Leafeon – How It’s Made – Part 2

Leafeon cosplay
Photo by Eurobeat Kasumi Photography

Hello and welcome back to my guide to the creation of my leafeon cosplay! Part 1 can be found here. Without further ado, here’s part 2! This is a direct excerpt from the make book of my leafeon cosplay, and also the paper I handed in for my semester project for Costume History class in university.

Part 2: Materials Preparation & Patterns

 

leafeon work in progress

leafeon work in progress

Preparing the fabric:

I began my adventure by washing all of my fabric and trim separately in hot water, and then ironing it all. This helped smooth the fabric for accurate cutting, preshrunk it so the finished garment does not shrink in the wash, and helped get any remaining dye out of the fabric to prevent bleeding.

leafeon work in progress

leafeon work in progress

Making the Patterns for the Bodice and Overskirt:

To begin with, all I had was a small book with a page full of shapes on it. I had to take these shapes, scale them up to full size, and then grade the patterns to fit my body. This was a long process and took a lot of time to do. The first step was using a square rule to put down key points on the pattern. I then used a combination of curve rules and straight rules to fill in the lines between them. As soon as all of the patterns were drawn and cut out, I used the “slash and spread” [6] method to grade the patterns.

The Other Patterns

For the rest of the dress, I purchased premade patterns for a skirt and a bustle. I wanted to make sure that the skirt I made would fit over the bustle, so I didn’t use the skirt pattern included in Patterns of Fashion 2. Instead, I used the “Grand Bustle” and “Parlor Skirt” patterns from Truly Victorian, a California-based pattern company. I traced my desired size onto tracing paper, and used my traced patterns to cut out the fabric.

leafeon work in progress

The Collar:

 

leafeon work in progress

leafeon work in progress

leafeon work in progress

leafeon work in progress

leafeon work in progress

leafeon work in progress
The finished collar embroidery
Preparing the Embroidery:

As soon as my fabric was washed and patterns were cut, I began the long task of hand embroidery. I chose to embroider both the collar, and all of the buttons on the whole dress. As a result, I made one large embroidery for the collar, and 48 small embroideries for buttons. Only 30 of these embroidered buttons made it to the final dress. Later on in the project I also chose to embroider leaf decorations, a brooch, the forehead leaf piece, and the hand fan.

 

The Buttons:

Leafeon work in progress

Leafeon work in progress

Leafeon work in progress

Leafeon work in progress

Leafeon work in progress

Leafeon work in progress

Leafeon work in progress

Leafeon work in progress

Leafeon work in progress

Leafeon work in progress
The finished buttons

The original dress had silk-covered buttons [1]. I decided to wrap my own fabric buttons as well, as they did not have plastic buttons back then. Additionally, I chose to embroider my fabric before covering my buttons for some more detail.

 

The rest:
Leafeon work in progress
Embroidered leaf decorations
Leafeon work in progress
Embroidery on the hand fan
Leafeon work in progress
The embroidered brooch at the collar of the jacket
[1.] Arnold, Janet. Patterns of Fashion 2. London: Macmillan, 1977. Print. [2.] “Day dress, 1873-75. Museum no. T.112 to B-1938. Given by Miss M. Eyre-Poppleton” Victoria and Albert Museum. Web, March 1st 2015.  <http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/node/5672> [3.] Fernald, Mary and Shenton, E. Historic Costumes and How To Make Them. New York: Dover, 2006. Print. [6.] Mora, Melissa. “How to Make a Sewing Pattern Bigger (or smaller) – Pattern Grading” Melly Sews, Web, March 1st 2015. <http://mellysews.com/2014/09/make-sewing-pattern-bigger-smaller.html> [7.] Armstrong, Helen Joseph. Patternmaking For Fashion Design, 5th Edition. Pearson Education Inc., 2010. Print. [8.] Reader’s Digest. New Complete Guide to Sewing: Step-by-Step Techniques for Making Clothes and Home Accessories. 2002. Print. [9.] Tortora, Phyllis G. and Eubank, Keith. Survey of Historic Costume, 5th Edition. New York: Fairchild Books, 2010. Print. [10.] Reader’s Digest Association (Canada) Ltd. Complete Guide to Needlework. 1979. Print. [11.] Truly Victorian Patterns

 

That’s all for now, folks! Parts 3 & 4 will be posted next week, on July 27th, 2016.

Products used in this post:

 

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4 Comments

  1. Pingback: Leafeon – How It’s Made – Parts 3 & 4 | Dorothy Thicket

  2. Pingback: Leafeon – How It’s Made – Parts 5 & 6 | Dorothy Thicket

  3. Pingback: Leafeon – How It’s Made – Part 7 | Dorothy Thicket

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