2 metres of my navy fabric and over locked the sides.
Then I adjusted a my mannequin to my waist size and cut 4 slits into the top (1 on each side, 1 at the front and 1 on the back) whilst it was pinned on.
I folded where I wanted my pleats to go and pinned them down. After that, I did a straight stitch on top of where I pined my pleats and this created the small pleats at the top of my skirt.
I wanted my skirt to be floor length. To get it to the right length I also made the mannequin my height marked and marked where it hit the floor then cut off the excess and hemmed the bottom.
For the waistband I used a rectangular pattern that was 77 cm long.the waist band was lined with interfacing and was sewn onto the skirt.
To fasten up the skirt, I hand sewed on a hook and eye and snap fastener.
The Skirt
My design included a hood.
On the inside of my hood I used the silver fabric that was used on outside of the bodice and on the outside I used the navy fabric that was used on the sleeves and skirt.
To make it I cut out two pieces of each fabric, then tacked the 2 silver pieces together and the 2 navy pieces together. then I sewed them from the front top seam and followed the curve to the back of the hood.
Then, I attached them to each other to make the hood. I sewed across the bottom seam with the silver fabric on the outside, then flipped it so the navy fabric was on the outside.
Similarly to my sleeves so my hood had a nice fit to the bodice I gathered the bottom a little bit.