Everyday Cosplay: LOTR Biker Jacket

Do you ever start reading something or watching something with the intention of just ah yes, I will become a casual fan. That was me with Lord of the Rings until it consumed my soul. I'm in too deep, man. There is no going back.

But you want to know what? I'm perfectly fine with that because it makes me end up creating little beauties like this recent monstrosity:

I've seen these half denim/half sweatshirt jackets in stores before, and thought that I could make one for myself because it can't be too complicated, right? But then things got away from me and oops. Lord of the Rings. But hey hey, woah. Hear me out. Like look at how punny this is... like Hell's Angels... but instead it's Mordor's Angels? Get it? GET IT? Shhhhh, I'm hilarious.

And in reality, though a little bit time consuming, this was actually really easy to make!

I started out by taking two things that I already had in my closet that I no longer wear. The zippy sweatshirt is from a million years ago and the jacket is my mom's that she did not want. So basically, I made this whole thing with little to no costs; I just reused old materials that were just going to waste. Yaaaaay not being wasteful.

Using a seam ripper, I started off by removing the zipper from the sweatshirt. (And now I have a full length zipper that I can easily use in another sewing project.)

I then removed the hood of the sweatshirt, making sure to cut about an inch below the seam so that I could use that inch as seam allowance.

I then removed the sleeves, again cutting about an inch in from the original seam.

I then attached the hood to the jacket by folding up the collar, pinning the hood inside, and sewing down the extra inch of fabric with a straight stitch.

Using my pinking shears again, I took the sleeves off the jacket. Only this time instead of cutting into the body of the jacket, I cut to the right of the seams, leaving an extra inch of the sleeves to use as my seam allowance.

In order to attach the new sleeves, I started by turning the jacket inside out. Then, with the sweatshirt sleeves right-side out, I tucked them inside the jacket and pinned them in the armhole.

Since the new sleeves were a little bigger than the old sleeves, I did have to fidget with it a little and do a few gathers here and there before sewing them together right along the old denim seams.

It was at this point that Kitty decided to tell me you shall not pass. Cue slight delay in project.

Since the sleeves were a little short on me, I decided to extend them by cutting off the cuffs of the jacket and sew them to the inside of the sweatshirt sleeves.

I also decided to cut off the bottom of the sweatshirt and add it to the bottom of the jacket.

Finally, once I got the jacket constructed, I could start on the back of the jacket. I started by first laying some newspaper on the back of the jacket and tracing out how big I wanted the back patch to be. I then cut it out, folded it in half and trimmed it so that everything would be symmetrical.

I then pinned this to some felt, cut it out, and topstitched it onto the jacket.

For the symbol, I looked up a picture of the tower of Barad-dûr on my smellphone and sketched out half of it like so. That way, when I pinned it to the fold of another piece of felt and cut it out, it was already symmetrical.

Once I got that all cut out, I topstitched it all onto the felt panel. Also, please appreciate how creepy this picture of Kitty is. Yay for long exposures and moving cats.

The final step was to add the words. I drew them out on some newspaper, and kind of just went with it. I could have made the font actually look nice, but at this point in time, I was just too stoked to have this done.

I cut all the letters out, pinned them to my felt backwards, and traced them out. I decided to do them backwards so that the pen wouldn't show up on the other side, which made for a cool clean effect.

Finally, after cutting out all of the letters, I pinned them where I thought then would look good and stitched them all down by hand (actually, everything on the back is hand-stitched btw).

And that was it! I'm not going to lie, this is probably one of my favorite things I have ever sewn (besides the Thranduil Dress). Like I'm just so jazzed about the outcome. I have not encountered someone else who has gotten the reference yet, but ONE DAY I WILL. And I'm sure that it will be a glorious occasion.

It's like in case you didn't already know that I'm a giant nerd baby, let's make horrible puns about it. And then put them on my body. Living the dream, I tell you. Living it.

So what do y'all think? Would you ever wear something that is secretly nerdy? I feel like it would be fun to make another, but what fandom would I even go with? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Linkin'up:

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