Gala, Queen, Wedding, and larp, the most illustrious in that particular bunch. As you may know, I tend to want to make things for larp, mostly in the week before I have to leave, which may not be the best of planning decisions. However, this time this was the case again. In my productivity I managed to make a shirt, an apron and finally finish my backpack to satisfaction. All will be revealed in the coming posts, but first, the shirt!
So back in winter 2013 I discovered a pattern in a Simplicity magazine that I really liked for larp. It was a kind of peasant top with gathered neckline with the possibility to attach a yoke that closed with three buttons. I only took me 10 months to trace the pattern, so that’s almost a record.. I searched my stash high and low for some appropriate fabric and eventually found some of the most fluid, ravelling, presumably fake grey linen with black lines on the outside. Those lines weren’t really appropriate but the back was plain grey, the perfect plain grey for my top.
The Saturday of the cutting of this fantastic fabric was also the day I was scheduled for a very long first aid session at a film festival. I thought, correctly as it turned out, that nothing would happen at a film festival. So I had brought some of the fabric to make buttons, a tutorial of which I found here, quite a while ago. So I made myself a bunch of cute fabric buttons.
Back home, I cut the rest of the shirt, stitched it together, put it on and .. looked like a Michelin man. The arm holes almost came to my navel, but after some surgery I managed to take those in for a more comfortable fit. I finished the sleeves with cuffs that featured my buttons and the yoke too.
I hand sewed every stitch that would be visible on the outside, so the sleeve opening, the collarstand, the hem and the yoke facings. It was a nice detour from my usual machining.
I finished all the inside seams with the serger and used the serging to create the gathering at the yoke. I was too lazy to change the serger thread so it’s white with the light blue I used for my gala dress, this did make it a lot easier to find the right thread to pull.
While at the larp a got quite a few compliments that I didn’t even initiate (and some I did, sorry I was proud of this make). It is nice to hear that people like what you’ve made. This is the full view on me.
 
Next up: the apron.
Hopefully Creative 