Resources for Leia and Padme costumes

 At Närcon this weekend I talked a lot to a person about Padmé and Leia costumes, and I realized that simply due to the fact that I was around while the Padmé costumes were being analyzed and before social media, I have a lot of information about them, since I followed the progress of my fellow costumers. Today there is a lot of info social media, but it's usually hard to sort through social media posts to find clear and structured information on the costumes. Thankfully though a lot of the early research was done on forums and websites that are still around, if you know where to look, and this post is my way of trying to gather them in one place. So yes, if you want to make one of these costumes, but especially Padmé's, then I really recommend taking the time to read up on old internet post and on forums that were made before the advent of everyone posting videos and short clips of what they are doing.

First of all if you want to make a Padmé or Leia costume, the best way to start is over at the rebellegion. The Rebel Legion standards are lists of required elements if you want to become a member of the Rebel Legion, even if you don't want to become a member those lists are clear instructions on what parts the costumes are made up of. The Rebel Legion also has a forum, where persons making their version of the costumes have posted and are posting their progess, so you can see how other people has tackled a specific costume. Those forums can be found here: Rebel Legion Royalty/Senatorial forums

The most comprehensive website out there for Padmé, and Leia and generic jedi costumes, is Padawan's guide. Maggie, who ran the site, did and amazing job of collecting all available info on the costumes, and it is split between reference images, fanmakes and construcions tips for each costume. She basically summed up all the research that was done and made sure it was available in one place. That it is still alive, even if it hasn't been updated in many years, is a great gift from Maggie to all Star Wars costumers out there today.

A lot of what Maggie posted were summaries on what was discussed on the Jedi Council forums' Costuming and Props board. Back in the early 2000s this was the place where all Padmé costumers gathered and discussed their costumes, and posted their progress. All the Padmé Amidala costumes have their own tag in the forum - so that can be found here. Most of the threads are locked nowadays due to having been inactive for too long, but they are still there and are fill with information. Leia's costumes can be found here.

One costume that I get asked about is the iconic red gown from Episode one, also know among costumers as the "red invasion" costume. Back when blogs were a big thing on the internet Naergi from Germany did an extensive analysis, and the best recreation of the gown I have seen. If you are interested in doing that costume, you need to read her blog post. She also has other Star Wars costumes on her blog, so can be worth looking into for other characters as well. 

With this piece of internet archaeology I hope I can help some people who wants to make their own Padmé Amidala costume, and don't know where to start. Compared to Leia's costumes, that were basically made for a low budget film, all of Padmé's costumes are complicated, either in cut and construction or in materials, or in both so making one will always involve a lot of work and usually quite a lot of money as well. 

16th century underkirtle

 Back in March I posted about constructing a new supportive underkirtle, using the barra system. Back then I only had some fiddling to do, and I hoped to have it finished in time for Leksand's Medieval Market. Well that didn't happen. With Project Toad going on I have had the project on the backburner, picking it up from time to time, but now it is finished as well.

I started with bodice. It's made from wool and with a linen lining. It closes at the sides with spiral lacing.

I was worried on how hard it would be to close it by myself, but when I switched the lacing from being laced up, as I normally do with frontlacing gowns, to lacing it down it was a lot easier. The laces are temporary, I will switch them for more historical ones before packing for Visby.

The skirt is cut in gores, and to be honest I mostly winged them, rather than following a pattern. That also to do with my getting some really low blood sugar while cutting them out, and low blood sugar leads to some strange decisions, but once done I couldn't change them..

I added the skirt, that was still wide enough that I needed to gather it to the bodice, and then I could try the whole kirtle on - and I was so dissappointed. Even if I had taken in the front seam some more, there was no support, even if it felt snug under the bust. The problem was that the straps were too long though, so when I shortened the straps, I finally got some support.

The result of the shortened strap is that it doesn't sit perfet at the back where it joins the back piece, but it is good enough.

Now it felt a lot better, and then it was only the hemming left.

The hem is done by adding a long strip of wool as a hem facing, that is my favorite way of making hems. I really like the extra stiffness it gives to the hem.

The finished kirtle, which ends at around midcalf.

Finishing Project Toad

 So as usual in the end stage of a project I'm not as good with documenting what I'm doing, but the project is finished and I will try to scramble up some finishing details.

In the last post I had just made the hats wearable, and it was only on to adding the big white circles on them. I cut out round shapes and then I glued them on, and that is where I hit a snag, and why you should always test things before going all in.

The textile glue bled all through the white lycra and I got really ugly stains, since I had just randomly squeezed the glue on. It being glue it was really stuck though so there was no way I could remove he spotted fabric. Thankfully I had some extra white lycra left, since I had bought too much, and I could just eke out five new circles. I had thankfully only done one hat at a time so for Toadette I knew it wouldn't work. I simply had to handsew the circles on to the hat. I can say handsewing on the big unwieldy hats was not comfortable at all, so it took me a whole day for one hat, because I had to take breaks. It took me some time to get energy to redo the blue hat. I was thinking about if I had to cut out an interlayer to prevent the stains from showing through, but in the end I was too lazy for that and I just sewed the new fabric on top of the old

This is the end result. The stains are faintly visible, but most people won't think about it, so I will keep it at that.

For Toadette's ball plaits I bought styrofoam balls and covered them in the same fabric as the rest of the outfit. Around the balls I have made a net of fishingline, that interweaves with the fabric, that way the weight of the ball is not just hanging from a thread at the top. The fishing line is almost invisible, and I have sewn it onto the main hat. My idea with the glued on hooks didn't work, when I noticed that one of the hooks had already gotten loose. I guess that they were made for static weight, not for the swinging of three balls hanging from it. I have sewn through the foam, but to prevent the fishing line from cutting into the foam I have looped it around empty plastic thread rolls on the inside, to distribute the weight better.

With the balls done I could make a first costume test, because I had sewn the dress inbetween working on the hats. The dress was simple in construction, but lycra is not a forgiving material to work with.

The pattern for the dress is a simple A-line. I made it by tracing a top, to get the neckline and sleeves good, and then to make it wider I added one triangular gore on each side. I then traced the finished dress to make a pattern for the vest. The vest was cut in one back and two fronts edged with a premade gold bias tape. To finish the raw edges of the sleeveholes, but on the dress and the vest I sewed them together and turned the vest to the front.

My dress was finished and it was time to make his vest, and apparently I didn't take any photos of that process. It was a simply e-pattern for a man's vest that I fond on etsy. The outer fabric was lycra, but to stabilize it the lining is a blue cotton canvas. Here the lycra came to the rescue. When I measured my husband the pattern was made according to his chest measurements, but it was too small at the waist. I solved that by removing the shaping darts at the front of the cotton lining, but I could keep them in the lycra, which is also made it stretch really taught and nice over the lining, and looks really good. I skipped the finer details, like welts and buttonholes so the vest is closed with some snaps on the inside instead