Women's dress 13th century: saya encordada and pellote creation

The first piece I needed to create was the underdress with red and blue embroidered sleeves.  I decided to do a wider saya encordada and pellote through the chest area based on the saya encordada and pellote of Leonor of Castilla, rather than the lady from the Book of Games. Since the chest area is covered with the wider saya, I did not continue the embroidery onto the bodice.  This also helped with the amount of time needed to create the underdress as I only had 2 weeks to complete the whole outfit!  I wanted the embroidery to be geometric, as the embroidery in the manuscript image also appeared geometric.  I searched the web for simple embroideries that might have come from the rough time frame from Spain and did not come up with anything I could do quickly or simply.  I broadened my search and found a lovely set of embroidery charts made from extant items by the talented Miriam bat Shimeon.  These are middle eastern and many of them are Egyptian, but the look was right for 2 color geometric.  Here is a link to her website with her amazing charts. I used two of her charts

Cuff, based on Egyptian 10-15th CE embroidery, charted by Miriam Staples

Sleeve embroidery, based on 10-15th CE embroidery fragment, charted by Miriam Staples

 The embroidery actually went really fast and I am pleased with the overall look.  Samples from Egypt may be a stretch for Spanish dress, but I felt they were good enough for my needs and fit the look I was going for.

The underdress is rectangular construction made linen.  The internal seams were machine sewn due to time constraints but I had sewed the hems of the neck and sleeves since they show.

The next part was the saya encordada, thankfully this dress has lots of information readily available online.  The seam lines have been drawn by Marc Carlson (here), making pattern drafting really easy.  The gown is made of faux silk, as I had it on hand. The lacing was done as described in the previous post, I hand stitched ribbon to the inside of the gown with channels to allow lacing.  The original was laced with cord, but I used ribbon, as I had it on hand.  The bodice of my saya encordada is hand sewn and self lined to the hips.

 

The final piece was the pellote.  For this, I used some blue wool I had laying around.  The pattern for the pellote was based on the cutting diagram from Marc Carlson (here). Unfortunately, this wool will stretch, so I bound the arm holes with cloth tape and added some trim to make it a bit more decorative since the tape make the edge very plain.  As with the other dresses, I had sewed the neckline.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with this outfit.  Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of me wearing it.  I did not get much of a chance to wear it, as my cat was in the ICU the day of the event (he has since fully recovered).

Women's dress 13th century: Saya encordada and pellote planning

I planned on attending a Midwinter feast in December, the theme of which was in the 13th Century and Spanish.  The actual theme was Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212.  In searching for a dress I wanted to create, I was loose with the date, as I fell in love with Leonor de Castilla's underdress and over dress, which are dated 1244. 

Here underdress, the saya encordada, was very fitted, laced up one side and made of beautiful brocade.

Saya encordada of Leonor of Castilla

A lovely link from Jessamyn's Closet shows the lacing detail from the Saya Encordada demonstrating that the side lacing cord is run through a tape stitched to the inside of the opening. 

Her pellote was also of a beautiful brocade and is sideless.  The brocade on this gown is amazing.

Pellote of Leonor of Castilla

Brocade detail

Unfortunately, I had no luck finding anything similar that I could get in time for the event (or in my price range).  So I had to come up a plan B.

A friend of mine told me about Libro de los Juegos, ("Book of games"), commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile and dated 1283.  The pages of the Book of Games are available online and browsing through them I saw a number of women in the same style of dress.  One of them really caught my eye.

The lady appears to be wearing a white underdress with red and blue embroidery on the sleeves and probably on the bodice.  Over this, she is wearing a red saya encordada and a blue sideless gown.  She appears to have a pink cloak on as well.  These more simple solid color fabrics were possible in the 2 weeks I had to sew an outfit! 

Steampunk Tiki at Gaslight Gathering 2018

Here are a couple of pictures of the full outfit as worn at the con with my husband and a good friend. It was so much fun to attend this con again with a couple of friends, this con is so friendly and always a lot of fun. 

 

I love my friend's tentacle hat! 

 

The con provided this great back drop for pictures.

 In this photo you can see where my eyes sit in the mask.

Steampunk Tiki Part 4: A large knife

In the Diablo game, the fetishes run at you with giant knives.  The effect in the game is actually kind of terrifying and exactly the inspiration for the Steampunk Tiki, therefore I needed a giant knife.  I wanted the knife to look handmade and made in a jungle type area, so specifically not modern steel.  I decided that the knife blade should look like flint knapped obsidian.  While I have flint knapped previously, I am not great at it and it does create really shape knives.  Since this is for cosplay, I wanted the knife to look flint knapped but be dull so as to not harm people around me.  I decided on resin casting for the blade.  To create the mold, I first made paper clay blades halves.  I then poured 2 part silicon rubber mold material over the top. 

Paper clay blade halves

 Pouring over the top was a bad idea, while this is what the instructions recommended, the paper clay is too light and floated within the silicon rubber.  I should have pressed the knife halves into the top of the molding material so they didn't float.  Due to this mistake, the molds were very deep, and far deeper than the blade needed to be.

 

Knife mold

Once the mold was complete, I made a big batch of resin and cast the two halves.  Once they were set, I then used a small batch of resin to stick the two halves together.  You can see how the edges dont quite match on the two molds in the image below.  You can also see how dull the surface turned out due to the roughness of the paper clay.

raw knife cast

 To clean up the surface, I first used a Dremel and a belt sander to grind the edges even and clean up any odd cuts or bumps.  Then to give the blade a shiny finish, I added a fresh coat of clear resin to the entire blade.  To do so without having to lay the blade down, I hung the blade to allow both sides to be covered at once. I did not have anything fancy to hand the blade with, so I used a cheap clamp, some string and stick from my yard.  The stick was then stuck on the shelves in my front sun-room.  It actually took several layers of resin, with 24hr dry time in between to the finish I wanted.

Shiny finished blade

Hanging blade with resin and LED

I also added an LED into the blade at the top.  To set in the LED, I drilled into the blade where it would meet the handle.  The hole was drilled slightly larger than the blade and then I used resin to bond the LED to the blade (the wires are sticking out of the top of the blade in the hanging picture). Unfortunately, I accidentally used blue pigment instead of dye so the blade is not clear enough for the LED to have much effect.

The remainder of the parts were a gear from a bike, a couple of pipe fittings and a big copper pipe.

Knife parts

The copper pipe had two square cuts made a dremel to allow the blade to sit into the pipe and allow me to add cross lacing with leather to make the blade look tied in with leather.  The pipe fittings were chosen to allow the electronics (switch, battery and wires) for the LED to be kept in the pipe but still allow easy access.  The larger fitting was epoxied onto the end of the pipe and the smaller fitting can be screwed into the larger fitting allowing access to the stuff inside the pipe.  To use the gear as a pommel, we needed to cut it.  The dremel was actually able to cut the bike gear, although there were lots of sparks and great need for eye and skin protection.  The broken gear was then glued and wired into the smaller pipe fitting.

knife pommel

Finally, the I covered the pipe with some scrap leather to make holding the knife more pleasant and added the decorative lacing that 'holds' the blade in place. In actuality the blade is epoxied in place.

 

Leather handle cover and lacing

Other than using pigment instead of dye, which caused the LED to be less functional than I would like, I am pleased with the knife overall and certainly learned a lot!

Completed knife

Steampunk Tiki Part 3: Skull on a Stick Staff

As part of the evil fetish tiki, I envisioned the skull of an aviator from the airship crash stuck on a staff.  This was a very easy prop to make and utilized many cheaply bought parts.  First I bought a cheap plastic skull, realistic looking plastic eyeballs, cheap googles and a very cheap aviator's hat.  We also purchased some UV LEDs, a switch and a battery pack.

The googles were a basic silver color, so we spray painted them red to give them a bit of color.  To make it look like they had been in a crash, we hit one eye piece with a quick burst of black spray paint to simulate damage.
 

Cheap googles painted red

We drilled two holes through the skull that would fit a long wooden staff we had lying around.  The holes were drilled so the staff would go directly up through the center.

Cheap plastic skull with holes drilled for the staff

We then cut out holes in the eye sockets to allow the addition of lights later and glued some plastic eyeballs into the eye sockets.  These eyeballs are half globes, not full globes.  Since the aviator's cap needed a hole in it as well, I bought a really cheap costume one online.  It is very synthetic and would probably be terrible to wear, but for the skull it was perfect.

 

 

Skull with added eyeballs and cheap aviator's cap

To add a bit of a creepy factor to the skull, we cut a hatch in the back to allow the addition of electronics within the skull.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hatch for electronics

 

We then added UV LED lights behind the eyeballs. The lights, switch and battery pack fit neatly in the skull and the UV LEDs shine right through the eyeballs.

With lit up eyes

Skull on a stick!

Steampunk Tiki Part 2: The Mask

After creating a simple dress and vest, the most important part was the giant Tiki mask.  Since I wanted it to be very big, but not too heavy, I settled on foam for the base.  I have never made a prop with foam before, so this was certainly a learning experience.

The easiest part was creating a paper pattern.  I simply drew out what I wanted.

Tiki Mask pattern

Once the pattern was done, I cut out a backing piece and each decorative piece out of EVA foam floor mats (the grey colored foam) and thinner teeth out of craft foam. To allow myself to see, I cut out the inside of the whites of the eyes from the base mat.   The pieces were then bonded together with Barge's cement. Note: this stuff stinks and must be done in a well ventilated place!

Mask pieces glued together

Once the glue had set, I contoured the overlay pieces with a Dremel tool.  This step made a complete mess of the shop, and required safety googles and filter mask.  To create the wood grain, I followed an awesome Youtube tutorial from Craft Alchemist.  I drew wood grain on the foam with a sharpie (Note to self, dont use red if any of the painting is white.....)

Mask with contouring and wood grain drawn

After drawing on the wood grain, you make a ton of tiny slices in the foam matching the wood grain lines.  It looked like nothing was happening with the slices, in fact they were basically invisible.  I then heated the foam with a hot air gun and the slashes opened up creating a grain texture.

detail of grain texture

To seal the foam and allow the foam to be painted, the mask was coated with 3 coats plastidip spray.

coated with Plastidip

The mask was then painted with basic acrylic paints. It took 4-6 coats for each color, and the red sharpie bled into the white a little bit. 

Painted mask with human for scale

Next, I added glued 4 nails to the inside top of the mask and stabilized the nails with a second layer of EVA mat foam.  The bones are cheap leg and arm bones from a Halloween skeleton from the craft store are then glued onto the nails.  I then wrapped cheap twine around the bones at 4 different heights, using glue to keep the twine stable on the slippery plastic bones.  This formed a framework to support the fake ferns.  I then wove the fake ferns through the twine and glued the stems to the top of the mask.

bone and fern attachment back

bone and fern attachment front

To keep the mask on my head, I used leather straps glued to the mask back.  Since the mask is so flat, I had to add a piece of foam to move the mask out from my face.  The strapping goes around my forehead, not at eye level.

Straps to wear the mask

Here is what the mask looks like worn and with the staff and knife, which I will cover in the next two posts.  There were so many steps to the mask that required drying overnight that while the mask was started first, the other two props went much faster!

Tiki props

Steampunk Tiki Part 1: plans and dress

This year, Gaslight Steampunk Expo had a theme of Tikipunk.  I really loved this idea, however, instead of thinking tropical shirts, I was reminded of the evil fetishes in Diablo who used to run at you with creepy masks and big knives.

Basically I thought what would happen if a Airship crashed and found the natives aggressive rather than friendly.  To portray this, I decided my Tiki fetish would use bones and bits from the crash to create a scary Tiki.  The bones would be used to create the top of the mask, the skull, googles and aviators googles would be used in a staff and a gear and pipes would form part of the mask. 

First I needed a simple dress.  I used some basic cotton gauze the make a sheath dress.  The edges are blanket stitched for decoration.  I used some scrap monk's cloth to create the fringed edging and knotted it to make a netting simple pattern.  In keeping with the found bits for decoration, I used some small gears and paula shell for fringe decoration.

Dress front

Sleeve detail

Bottom Fringe

Once I put the dress on, it felt too plain.  I decided to make a quick lace up vest out of some scrap leather.  This leather has a embossed scale pattern and a coppery color.  There was not enough to use a single piece for the front panels, so I stitched pieces together decoratively. 

vest back

vest front

The dress and vest took less than a week and were by far the easiest part of this costume.  The hardest part was the vest, the embossing and the copper coating made the leather really hard to punch through, yet it was still thin enough that setting the grommets was a pain.