TOPIC: Trials of (Cosplay) Transformation

So the reason I started writing "Trials of Transformation" actually sprang from a desire to make myself a Jedi cosplay this year, which in turn sprang from discovering Saber Forge and resolving to get myself a lightsaber (or 3). But being an RPG enthusiast, making a costume wasn't enough; it had to come with a whole persona. So Bor'om began to develop. As well as I can, I'll be posting a weekly (maybe every other week) update on the progress of this cosplay, along with a new part of "Trials".

Here's Part 1: The Conception

I wanted to be a Jedi, but I didn't want to be a "vanilla" Jedi, I wanted to try and create something characterful. So the first order of business, along with researching for patterns, tutorials and other resources, was deciding what I wanted the end result to look like. My one stop shop quickly became the forum's of the Rebel Legion. If anyone would be invested in learning how to make a good costume at a good price, it'd be them. One of the first things I stumbled on was a simple Jedi Creator, a Photoshop file for manipulating parts and colors of a Jedi outfit.

Using that, I came up with my target:


I know what I want it to look like. The next step is learning to make it. I'd never touched a sewing machine in my life!

Next Update: Patterning Robes

That looks like a great concept. What will you do for boots, and are you planning on using gloves?

MommyHoldMe wrote:
I've got two pairs of boots I picked up while living in Brazil that're already pretty passable as Jedi boots, one in brown and the other in black, so hopefully those will work with little to no modification. I may use gloves if I do a Dark Side modification to the outfit. I'd probably want to do another robe in black for that.

It's looking really good!

I'm trying to make a costume too. But like you I don't have any tailoring skills...
I'm thinking in hiring some tailor or something.

And to accompany this weeks story segment, more on bringing "Bor'om" to life!

Part 2: Planning

Full disclosure, I'm not much of a planner, but I have definitely taken more care with this project than I have with others. Knowing what I wanted the final result to look like, I needed to know what I'd need to make it, and how. So where do you look when you need to know how to make something? Internet tutorials, of course. Mine, again, came from the Rebel Legion, where a user named EeanLedgor has compiled a series of tutorials for the various parts of a Jedi costume.

For no particular reason, I decided to start with the robes. This tutorial in particular gave me comfort because I've never really sewn anything before, and neither had this guy when he started. But there's no questioning the quality of his end result. Like him, I decided to start by making mock-up Step one in his robe tutorial(and apparently to sewing in general): making the pattern. My "Master" provided a list of measurements (back of the neck to floor, side of neck to middle finger tip) and how to arrange them to create the pattern. The idea then is that you cut out the pattern and lay it over your cloth to cut that out. Accounting for extra inches added for hemming, my pattern totaled 68" top to bottom and about 41.5" neck to finger. My wife has done a decent amount of sewing, but she tends to buy complete patterns. My "Master" there had some kind of purpose made pattern paper that I didn't exactly feel like finding. Our solution was to use wax paper, taped together into one sheet. For the final pattern, I do plan to try and track down some proper paper.

But here's how my pattern for the robe turned out. It comprised separate parts for the body and the hood, to be joined later.






Note that it's just half the robe. By folding the fabric, you can cut out the complete robe material with just this half a pattern, though it might not be the fold you're expecting. Next week I'll post about how that went down.

Together with newly released Part II of Trials, here is another brief look at how the WIP progressed. Seriously, please excuse the brevity. I hadn't initially planned to share my progress, or I'd have for sure taken more pictures XD

So to create this robe mockup I followed the aforementioned tutorial here. My first error was one of supply. I'd looked over all the tutorials previously and gleaned a recommendation to do a practice run with a set of twin sheets. But I forgot that that advice had been for the tunic and not the robes. As it happens, a set of twin sheets is not quite enough fabric for a full robe. I'm glad I didn't pay full price for the sheets, but sad I wasted a gift card on them. They've still been helpful for the important aspect of the mockup: practice.

So I got my sheets, laid 'em out under the pattern, placing the fold along the arm/shoulder, and stretching them as far to the bottom as they'd go (they left a good 6-8 inches). I pinned the fabric on and cut out my pattern.



The end result. Like I mentioned last week, this is just half the pattern, basically the eventual left or right side of the robe. To get the other half I repeated the process. It was a little more challenging the second time because the second sheet in the set was the fitted one, with the elastic around the edge. So I cut all that off to get it to lie flat. The result was that one half of the robe wound up with pretty jagged edges. Not the worst problem since I planned to hem them later.

Finally, the pillowcase worked out pretty well for the hood, again allowing me to use the natural fold of the material to avoid a seam. The issue there is that the pillowcase isn't quite tall enough to match a movie accurate robe, but I've found that you can't really tell. Next week: these three pieces sewn together!

Part III has landed, and with it, another look at the costume WIP.

This will also be a shorty. Basically, having cut out the pattern, the next step was just attaching the two halves, sewing up the seams and attaching the hood. I think I actually did those on separate days, though.



The left and right and the sleeve seams were easy enough to do; basically just folding the edges in, pinning 'em up and following the line. The hood was a little more complicated, since it needed to match up with an exactly sized neck hole. So after measuring the neck space, I had to draw in the hood material with a few pleat-fold-things, and then pin it up and sew. Lots of unpleasant lessons learned there about the value of keeping material smooth and flat while you run it through a machine XD. The result is basically the robe. The only thing left to do after this was hem the various parts.



Here's just a test fit of the unhemmed robe, where this whole process actually started to feel rewarding (as you might be able to tell by the smarmy look on my face). Turns out that hemming isn't super simple, though. But I'll get into that next week

You'll go from Apprentice Tailor to Master Tailor in no time.
I like your 'Part' references with an embedded hyperlink. Very smart.

Hi Borommakot,

Great story so far and a great commentary on your Tailoring exploits. Remember to keep the foot down on the machine, helps to keep the material run through smoothly!

Just one question...what happened here?



Keep up the good work, looking forward to seeing Jedi Borommakot fully attired,

For Tyeth

Wow, this is amazing stuff, thanks for posting your process. It looks like it's going to turn out great!

For Tyeth wrote:
Lol! Turns out you can't make a Jedi with out breaking a few Jawas. Thanks, For!

h2soy wrote: Thanks! Here's hoping XD

Oof, almost forgot this week's update!

Well, as of now, the mockup robe is done! This weekend, time providing, I'll start work on the final robe. Here's the completed mockup:








There are a few things I need to work around. From the waist up, the test robe looks decent, but I've got too much material in the armpits, so that needs to be drawn in. Obviously, this one wasn't long enough, but that was a side effect of using the twin sheets; my final material won't have that issue. Same with the hood. Other than that, I'm ready to go.

Sorry to any who were expecting an update here for not posting this yesterday, but updating this thread on Thursdays alongside Trials has proven untenable, so going forward, it will be updated the day after, on Fridays. So later tonight I'll have an update to share I just get home late on Thursdays, and since I have[ to be at home (where the pictures are) to make the update here, unlike the story thread, there's not a lot of time for it with other things that also need taking care of. By way of teaser, though, cutting out the final robe fabric this week (while not all that different from cutting up the sheet) was pretty exciting ;D

In conjunction with this week's story update, comes more costume update!

Last weekend, I cut out pattern out of the actual linen for the robe. It felt real, like "Woah, I'm makin' this happen!" Which is a little funny since it was literally the same process as last time, without the running out of material. Well...sort of.




Here's the pattern laid out on the material (yeah, still wax paper. it works).

You can see there at the bottom that there's a few inches to spare. Turns out that needed to be used XD. The tutorial I referenced earlier originally called for 10 yards of material, but we could only get them in rolls of 8 (I'm not sure if the creator of that tutorial somehow got a longer piece or what), so we got one of those, plus 1 additional yard for the hood. For my size (5'11") that would have been the perfect amount...if I used the full material. After cutting out the one half and folding the material again to cut the second half, we found that it would be 2-3 inches short off one hem. It's not the worse thing in the world, I can make that the back hem and it won't be an issue, but the age old adage "Measure twice, cut once" holds true, my friends.

Here's that first half, cut out.




The other half is basically identical, not much to see XD

And then the hood, substantially larger than the previous one, thanks to actually having the amount of fabric called for.




Fun stuff! This weekend I'll probably join the two halves, and maybe do the side seams. This final robe will have a couple of additional steps the mockup didn't use. So that should prove interesting.

Bonus pics!
Sewing the mockup a couple of weeks back






And that one time the scraps from the final material made me a Miralukan

Awesome as always

Well, folks, I hoped to have a bit more for you today, but something is better than nothing, right?

So here's the follow up from this week's entry of Trials.

I got started with the robe halves doing something new; creating the "shoulder tucks" seen in some Jedi robes. Here's a notable example from Master Obi-Wan:



That little effect requires more hand stitching than I'm used to, so it was an adventure to sew, but I laid it out and got it done. The measuring was almost as involved as the sewing XD





But by the second half, it actually did go noticeably quicker.






So I got both sides of the tuck done. By next week, I'll at least have the back seam sewn (I make this sound so involved, but really, I'm just lazy), and can hopefully begin to get an idea of how it'll really fit.

Just as a heads up, folks, I'm going to put this costume project on hold for the next couple of weeks while I finish class projects and study for finals, and pick back up again once the semester ends

Not a proper update per se, though I have gotten a little bit more sewing on the robe done. More exciting has been that a few swatches I ordered from some different companies have been arriving, so I've nailed down the shades and materials for my tunics, tabards and obi. I've also decided to change the inner tunic color from black to the off-white more often worn by the Jedi on-screen, so it's more clearly Light side, and later I'll make a black tunic (if needed) for the Dark side costume.

So this project is still underway. It went a bit on hiatus with the end of the semester, but I've been getting bits and pieces done throughout the summer. Unfortunately, my wife loaned out our sewing machine, so that's slowed things down. But in the mean time, I've gotten the fabric for my tunics and obi and tabards, and (just today) my belt!






It came from Blackbeard Workshop on etsy. I'm pretty pleased with it. I'm sure I'll need to do something about the extra little tab that goes through the buckle, but I'm not sure what. I may just cut it into a tapered point, but I don't think I'll remove it completely, just to be safe.

I'm really happy with how the covertec clip cover looks on it.

I also did end up purchasing a metal Kylo Ren belt clip through =JJ= industries, and I've got a plan for giving it a little bit more mobility, using a leather strap from the belt to allow some movement away from the hip, and a rotating plate to give it freedom of movement forward and back. Crappy illustration follows:



My original plan has basically now expanded into 3 costumes, this original, using a covertec clip, a more "classic" brown/beige outfit using a D-ring, and my Dark Side outfit, using the modified Kylo Ren clip.

Borom your saber looks fantastic on the new belt. Can't wait to see the complete ensamble!