TFA Leia makes a comeback for TROS

Today The Rise of Skywalker premieres in the US, but I have already seen it twice since it premiered yesterday in Europe, and I got the chance to see the VIP preview on Tuesday. I hadn't planned at trooping the premiere, for the first time ever. But after some coaxing I reached out to our local cinema in Falun, and they were happy to have us there.

Now I have complained that I am a bit bored with my X-wing. I then realised that I had fabric that I had saved for remaking my TFA jumpsuit. My original jumpsuit was made in a dreadful plastic fabric, and it had also mysterously shrunk around my tummy and hips. In fact I was surpised that I could paut it on at all. This new fabric I had was a thin cotton with a slight stretch in it. I had bought it for Admiral Daala, but when it arrived I thought it was too light and I also saw that it would be a lot better for TFA Leia. Well now it was time to finally remake the jumpsuit. I simply cut up my old jumpsuit to use as a pattern and added some cm in every seam to make it bigger, and then I sewed it together. This was done in two evenings, so I was in a rush and didn't have time to take photos. It worked fine except for the collar that ended up a bit too big, I might redo it in the future.

The vest and belt still fit, thankfully. The boots were too small at the top, so I couldn't zip them all the way up, but I don't think anyone noticed that. Wearing the boots I remembered just how comfortable they are, so I'm seriously thinking about bringing them to a local cobbler and have them fitted again. Then it was the hair. I haven't done the hair in more than three years, and since I was working in the morning and then stressing to have lunch and show up for the first showing I had a full 15 minutes to make it. It's ok, but it definitely got a bit too poofy. All the photos are taken at the end of the evening, when the twists had started to unravel and gotten even poofier. The hair was tighter earlier in the day.

The troop itself was easy. I was by myself for the first showings, I saw the very first one. Since it was just me I helped to scan the tickets for all the people going to see Rise of Skywalker. Later in the evening I was joined by Alexandra as senatorial Leia.

Early evening, less poofy hair

We have our scanners ready for the people going to the late show

After we had let the last people in we decided to also have some fun up in the machine room of the cinema, since we had to pass it on or way. I also got to borrow Alexandra's blaster.

And to finish it up we joked about the fact that I had gotten into costume at home and then taken my bike to the cinema. So Leia on a "not-exactly-speedy"-bike.

Still aiming better than stormtroopers

I really enjoyed trooping in TFA Leia again. The new jumpsuit was really comfy and cool, in fact it was quite cold riding my bike in it in sub-zero temperatures. I need to practice the hair and make it better, and fix the boots, but then I'm definitely going to use this costume more in the future.

TFA Leia approved

I think it's a new record for me to have two new costumes approved for Rebel Legion, within one week of each other.

I felt it was time to finally submit TFA Leia, after all it's been finished since July. The one thing it's missing is the ring, and I had hoped to have it done before submitting. I have brass wire at home, but I haven't found suitable blue stones, and at the moment I'm not feeling inspired for it. Since it was an option component for approval I skipped it and sent it in. To be honest this is not a costume that I think I'm going to use much, the fabric of the jumpsuit makes it hot and uncomfortable and it's always a hassle with a wig. Still it's done and if there comes a request for TFA characters or so, then I can use it.

TFA Leia belt

When I sent in my application photos I realized that I had never posted about my belt and belt buckle.

The belt itself is a black 5 cm leather plain leather belt. The belt buckle is permanently attached to the middle of the belt and I have the belt's own buckle in the back. It's never seen since it's under the vest anyway.

For the belt buckle I'm very grateful that Heather Tanner made a lot of research and posted this sketch on the Rebel Legion forums.

I printed it on paper and then cut it out in worbla.

 The whole piece is in 2-4 layers. The base shape are two layers of worbla, and then the side shapes add another two layers.

To create the the two ridges I used narrow bands of worbla and formed them with my hands while they were still warm enough to be moldable. I also tried to smooth out the edges with my fingers.

I didn't take any progress photos of the next steps. I attached the buckle to the belt with a piece of worbla. I then masked the belt and the holes in the buckle and covered it in a couple of layers of gesso. I overdid the gesso a bit, so the holes shrunk a bit too much.

The final step was to paint the whole buckle with silver spray paint.

TFA Leia application photos

Since I had my living room set up for Rebel Legion application photos, for Mon Mothma, I also decided to finally send in photos of my TFA Leia as well. I haven't fixed the ring yet, but it's optional for this costume so better to have it done in case I want to use it for an event or so.

The TFA Leia vest is finally done

At the moment in Sweden there is a commercial talking about projects that take time and when things go wrong, but if you only persevere it will feel more rewarding in the end. Well the TFA Leia vest is the opposite. A lot of things did go wrong, I finished it, but I'm not happy with the result.

It started out easily, using the black vest from my first attempt to make a new pattern.

The front is cut on the grain, along the selvage, and the shaping is done at the side seams and back. It's a left and right piece, since there are no visible shoulder seams. One of the problems was that the fabric that I had found had quite a colour difference between the right and wrong side, and since the inside of the vest is seen quite a few times and needed to be the same colour I had to self line all the pieces.

Here the left and right sides are sewn together. I also added a piece of fusible interfacing to the outer layer, since I thought that it might be flimsy. In the end it would have been easier to be without that layer. The vest is heavy enough without it, and the extra layer just added bulk and complexity.

The loose yoke was made by taking the pattern and drawing out how I wanted it to look. Then it was simply a question of looking at reference pictures, pinning and cutting until I had a shape I liked.

I had the yoke pinned to the vest when I did all the finishing on it.

This is the finished yoke, Before it's attached to the vest. I first attached it to the front opening, then I added the colour and I ended with sewing the back to the back piece. The collar is a strip of fabric, 6 cm wide, cut on the bias and with fusible interfacing to make it stand up.

There are some definite issues with all the layers shifting and being uneven. The vest is also quite bulky, where the yoke is there are four layers + interfacing. If, or rather when, I redo the vest I will do my best to work with deep hems and facings in order to avoid having to fully line all the pieces.

Here I am trying on all the soft pieces. Wearing a jumpsuit that's basically made out of plastic and a four layered vest is hot and heavy though. I was really sweating just from putting it on and taking some photos. At the moment I'm thinking about maybe sewing some kind of linen shorts and tank top to soak up the sweat and make it more comfortable to wear for longer period. We will see how much time I have before London. After all my main motivation for finishing the vest is that I want to start and some other more fun projects that I want to bring to Celebration.

Anyway after all the swearing I felt that I deserved this after having finished it all.

Boots for TFA Leia

The vest didn't get finished this weekend, but instead I can show you the boots that I'm going to use for it.

It turned out it wasn't so easy to find a pair of brown wedge heel boots. In the end I setled for these ones. They do have a zipper up the side, but there was no chance that I could find a pair of boots without a zipper that I could get up my calves.

When I tried the boots on for the first time I was worried, they were so tight. I could just get them up, but it hurt a lot. When I took them off I had marks after the straps. Still that made me hopeful that it was the straps and not the bootshaft itself that was too tight. I cut off the straps, and also a flap that was at top of the boot, that also had the benefit of removing the brand name on the boot since it was a metal thing on the flap.

The boots are still tight, but I have no problem getting the leg of the jumpsuit into them. There are some marks where I removed the straps, but I don't think they are too visible. I'm also thinking about finding some kind of brown paint that will work on the wedge heels to make them blend better with the boot itself.

Remake of TFA Leia

This weekend I started on the remake of my TFA Leia, of course I want to have it finished before Celebration Europé, but I also would love to have it approved with the Rebel Legion and that usually takes a couple of weeks so I need to finish it pretty soon for that to happen.

The jumpsuit is the first part that I have finished. The most complicated thing with the jumpsuit was to find a good fabric. In London that was my main quest, but I couldn't find anything suitable. I did find a fabric with a good colour at Tyg.se, a jacket fabric in a colour called "ocean". I ordered a swatch and it was definietly the right colour, green in most lights but grey in others. The bad thing is that it's a plastic coated synthetic fabric. It was also quite shiny, but I used the wrong side of the fabric that was duller than the right side. The synthetic means that it's impossible to press and it's also going to be really hot to wear. I will be on the lookout for a natural fibre in the right colour, but for now the colour is perfect and that will do.

I used my old grey jumpsuit as the pattern. I simply cut it up along the seam lines. I chose to cut it, rather than just rip the seams. When I made it I had done quite a few alterations to it, so the seam alloweances were very varied, by cutting along the seams I could add uniform seam allowances all over.

There are a couple of details that we have found out after I made the grey jumpsuit though, and one of them is that Leia's jumpsuit has a yoke. I also decided to incorporate the collar into the yoke, since I couldn't see any seam along the neckline. I've since then discovered that there is a seam, so the collar should probably be a separate piece.

Anyway to create the yoke/collar I did one of my strangest pattern hacks ever. I started off with this pattern for a 16th century partlet.

I tried out the collar shape in some scrap fabric until I was happy with the shape of the turned over collar

 I then cut off the top part of the jumpsuit and layed the partlet and jumpsuit pattern over each other on the fabric.

The yoke/collar is constructed from two layers of fabric, with some light interfacing on the collar part. The back of the collar ended up a bit bubbly, but the lapels look crisp.

Other details that I added was a small pocket (7,5 cm x 12 cm) on the left sleeve and a flap covering the zipper. The flap is simply a piece of fabric folded in half and then both halves turned to each other.

Next stop is to make a new vest.

The big trooping Star Wars: The Force Awakens post

I've barely survived some crazy Star Wars times, but it's been wonderful. It's well worth it sitting her with giant blisters on my feet and a bit of sleep deprivation.

I'm not going to post any spoilers in this post, it's going to be about me and what I've done in connection to Star Wars during the last two weeks. At the end I will give my score for the film, but not say anything particular about the plot.

I've been contacted by quite a lot of media as well leading up to the premiere of The Force Awakens. The Monday before the premiere I went down to Stockholm and me and Andrew talked Star Wars with an internet show connected to one of the major papers in Sweden. They asked me to come in costume, so I was dressed as classic Leia. I did the ESB end hairstyle though, with just a single bun on the top of the had, rather than the cinnamon buns. I got to talk about my gold handmaiden a bit as well.

The program is available here: Star Wars Deluxe

I was in the local radio, and they actually tested me with quite a funny quiz. I had to recognize if a line was from either a Star Wars film or the European Parliament.

The local paper also made an article with me in my costumes. DT - Johanna syr sin egna dräkter

On Tuesday the 15th the Nordic Garrison and Nordic Base had gotten invited to come in costume for the preview of the film. So we dressed up and stood on the red carpet watching the Swedish celebrities pass by. I managed to not see anyone I recognized except for the Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang, but there were a bunch of people there.

 Here we are doing the thumbs up for the film on the red carpet. We had time to get out of costume and then watch the film for the first time.

The next morning I had to get up really early to be on SVT Gomorron, the national morning TV show. I didn't go in costume, I felt that a lot of my media appearances have been so focused on costuming that I wanted to show that there are other sides to being a fan as well. I wore my new Death Star maxi dress though, together with my R2 pearl necklace. I don't have any photos of that though, but a friend took a screengrab, unfortunately I'm sitting down so you can't see the Death Star properly.

The other person was a collector that had brought part of his collection with him and talked about that. I got a bit annoyed when he said that it had gone too far when they started to put Star Wars on make up. (male stuff is apparently ok but not female stuff). I tried to focus on the fact that there are a lot of female fans out there, and that there have always been a lot of female fans as well.

Then it was off to see the film for the second time, when it had its official premiere at 10 am. Both the preview and the premiere was my first experience of watching a feature film in IMAX 3D, and I must say that was pretty cool.

After lunch it was off to the next cinema, Filmstaden Sergel, where they had asked us to troop the evening. A good thing with having seen the film was that I could correct my hairstyle into something a lot more accurate. I will try to make a post about the costume notes that I did, but that is for later.

It started off fairly calm, and at this point I was quite tired as well. We walked around met people, nobody wanted pictures with me though. They prefer more recognizable characters.

From the early evening showing we started to march in just before the film started and present it for the audience. That was great fun to hear their cheers.

We also got to see the film a third time. The third time was actually the funniest. The audience was a lot more energetic and by now I could sit and it was just as fun to sit and wait for the audience's reactions to certain scenes, as it was to watch them

After the third viewing I started to go into a bit of overdrive, due to lack of sleep, but it was really fun to run around and stage photos.

TFA characters stay together of course.

 Playing hide and seek behind the movie posters.

 I think this is actually one of my favorite photos of my Leia costume.

 I feel like a proper rebel leader giving orders to the pilots in this photo.

It's not easy walking in stairs in armor.

 Most of the gang that was trooping in a serious mode

And in our more normal state?

After that it was time to head to Uppsala for me to catch some sleep before taking the morning train back to Falun.

In the 40 hours before this photo I had slept 4 hours, but seen TFA 3 times, and been in costume for 7-8 hours.

It was a very special experience to be part of the whole thing and I feel very privileged to have done it. I can only hope that there will be something similar for the coming films.

As for the film itself. To be honest I'm not quite as overwhelmed as most people seem to be. If you love the original trilogy, but don't like the prequels, then you are going to love this film. For me it ends up in the middle though in the 4th place of my personal ranking of the Star Wars film. It made me laugh, I even cried a bit, but it's no Empire Strikes back or Revenge of the Sith.