The Making of a Khaleesi
June 23, 2014  |   The Making Of...  |   0

I decided to go to Dallas Comic-con 2014 as Daenerys Stormborn during her time in Qarth, and while we don’t own a sewing machine or know the first thing about sewing fabric, we were pretty sure we could figure out the delicious breastplate she wore. We didn’t have much experience yet with making our own patterns, but there’s no better teacher than diving right in.  We began by wrapping ME in cellophane, then strip by strip making a mold over my torso with masking tape.  After downloading as many possible views of the costume used in Game of Thrones, my sister sketched the lines as I tried not to fidget.  While it was a valiant first effort, once it was cut off, there were changes I wanted to make, however, we had many many conflicting marks and it was very hard to discern what was the appropriate line.  In addition, trying to sketch new marks on the mold with nothing to support it underneath was challenging at best.  So!  It was time for Take Two.

We pulled out the dress form, configured her to my measurements, and then wrapped the old girl in cellophane.  Then, strip by strip, we made a mold out of masking tape.   This time, we started drawing with the fine side of a sharpie then traced over with the heavier end once we were pleased with the sketch.  Before long, a tidy pattern was emerging. We numbered the pieces (and then documented it with photos just in case!).  The next step was cutting the mold off the dress form and carefully cutting out the pieces. The individual masking tape pattern pieces were very fragile and difficult to trace, so we decided to transfer them to poster board, both to ensure they survived more than one attempt and to make general tracing easier. [/ale_three_fourth_last]

Once we had all of the pattern pieces cut out on posterboard, we decided it would be best to tape together a mockup out of craft foam.  You can buy it at Hobby Lobby and is a very cheap way of simulating the structure of leather.  I’ll talk more about the benefits of being able to map out your sew lines in the Batman Cowl article floating around in my head.  Some people recommend building it out of paper or posterboard, but trust me – craft foam is a great material and worth it.  So, I cut and taped together half of a leather breastplate and felt very confident before putting blade to leather.  In hind sight, I should have built the entire thing out of craft foam. If I had, I would have realized that my center diamond was too big before I had it completely sewn together 😉

We laid out the leather and traced the poster board pattern pieces on as economically as possible.  Once cut, we then stained and sealed before starting the assembly process.  Again, in hind sight, if we ever do this again, we would have built the entire thing out of craft foam first, and marked the holes on the craft foam rather than trying to align each piece, mark the holes, punch the holes, then sew together.  It worked out well enough, but the former process would have been easier and certainly less nerve wracking.   But piece by piece, the breastplate emerged (and we squealed with progressively more delight).

A friend of ours sewed the tabard to fit the lines of the breastplate.  Add a wig, a leather wrap skirt, a baby dragon, and voila!  A Khaleesi is born.

 

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