The cosplay vs recreator community

So this is something that I have thought about for quite a long time, and I feel that I need to get it out of my chest, and I would be happy if it could lead to some discussion. This is about historical recreators, and before someone gets upset of feel personally targeted I must say that since coming in to this hobby all the people that I have gotten to know have been wonderful, helpful and open people as individuals. Historical recreators as a collective though, not so much I am sad to say, especially for recreators doing pre-1700s.

My first 16th century kit

I came to this hobby from cosplay, and especiatlly Star Wars costuming. The 501^st legion, and its sister organisations, have had a rumour about being elitist, but my experience is that if you come as a new person you were welcomed, showed where you could find resources for your big costume project, and also showed standards on how good the costume needed to be in order to become a member.  Once you have your costume you are encouraged to take on responsibilities in the club and help organise events. Outside of Star Wars costuming the different cosplay groups have always been open on when and how you can meet them and  they are happy to see new people tag along.

As a contrast it took me 4 years from finishing my first 1520s project until I got into contact with a group for that time period, and it only happened because I got to know a person, who then added me to a private fb group. That seems to be the norm, now after a few years getting to know people I have been added to more private fb groups. Looking at the webpages of several recreation groups you are more likely to find information on how to hire the group for events, than you are to find information on how you can join them. So you first need to figure out how to make your costume, which depending on your chosen time period can be more or less challenging, and then once you have a nice costume, then you need to find a person who can introduce you to other recreators. Many of these private groups, that you can get invited to if you know the right person, also have very strong informal hierarchies. It is a pretty tough social environment, especially for introverted persons.

If any cosplayer would like to take the step into historical recreation, I am happy to help you find your way, not the least because I have at times myself been frustrated by how closed the community is.

The female tusken gown

 I realised that I had never posted about the gown that I will wear as the base layer for the female tusken.

I sewed it up in the summer, because me and my friends were planning a dye day.

It was a day when we had access to our combined large pots, an outside kitchen and a garden with both garden hoses for water and a place to hang the fabrics to dry.

I had problems finding a good dye. The fabric in the dress is raw silk and viscose, while the shawl is polyester. I also didn't want to dye them brown, just sand coloured. In the end I used a dye that was called "caramel" and it didn't really dye as dark as I wanted it to. The photo above shows the fabric for the shawl and the gown when they were still wet.

And this shows the fabrics when they were dryed. It's also very clear how different the fibres take on the dye, with the viscose taking on the most and the polyester the least. That was also why I needed to make a really strong dye bath for the shawl to darken it a bit more.

The fabric for the skirt and sleeves is a gorgeous, slubby raw silk, or silk noile. I only had a limited amount of it, that's why I made the bodice out of viscose, since that won't be visible anyway. For the tusken you can opt for short or long sleeves. For my old tusken I had rather short sleeves, but it was always hard to make sure that the arm wraps stayed up well enough to leave no gaps between the sleeves and the wraps, so this time I went for longer sleeves. 

Reusing my old parts for the female tusken

 With a new shawl, new gown and new mask and bracelets it was time to go up to my storage and retrieve the parts from the old tusken to see what I could use.

I found a plastic box with quite a lot of stuff in it, both for my jawa and tusken. Except for the old shawl and hood, jawa scraps and fabric strips I found quite a lot of things that I can reuse.

The armwraps and gloves. The armwraps are sewn on to a loose sleeve of stretch fabric, so I can just pull them on and don't need to rewrap them every time.

A gauze sash and a long strip of fabric to use for holding up the bag.

My old boots. Strips of fabric wrapped and glued to a leather boot. I think the extra strips of fabric that I had in the box are in case I wear these out.

The bag was actually not from the old tusken, instead this was the first piece that I remade when I wanted to redo the tusken, so still more than 10 years ago. It is still the most complicated leather work that I have done, and back then I thought I would like to learn leather work, so I also found a pair of leather scissors and some other leather tools. The bag lacked the tusk decoration, so I made one out of foam clay and added it on to the bag.

I also had kept my tusken baby waiting to finally get a day out.

The final things that I will keep are these shoe covers. I made them for a journey to a Celebration in Orlando, I'm thinking it must have been 2012. I didn't want to pack my whole boots, so I made shoe covers that I can use over any shoe when I need to be mindful on how much I can pack while travelling to an event.

And with all these old parts down from the attic I felt that it was time to get it all on and take new approval photos for the 501st and Rebel Legion

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.

Female tusken failure

 So it was time for me to start with the soft parts of the female tusken, the main thing I have left to do.

After having stared at this image in high resolution for far too long I realised that there is omething strange going on with the fabric. The weave of the fabric continues without a break over the frayed edges and into the next segment. Either they have done some crazy pattern matching when cutting out, or the fabric simply isn't cut. The more I thought about the only solution would be if the fabric was pleated into tucks, and then those tucks would be cut open and the fabric frayed to create the edge. Tha would also explain why there is a female tusken whitout a frayed edge on the seams, it looks like it is inside out, and it might be possible that the tuck is so small that it didn't create a nice fray so then they just turned it the other side out. That is purely my speculation.

A huge issue here was to be able to work this by my own, it would have been a lot easier to work on a body.

Well some creatitivy with a styrofoam head and the stand for my dress making mannequin at least gave me something to work on, even if the head is way smaller than my own.

After a day of pleating and pinning and tacking this is where I was at. I felt like a Christmas tree when wearing it, definitely not the body hugging shawl of the female tusken. It was also way too short in the back.

I simply couldn't get enough fabric on the sides to shape it. With that I decided to give up on this experiment. I still think there is pleating going on, but I think that the shawl was probably first sewn together to get the silhouette, and then smaller tucks were made to create the fringe. Since I want to finish this fairly quickly I will probably go back to the common way of doing the shawl, which is to cut cut fabric strips and sew them together. Like I did with my first tusken female. Bonus is of course that it's a fairly quick and easy method, I only hope that the fabric I have, and that I have made some cuts in, for example the face opening, will be enough. But first it time to undo all the pleats.

I still think it's important to show when something goes wrong, it's so easy to just post the good results. And I am still convinced that there are tucks and not separate fabric pieces, I am just not the person to figure it out completely.

A UFO dress

 So with new inspiration I want to start on my sewing projects, but I also decided that I first needed to do a proper clean up of my sewing space. I live in a two room apartment, so my sewing space is a corner in my living room, not very big and it had gotten cluttered. So I sat down and made sure to sort everything back into its boxes, you know haberdashery, sewing thread, small craft things. While doing that I also found a bag with fabric in it. 

It turned out it was cut out pieces for a dress, and the description for the pattern was in the bag as well. It was the base pattern that I have used for the I heart SW dress, the little Greedo dress and the big Greedo dress. The last time I used this pattern was apparently in 2018 so I had no idea about the size of the pattern or what I had thought with it.

I sewed up the bodice and it fit. It's a very short bodice though, so I wanted to see if i could lengthen it, something I have done with the other dresses well. I didn't quite understand why I had cut out a variation fo the bodice with collar and decorative pleat down the side, which gives the dress a very vintage 1960s feel, and then I had cut it out in this very soft and patterned jersey, I had also cut out two sleeve ruffles for it.

Why I like this pattern is that it is very easy and goes together really quickly. I hadn't cut out a lining for the collar, so I folded it double instead, which made it quite narrow. I also skipped the sleeve ruffles and use the fabric from them to add a waistband to make it longer. All in all it took me around 2 hours to sew it together, of course it helps that I it's a knit fabric where I didn't have to finish any edges on the inside, and I now have a new dress and one less UFO in the sewing corner.

Inspiration is back and is called Project Toad

 After a January that had me doing nothing and feeling no inspiration at all, I feel that it's time to start doing something again.

In fact I'm now so inspired to start with new projects that I have put up a deadline that I need to finish my female tusken soft parts in February, see I even publicly write a date, so that I can start with the other stuff that I want to make.

I'm into two things - project Toad and linen napkins. The linen napkins are for my 16th century camp gear. Earlier this year I got a lot of old linen curtains that were going to be trashed. The linen is a bit too rough and not tight enough to use for clothes, but it will be great for household items. I feel like making napkins and towels will be a great thing to have going, and I can keep on testing embroidery and embellishment on them.

But the main thing is that I have decided to go for Project Toad! My husband has agreed to come one day to NärCon Sommar, and that he can be Toadbert.

Toadbert isn't the most common toad, but I feel that he fits my husband really well. I've given him the mission to find a pair of white trousers, a short-sleeved white shirt and a yellow tail, and brown boots. Cosplay is new to him, and I feel that it will be best to make him wear as "normal" clothes as possible. I will then sew the blue vest and make the toad hat.

I will of course make Toadette for myself. I feel that she isn't too complicated, but I have some decisions to make. How long do I want to make her dress? How long should her ball/plaits be. The length will also determine how big they are. I will get a longer plait with larger balls, but they might also be too chunky if I make them too big. 

For the toad head/hat I plan on starting with this foam pattern for a mushroom hat.

The pattern is from Pretzl cosplay, and is for quite naturalistic hats, but I think I can use the button mushrrom pattern and modify it ino a toad hat. Since a full foam hat is really warm I'm thinking covering the whole hat with fabric, and cut out venilation holes, probably where the white circles are. For Toadette's balls I'm planning on using styrofoam balls that I also cover in fabric.

Cover in fabric migh be trickier than just painting, but that will allow me to use the same fabric in the hat as in the vest and dress, so that it's totally matching. I'm also planning on using a fourway stretch fabric, might make it harder to sew the clothes but will probably be easier to use to cover the foam.

Well that's the plan and I am quite excited, now I only need to finish the Tusken and get my next paycheck so that I can start on Project Toad.