Everyday Cosplay: Mark of Gandalf Vest

I have fully accepted that one of my ideal fashion aesthetics is the idea of "casual nerd."
Like the kind of thing that you can wear out in public and people who aren't in your fandom just think "Huh, that's interesting." Nothing suspicious about it. But little do they know: BAM. You're a raging nerd baby.

That is me. This is my life now.
Which brings me to one of my latest creations:

I will be the first one to admit that I have an unhealthy obsession with Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit. So much so that it's taking over my fashion choices. But let's be real here-- who wouldn't want to wear the Mark of Gandalf on your back? You never know-- it might score you a troupe of dwarfs that will take you on an adventure. And I'm all about that adventure life, yo.

This was actually really quick and simple to make since I already had the vest which mostly fit, so I didn't have to do any alterations to it. But here is what I did do:

Similar to the LOTR Biker Jacket, I started out by flipping the vest over and traced out the back panel onto a piece of newspaper. Please take note of that creepy face in the upper right corner because it haunted me for this entire project.

I then cut my pattern piece and measured it against the back. I made sure that my pattern piece was slightly larger than the seamed-out panel on the back though because it's a lot easier sewing if you're not having so hand sew through multiple layers of denim.

On a separate piece of paper, I traced out my Mark, making sure that it would fit nicely onto my other pattern piece. I decided to go with the mark that Gandalf puts on Bilbo's door in the first Hobbit film, akin to the general rune for "G" that he uses in other parts of the films. Though to be fair, I have recently learned that the mark that he used in the movie was more of a Peter Jackson invention, rather than a strictly canonical mark, but that really doesn't really bother me much. If' you're interested in what I'm referring to, check out this informative thread.

Anyway, I digress.

Once I was sure that my pattern pieces were just how I wanted them, I pinned them down, traced them onto felt and cut them out.

After cutting them out and putting them on top of the vest though, I thought that it looked a little plain, so I decided to make an adjustment.

(shout out to my foot in this photo)

I took the Mark, pinned it to some red felt, and cut around it, making about a half inch border all the way around.

And then I had to take a quick interlude because someone was hogging all of the fabric. Wow. Jerk.

I liked this look way better so I pinned the grey to the red, sewed that down, and then pinned the red to the black before sewing that down too. I just did a whip stitch all the way around because I like how that looks. I don't have a better reason.

Lastly, I took the whole thing and sewed it down to the vest using the same stitching as before.

Bonus: Look at this picture of Kitty going into warp speed.

And kachow.
More nerd. More Hobbit. With a slightly punk-rock, I'ma-beat-yo-ass-if-you-talk-trash-about-my-wizard kind of vibe. (You can talk trash about Thorin though. Hit me up if you ever want to have a debate about Thorin with me.)


So what do you think? Anyone else out there who would be willing to join Gandalf's gang? Because I'm ready to go.

Linkin' up:
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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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Librarian Dream Dress

Story time:

So once upon a time during my junior year of college I was walking home from an afternoon class, you know just minding my own business and such. I decided to mildly dress up that day because it was nice out and because why not. I had on a high-waisted skirt that I had belted, and some top of which I don't quite remember. But anyway, I had almost gotten back to my apartment when I crossed the path of some younger children (by children, I mean like.... freshmen who were only a year or two younger than me) who were sitting on a roof yelling things at people. When I walked by, one girl looked at me and kind of scrambled to say "You look like a librarian." And all I could think to say back was, "Yes. Thanks. That's what I was going for."(because to be honest, I probably really was going for that) Then I smiled and continued on my way while she gave me the most condescending, bewildered look.

The reason why this throws me off is because I genuinely don't know... was that supposed to be an insult? A compliment? An observation? I take it as a compliment, but I think she was trying to offend me. Considering the fact that I lived at the library (No joke. Slept there, brushed my teeth there, you know, normal stuff) I take that to be a certain degree of praise.

Where was I even going with this story? We just don't know.

Oh, it has something to do with this dress I made:

That's right kids, I have finally made my first completely self-drafted dress. It was kind of an adventure since I've never gone fully pattern-less on a dress before, but I'm so stoked about the final outcome. It's like... If I was genuinely a stereotypical librarian like that girl had said, this would be my prefect dress. Hands down. Care to see how I made it? Then read on: (Prepare for an image heavy post, yo.)

After poking around the internet for a while and looking at some other patterns that I had, I found out that I needed a few different measurements to make the bodice. (Do you like my jank drawn on measurements here? Can you tell I went to art school yet?) They were:
1. How far I wanted the neck to come down
2. Width of the strap
3. Armpit hole length. I'm sure that there is a more technical term for this.
4. Bust divided by 4
5. Waist divided by 4 (which actually, I ended up just keeping the same length as my bust and fit it with darts later)
6. How far I wanted the bodice to come down

To all of these measurements, I added on seam allowance too, just because I was super paranoid about everything being too small.

For the skirt, I just used a circle skirt pattern that I had made for a previous project. If you've never made a circle skirt before, I've posted about it here.

Once I had my patterns made, I began cutting them out of my fabric. The fabric I got for a totally awesome deal-- I found about three yards of it at the thrift store for some ludicrous amount like... four bucks or something. It just looks so 70's to me and I love it. But since I had so much fabric, I had enough to line the bodice as well. So, I cut two of these on the fold of the fabric, and four that were not on the fold of the fabric.

Since the fabric wasn't quite big enough to cut my entire circle skirt out as one piece, I traced the pattern twice on the fold to make my skirt.

To attach the skirt to the bodice, I also cut out a waistband which was about... idk... 5 inches by my waist measurement (plus and inch for seams).

Once I had everything cut out, I started the whole assembly process. I first pinned the front of my bodice pieces to their corresponding back panels just at the shoulders and sewed that down. I then used darts in both the front and the back to taper the bodice so that it fit my waist better. This involved a little math and pinning and unpinning the sides and trying it on to make sure I wasn't taking it in too much. Basically, I just wanted that bottom edge to be the same width as the waistband I cut out.

See. Darts.

Next, I laid my pieces on top of one another right-sides together and made sure that everything lined up.

Once I was sure that everything lined up, I pinned down the armpit holes and neckline and sewed these together.

To turn the bodice right-side out again, I had to shove those back panels through that tiny opening that is the straps. I don't really know how to explain that, but does the picture kind of make sense? Basically, it was like the bodice had to give birth to itself.

But once I managed to deliver the top, it looked like this. So I lined up the sides and made sure that it looked fine in that regard.

To finish off the bodice, I had to do another thing that is kind of hard to explain. Instead of having raw, fuzzy edges on the inside, what I did was first pin just the two innermost layers together. This allowed me to open up the whole top, pin the outermost layers together, and sew the whole side seam as one straight line. I know that doesn't really make sense, but it's super hard to explain so hopefully the picture makes a bit of sense? Once that was done, all I did was topstitch the neckline and arm holes.

Once I tried on the bodice and made sure it fit, I attached the top to the bottom using my waistband piece, which I made nice looking by doing all my attaching on the inside of the dress.

The final step was just to pin in a zipper, make any last size adjustments with those pins, and then just sew the zipper in. I mean, there are still a few fit issues with this, but I'm still super stoked with the outcome. I didn't think that I'd ever trying making a dress completely from scratch, but here we are. What a time to be alive.

Dang roof girl, if only you could see me now...

So what do y'all think? Any advice on how I could do better for next time? Any advice on pattern-making is MORE than welcome because I am still such a novice.


Linkin' up:
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Denim Shirt Refashion

Because who doesn't love a good ol' refashion, right?

I feel like this refashion really captures the essence of how much of a piece of trash I am. Like....I actually made the whole thing almost a year ago, but didn't get around to photographing it until just recently. I know, I know, I am garbage. But I'm okay with that. Because who honestly has that kind of control over their life, right? Right? Ehhhhhh...

But anyway, here is the pièce de résistance:

And it isn't even that huge of a deal of a refashion. Like, I literally have no excuse as to why I didn't photograph this. I'm so sorry, I AM UNWORTHY.

My saving grace though is that I did take pictures along the way while making this, so at least I can explain what I did. I first started by putting the shirt on and pinning a line at my natural waist so that I could chop the top of the shirt from the bottom.

I then removed the pocket...

...and the sleeves. (Look, you can even tell how old this picture is. That's def the carpet from my old apartment from school last year.)

I then took a little more off the the sleeves and pinned where I wanted to take the shirt in at the sides before sewing in my new side seams and finishing off the new arm holes.

Finally, I pleated the bottom part of the shirt so that it was the same length as the top part of the shirt before attaching the two together ( I also decided to do some hemming of that bottom portion so that it didn't fray.)

So this was super quick, super simple, but I feel like it was a pretty legit improvement. Even if the original said "80's pinpoint" on the inside, I don't know what that means, but I'm on board for whatever that entails.


Linkin' up:
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