Endor Leia went out trooping

On Friday and Saturday I got the chance to use my new Endor Leia get up. It was a small troop and on Friday I had first planned to only go as Endor commando, but I was called Endor Leia anyway so I changed into that gear. The main troop was on Saturday. It was the "culture night" in Västerås, meaning that all over town there were a lot of cultural events where people could drop by. The Nordic Legions were asked by a company to provide a Star Wars theme. They had a cantina bar (with non-alcoholoic and great fresh smoothies) a games room, a question round, and we also provided blast-a-trooper. There were only four of us, and two Leias. Since the other Leia was the more recognisable classic ANH Leia she was inside, and I spent most of the time with a storm trooper on the street making people aware of that something was going on inside. Even if it was the stormtrooper that got most of the attention it was great standing around, and at least a couple of times I heard someone say "Princess Leia".

I also might finally have found a Star Wars costume that is really nice to wear. I've always felt conscsious about my size in the tightfitting pants and shirt, but with the poncho over I felt a lot better. I also changed the heavy and hot wig for the Endor helmet, and then it was no problem wearing it for a full evening, and not having to worry about the hair looking good was a great bonus.

Painting the Endor poncho

So the paints for my Endor poncho arrived today, so I got to painting it straight away. For the paints I used Fosco DDR green, Fosco Pale green, Fosco desert and Fosco Mud brown.

Now the paints stink and can get quite messy, so I didn't want to do it inside my flat. I went out into the parking lot outside my house and hung the poncho in a shrubbery. I got a few funny looks while I was working, especially from an older man..

The poncho has camo paint both on the inside and outside, so I started with turning it inside out and spray the inside. I first put on a base layer of the DDR green, then I added the Mud Brown, Desert and finally the Pale green over everything at the end. Then I turned it back and went over it in the same order. After the first layers I also put yet another layer of DDR green and more Pale green. I actually emptied both bottles of green, I would have liked to get even more paint on the inside and might add more in the future.

Then I went inside and now it's drying in my bathroom, with the fan there and in the kitchen going for full, but I can definitely feel the fumes.

My advice if you want to do this is:'
Make sure to be in a well-ventilated area (outside is great)
Buy more paint than you think you need
Remember to buy paint removal, or wear gloves. I forgot and now my fingers have an interesting green colour even after a lot of scrubbing.

Endor Leia Poncho

Since I've seen that this topic is one of the most viewed I would like to make a public announcement. 
Since I got the Star Wars Original Trilogy Costume book I've come to the realisation that the construction described here is wrong. It works to get the right look, but the collar and hood are constructed as one piece, and not as separates. /Updated 2015

We take a break in Queen Elsa in order to make a quick, but well overdue, project.

When I made my Endor commando and Rebel Briefing Leia my plan was of course to also make the full Leia Endor battle outfit, the only thing missing after all was the poncho. Well that was almost two years ago now, but I've finally made the poncho, or at least the fabric start. It also helped that I have around 20 meters of a sturdy cotton that I need to get into more managable piecec, it's the table cloth from my sister's wedding.

Now making making a poncho, that shouldn't be too hard, but of course as always with costuming there are some hidden complications.

The base for the poncho was simple. I took the full width of the cotton, fold it over so it was longer in the back and shorter in front and cut a hole of the head.

Reference for length of poncho

The tricky part is the hood and collar. As you can see there is a kind of poofy, piece of fabric around the neck, but you can't see the hood.

In this photo it's possible to see that the collar consists of two parts, there's a seam connecting the lower and upper part., the upper part is not attached to the neck opening, and you can't really see the hood.

I made the collar the same way I do a circle skirt, so it consists of two layers, and upper and lower circle, and they are sewn together at the outside.

The hood took me some trial and error, I simply made it too small at first. Here is a comparison with my first and second version of the hood.

Since the hood is always going to be worn hanging down the back I flatfelled the center seam to make it look good and don't show any raw edges.

I then attached the lower collar and the hood to the neck opening of the poncho. The hood was placed between the neck opening and the lower collar. The inner edge of the upper collar was hemmed, but left to hang free.

 In order to reinforce the the opening I sewed a piece of cotton tape to the opening, and hid all the raw edges under the tape.

 The last thing was to make two slits in the front, that I can put the belt through, the front is belted, but the back is left to hang free.

This is the final result. As you realise though, it's white, and not in camo colours. Unlike the Endor Commandos the heroes' camo outfits were painted on a white background fabric, the commandos have tan/beige background fabrics. At this time I went up to get my remaining paints from the Endor commando costume, only to realise that it's not enough paint left. I have ordered new paints though.

There is an event this weekend that I'd love to be able to wear the poncho for, but it all depends on if the paints get here in time, with luck they'll arrive on Wednesday and then I can paint the, let it dry until Thursday so that I can pack on Friday morning.

SSFGFC Stockholm, costume report

So this weekend it was the largest annual event in Sweden, and one of the largest in the Nordic Garrison's/Base's troops. It was the Scandinavian Science Fiction, Games and Film  convention in Stockholm. This year there were more than 50 troopers from the Nordic Base and Garrison, as well as our friends from the Russian Outposts (both Rebel Legion and 501st). It's definitely so that our stand is one of the main attractions of the conventions. Usually there is a photoshoot opportunity, with Star Wars characters, and a the chance to shoot stormtroopers with nerfguns, blast-a-trooper. This year we were bigger than ever so we had two photo backdrops. One with a death star corridor, where you could get photographed with the Nordic Garrison and one with the Endor bunker, where you had the Nordic Base.

Costumewise I had decided to use my Amidala Purple travel gown. I love that costume, it's impressive, and I also realized that I hadn't trooped it at a major event. Then I also wanted to premiere my jawa. Well then I heard the news that we were going to have the Endor backdrop, and that we would have members costume as Return of the Jedi Han, Chewie and Luke, so I felt that I really had to bring Endor Leia as well.

The thing is though that I got scheduled quite a lot to be in the photostand with my Amidala, since it's a face character and people usually want to have photos with face characters. On Saturday I realised that it simply was impossible to change quickly between Amidala and Leia, due to the fact that Leia's hair takes a good 30-40 minutes to get right.

So here's the costume breakdown.

Mara Jade, R2D2 and Queen Amidala

I wore Amidala on Saturday morning and almost all of Sunday. Most reactions I get is "look at the pretty princess", but that's ok. The costume is a bit hard to pose in fun ways, after all it's a regal and sombre costume so I'm mostly just tsnding there. It's starting to show that it's almost  two years old, and even if I haven't worn it a lot I should make an overhaul of it. There are a bunch of small things that needs fixing.

One thing I did this time was to add two of my 18th century petticoats, and what a difference those made. With just one ruffled petticoat there has been a tendency for the hoops to show through and to have the outer skirt stick on to the hoop skirt. With two simple petticoats and a ruffled petticoat I had the best silhouette and behaviour of the dress that I have ever had. I also need to do something about my hairpiece. It's set on to a hard plastic alice band, and it presses on the sides of the my head and gives me headache. I'm thinking about doing two individual hair "buns" that I can clip on to the top of my head and get rid of the alice band.

Endor Leia and ewoks

Endor LEia is one of my favorite costume, since it's so comfortable, and you can act out a lot more than with Amidala. The tricky thing is the hair, and I was lucky to get help to fix the hair, wich meant that I didn't get neckpains, since I have a tendency to pin the braided buns on too low. I need to redo the closure of the shirt, like many busty girls I have a bit of a problem with gaping and I fix it with safety pins, but it would be nice to have something more permanent. The boots are in for a replacement, they have started to burst, but an alternative would simply be to cover some cracks with black paint.

I also had to take care of the ewoks in this costume. One is a doll, but the other is a a child of our Finnish members, and when we had a parade the ewok could go in it if I looked after it.

this jawa found a broken droid

The third and final costume was my jawa. I didn't have time to wear it for any official things, but in the last hour of the con, both on Saturday and Sunday, I could slip into it and just run around on the con floor. I can hardly see in it, but I can orientate myself, and the hood has three layers and is pretty hot, but the robe and shoes are really comfortable. Now with the convention being held at the start of the holiday season I also decided to do a gingerbread jawa. I simply pinned some white strips and roundels of white fabric on to it and ran around handing out gingerbreadcookies

and this jawa handed out cookies

Endor Leia

Original costume

2012 was probably my most productive costuming year, yet. I ended up making one final costume. In preparation for the 30th anniversary of Return of the Jedi, I wanted to make a costume from that film. A bunch of us in the Nordic Base had agreed on making Endor Rebel Troopers, but I also wanted to make Endor Leia. Technically it's the costume that she wears at the briefing scene before going down to Endor, since I haven't made the poncho for Endor yet. This also shows how much comfortable I am with sewing than anything else. The Endor Rebel Trooper is basically a costume made up of ready-to-wear items, that just need some camouflage paint but I still finished Leia quicker, even though that involved sewing the pants, the blouse and the vest from scratch.

I can't really say what patterns I used, both the trousers and the shirt were copied from the sewing magazine Ottobre Woman. The trousers are in a light blue stretch twill, and I must say that wasn't easy to find, but in the end I found it on ebay. This was my first ever pair of fitted trousers and it worked quite well. I've also sewn a piece of elastic that I can put under each foot to make sure that the trousers don't move up the legs. For the golden stripe along the leg I first used shiny satin ribbon, but I didn't like that. I upgraded the costume for Celebration Europe II when I simply cut a long piece of a dull, but gold coloured, fabric I had in my stash and sewed it on instead. One difference between the original costume and my trousers are that I also had to add in darts in the back. I simply have to take a lot more curve into account than the person who did the costume for Carrie Fisher.

finished shirt

The shirt was also a pattern from Ottobre Woman. The most important thing when I looked for the pattern was that I needed a pattern with the correct collar shape, all other things could be fixed. Leia also has two pockets, one on each sleeve, and I followed the instructions that I found on this site. The pattern that I used was very similar to the pattern on that site as well. The finished shirt looks really good, but the fabric is quite warm and doesn't breathe.

For the vest I used the pattern for the shirt, but I removed the collar and the darts. I then freehanded where the stitchlines should be. All the seams on the vest are purely decorative in my version. Finding fabric for the vest was one of the thing that finally made me give up on ever finding a good fabric in any of the two fabric stores in town. I went in and asked if they had any twill fabric, and the people looked at me as if I was crazy. In the end I had to make do with an old grey bedsheet that I flatlined to grey hobby felt to give it some weight. If there is one thing I'd like to redo on this costume it's the vest. I've studied the original a bit more and realised that some of my decorative stitching should actually be seams for a pocket, and I would like to do it in a better fabric.

To make the hairstyle I took my Leia wig, that I had bought for the cinnamon bun hairstyle. I divided it into four parts and braided them. Those braids where then looped in a figure 8-pattern at the nape of the neck. I have to put it quite low or else my own hairline would be visible. I then took some loose hair and made two single braids. Those two braids are then pinned from under the figure 8-bun, over the crown of the head and then back under the bun. Leia can wear this hairstyles in two ways, either without or with a leather cord braided into the front braids. She has the leather cord in the hair in the scenes after she's been to the ewok village.

The belt was picked up on ebay, the wrist communicator and the rank badge were made by two different friends. The boots were found at a local thrift store, I'm still on the lookout for black boots with a wood coloured heel though, and the blaster was made by a person who did a run of Leia blasters over at the Rebel Legion forums.

The I had it finished in December 2012, unfortunately those pictures disappeared when my computer crashed in January, but I wore the costume to Celebration Europe II in July 2013. For CEII I had upgraded the costume to a new stripe on the legs, my first was a shiny satin ribbon, this new is made from a duller fabric. When I wore it at CEII it was heatwave, so ignore my sweaty and blank face, and that my wig didn't stay on properly. In fact I almost got a heatstroke from wearing this much clothes and a wig that day, thankfully my hotel was close enough that I could rush home, drink a lot of water and take a really long, cold shower. The holster and the pockets are made out of faux leather and without any real patterns. If I learn how to work with leather it would be great to upgrade them to proper leather instead.

This is a very comfortable costume, but to be honest I always feel very self-conscious when I wear it. I feel as if people are staring and judging that I don't have the same bodytype as Carrie Fisher. I'm happy to wear it in a group of other Endor rebels, but it's not as fun to wear when I'm on my own. The pictures below are from Celebration Europe II, unfortunately I had a computer crash just when I had finished the costume in 2012 so I lost most of my construction pictures and pictures of the original finished costume. I look a bit tired and blank because these pictures are taken during a 30 degree day in Germany, and I'm wearing a full wig, leather boots and two layers of warm clothing. In fact after this photo I more or less had to rush over to my hotel and take a shower because I was on my way of getting a heatstroke.

Status: active (and I really want to make the poncho that goes with it as well)

July 2013

July 2013