Hobbit Dress

After Comic Con, I was left with a hopeless longing to travel through Middle Earth (I blame Karl Urban, but I digress). Thankfully, there was a Hobbit ball coming up. 

I dug through the costume closet, but nothing grabbed my attention, fit well (thank you health issues), or screamed 'I would be perfect for the ball!' Drats. Guess I had an excuse to make a ~new costume~

That meant that I had two weeks max to make something. Anything! I turned to the fabric stash. 

Plenty of options resided there, but would anything work together? The cool thing about the Lord of the Rings movies is the diversity of costume eras and classes to draw inspiration from. Each race had styles and embellishments that matched their culture, and all that with fantasy flair thrown in because why not? I could totally keep geeking out over the costumes in those movies, but I'll spare you. 

With that in mind, I pulled down literally anything and everything that even closely resembled something that might be worn in Middle Earth, compared those to patterns I already had on hand, and tried to estimate if I had enough material to make the idea happen. That was quite the mess, if I do say so myself. I finally landed on an earthy palette with some 1700's flair using American Duchess's Simplicity pattern 8161 from the Outlander series as a loose base to launch my Hobbit vision because I can't leave a basic pattern as it is. I did the jacket, ditched the sleeves, and added a peplum. The skirt and stomacher I did leave 'as is.' So all in all, not a lot of changes. ;) 

If time favored me, I also planned on using the undergarments pattern from that same line to make a chemise and bum pad to finish off the look, but that was the lowest on the priority list given how much time I had to put this all together. 

And so I sewed in any moment I could find. I must say, that was probably some of my more focused sewing, and yet, extremely relaxed. I don't know what was up. :P But that is why I don't have any 'in progress' shots. I would turn up my music and just sew. For the little bit of hand sewing that was involved, I turned on Gilmore Girls. I maybe got through two episodes, and I was done with the hand sewing. All this leaves now is the finished look. :shrugs: That might not be a bad thing. 

The really cool thing with this whole thing? Most of the fabrics were given to me or found for a steal at the thrift store. SCORE! Costuming on the cheap! :fist pump: The one downside to being able to use my stash - the fact that I have a stash to pull from. :P 

Let's do a supplies inventory:

Blue floral 'vest'- given to me

Brown linen/burlap stomacher - on clearance in the remnant bin at Joann's, maybe $3 max

Rust cotton sateen - given to me

Plaid wool flannel for skirt - Thrift store, 8 yards of material for $2/yard but I only used about 6 yards

Jute String - $0.99/yard, 3 yards at Joann's

Grommets - 2 packages of colored eyelets (because I only wanted to use the brown ones and the package had about 5 different colors, so in order to get enough of the color I needed, I had to pick up 2), $6.58

Chemise and petticoat (underneath) - repurposed from other costumes

Grand total: $24.55

WOOT! 

Now, I didn't have the time to make the structural underthings to :really: make the look. But now that I have the outfit, it won't take much to make those. Right? :sheepish grin: What I really noticed was lacking was pockets. The skirt had slits for pockets, but I just didn't have time to throw them together. Maybe someday. 

Until next time! 

SG