#also i don't know yet if i'm going to add an undertunic to the outfit

[redbootsindoriath]

#but the actually fun reason is i've finally gotten to working on the costume i've been trying to put together for like two years now#the great part is i get a cool outfit out of it#the time consuming part is that i'm making myself sew EVERYTHING by hand including the seams for the sake of authenticity I would LOVE to hear about this if you'd want to talk about it?? I love sewing by hand (even if it takes forever)! Would you be willing to share pictures?

Oh wow, thanks for asking about this!  I can never be sure how many of my followers are reading the tags, so it’s cool to know that you are.  And I’ve been keeping this costume a secret for a while, so I’m excited to ramble a bit about it.

Okay so.  A couple of years ago I decided I wanted to try making a costume based off something I’d drawn, and I also wanted a Silmarillion costume, so I’m doing both at the same time and making the gold-hemmed green tunic that I’ve drawn Beleg in a few times.  It’s about half done at the moment, but I finally got the sleeves to sit right (only took me four days, RIP; as I said before, I’m no tailor) so I’m feeling confident enough to post this progress picture.  Pardon the ugly black background; I decided to erase the real background because it was kind of cluttered.  And you’re going to have to take me at my word that the fabric is green.  It turns kind of brown in warm toned lights and kind of grey in cool toned lights, and I took the picture in a room where the light was yellowish so that’s why it doesn’t exactly look green.

Eventually there will be a gold border around the sleeves and lower hem (probably embroidered but I’m saving that decision for the very end). The outer waist belt sits approximately where those three safety pins are, and there will be a total of five buttons above that line.

Ah, but then!  Once the tunic is done, I’ll only be about halfway finished with the whole outfit.  Sure I’ll have the big pieces (the tunic and trousers), but many of the little details that actually bring the whole look together (belts, pouches, bracers, gaiters/puttees/winnigas, etc.) have yet to be found/crafted.  The outer belt I’ll probably not be making myself since I have a stamped leather belt with moose and forest imagery on it and I think that’s dope as heck, and I have a buckled bracer that I was given last year which matches that belt, but everything else I’m pretty sure I can make myself.  We’ll see. I’m hoping to have the entire outfit completed by the end of the summer, but because I’ve been procrastinating for ages I’m starting to run out of time if I’m going to make that deadline.  As a wise man hobbit once said:

...but at least I’m working on it.  The thing I’m really dreading making is the bow and arrows because no matter how many tutorials you read and watch, you don’t have the skill to do it well until you’ve tried it yourself and messed up a few times, and also those are a bit important to the character so it’s kind of crucial that I do well on them.

Anyhow, this post has gotten pretty long now, so I’m going to leave the rest of my rambling in the tags.  Thank you again for asking about this!

#the man the myth the legends #yo somebody talked to me #/end classification tags #i've mentioned this before but army green and other warm greens are my favorite ''real'' color #because of how they change in different lights #in the past few years i've been accidentally collecting more and more clothes of this kind of green #which makes me very happy #viva la army green #also i don't know yet if i'm going to add an undertunic to the outfit #in some drawings with the green tunic i had beleg wearing a brighter forest green shirt with long sleeves #but i don't have a shirt that matches that description #nor do i have any fabric of that color lying around #so we'll see #okay but back to griping about the issues i'm running into while making the tunic #i designed it and cut out the pieces well over a year ago (actually almost two years i think) #but during this past year i decided to start upping my strength training and whatnot #so when i started actually putting it together this may i realized that it was going to end up way tighter than i meant it to be #oh well #the silver lining is thicker than the cloud in this instance so i can't complain #and i was able to widen the sleeves rather easily which was the biggest issue #the shoulders and chest i had to leave the way they were because i couldn't exactly add more fabric to the stuff that was already cut #measure twice cut once #except surprise your unit of measurement changes later and there's nothing you can do about it #and that's just the way the lembas crumbles sometimes #i'm sure it'll turn out fine