Tusken female shawl take two

 When I just want to finish something, then I'm bad with documenting what I do so I just rushed this process on to get the shawl finished.

For my take two I gave up on working with tucks. Instead I started with just sewing myself into a sheet and adjusting it until I had a good fit. Then thankfully I had a friend that I could dress up in this and I freehanded the segments with a pen and cut the sheet up at the lines to get a pattern.

I started from the top and made sure that I got that fit right before going downwards. This was a bit tricky since it needed to be a lot tighter than I had planned at first. In the end I made it tight enough so that when the mask is on, it is held in place just by the hooded part of the shawl. This is unlike my old version, where the mask was first held in place, and then I simply put the shawl on over it.

Getting the hole for the mask was the most fiddly thing though, and in the end that process ate a more fabric than I thought it would, so that after four segments in place it was a lot shorter than my mock up. The good thing with working one segment at a time though was that I could simply make the fifth segment a bit wider to be back on track.

Finally the shawl was done! Then at least it was time to do the fun part, weathering it.

First it got a a proper dunk in a strong teabath, the tea should really look black. And then it was time for me to unleach my secret weathering weapon.

This was something I discovered when I did my original tusken. The water from the mine where I work reacts in interesting ways with the tea stains. It's not a water that I would recommend drinking or bathing, but it's perfect for this. For my last tusken I simply took the costume on and walked a bit in the mine, for this I felt it was easier to get some water up and spray it on the fabric. Once the mine water hits the fabric that's been in a tea bath it both lightens the fabric and turns it into a strange grey colour. So I worked the shawl from the bottom and up, making sure to get it more dirty at the bottom. I also had the gown that goes under it get the same treatment and I hung them up together so that I could work on them at the same time.

And with that the shawl was done. I made sure to protect the bathroom walls behind the shawl since I didn't want to stain them.

Last month at work

As I've mentioned earlier I'm working at the mine museum in Falun, and last week we finished off the biggest new exhibition in the museum since the 1960's. We are basically rebuilding the whole museum and next year it will be totally finished. This year we opened the largest part though, which is about the heydey of the mine in the 17th and 18th centuries. The last few weeks were really hectic, in fact when I posted about my trip to the medieval fair in Leksand, well that was my only day off, and I've been working well into the late evenings as well. Outside of arranging the geological part of the exhibition, I did get to have some fun with my costuming/cosplay skills.

I have carved charcoal into smaller pieces that could fit a model of sled, and I made mini-blankets and halters for some wooden horses. (it's part of a miniature stable where you can take the horses out and play with them). I also had to weather some copper to make it look like it had been down in the mine for more than 40 years.

The copper was a snuff box and at first I thought that I would actually put it in a bucket of mine water, which is very corrosive, but I figured that it would be easier and less messy to weather it myself.

I don't have any before photos, but it was a brand new snuff box in shiny copper. On the outside I first dabbed some green paint on it and wiped most of it off with some tissue, then I did the same with black paint. I did this two times over. The inside, which was tin coloured, I only used the black paint. In the box you can also see the fake snuff that I made by grinding coffee and black tea together. In the end the snuff box was put in the exhibition with the lid on, so outside of this blog nobody will see the inside or the snuff.

Even more fun than weathering was to create fake blood. A part of the exhibition is about the health care and social security for the workers, and horses. The workers were provided with the best the 16th century could offer, unfortunately that wasn't much. As a visitor you get the chance to experience what it's like to amputate a leg.

The producer of the exhibit and one of my colleagues

When the leg arrived, it was just a leg wound in some white fabric, so me and the producer agreed that it had to look more realistic. I volunteered to fix that.

Now looking up fake blood wasn't totally easy. Most fake blood recipes are based on sugar/glucose and sticky and messy. We can't have our visitors getting stains on them, so the blood had to be dry, but still look good. I went up into my dye box that I have in the attic and found that I had some Dylon terracotta fabric dye. Blood is a lot browner than most people think so I started with just a few grams of the dye and water, to that I added some regular red hobby paint. The paint didn't quite mix with the water, so there were still some lumps in it, perfect for looking like blood cloths.

The blood was very thin and runny. I splashed it onto the leg with a big brush, and also poured some of it down the sides so it ran down on the table. I felt that the wound still looked to clean though, so I took some beeswax and melted it and poured it on the leg as well. Then another round of the fake blood so that the wax was covered. To finish the leg I took a piece of wool cloth and covered the upper part of the leg, to make it look like a trouser leg. But first I made sure to go over the cloth with a knife to thin out the fabric and make holes in it. I also used black paint and more of the fake blood to weather the cloth.

I'm really satisfied with the result, and the fact that people who've seen it have commented on that it look scarily realistic.

Here is an article about the new exhibition, in Swedish.