With Apologies to the Costuming Communty...

You know, the ones who went to school for this shit (you'll understand down below.)

In which I spend far too long gushing over a fantasy show's costume choices:

So on Tuesday, my friend invited me to this Game of Thrones party at the SF Armory for that Saturday. As a full-time student, this is a problem. In general, costumes take a combined week of work but that is a week of having nothing else to do other than sew. With a full schedule of classes, making a nice dress that is worthy of that costume-porn they call a show.

Seriously, please look at those DESIGNS!!!!

Basically if you want to do a good last minute costume, you're shit out of luck. The show is just too damn good to half-ass one of Cersei or Sansa's dresses. For Godsakes, they have an official embroideress! THEY HAVE SUCH ATTENTION TO DETAIL THAT THEY GOT A SPECIFIC PERSON TO EMBROIDER THIS SHIT.

This work is gorgeous and terrifying and I want to embroider EVERYTHING now.

Was there a point to this?

Uhh what was I talking about? Oh yeah. Anyway, the dress problem. I was at a loss to decide what dress to make for the event that could be done quickly. I also had the challenge of making a dress or at least finding a dress for my friend as well. Thankfully, everyone's favorite character came to my rescue.

                                             

Emilia Clarke looks amazing in practically everything but the dresses she gets to wear as Dany are absolutely amazing. I've always admired the combination of metallic accents with gauzy materials and GoT simply loves doing this:

  

                             

This shit is my crack

                           

Anyway, I didn't have enough time for armor so I settled for one of Dany's easier to make dresses. (relatively) 

The pictures of her actual dress mostly show it as a pale grey crepe... linen maybe? (When I finished my dress I realized how wrong my fabric choice was. You'll see.) I I didn't set out to make an exact recreation of the dress, I just wanted a slightly similar look for the party so I'm okay with things not being exact.

The construction:

The day started with a trip to the fabric store to find the cheapest gauzy material I could find and was willing to work with. In the end I settled for a grey jersey with a layer of sheer... shiny... poly.... something vaguely lavender over it.

The right side of the sheer was SUUUUPER shiny so I chose to use the wrong side, simple enough.
 

I set to work sewing what was basically a long 2 yard rectangle of one layer of jersey and one layer of sheer together.

And it was a BITCH to do.

From there, I closed the ends of the rectangle together to form a long tube and across the top a ran a gathering thread to make it fit over my chest. Then I looked back at the pictures of the dress and realized there was more shape to the dress than I thought. I realized, if I wanted to make the dress look right with the crossed bust pieces, I'd have to take apart the fabric and re-cut it to fit a pair of bra-pads that I'd have to go out and buy. So I wracked my brain looking for an alternative solution.

Solution.

With a few seconds to think about how much I was going to regret it, I took the gathered dress-top and tacked it (pretty sloppily) my only nude bra. The result had the desired effect with the unfortunate side effect of being a little boobie-licious. From there I gathered the short end of two longer strips of leftover sheer and tacked them on to the outer end of each "cup." One of these fabric strips was threaded with an old belt-buckle I had purchased a while back as part of a my Scheherazade costume (more on that later) but wound up being too small. It's too small here too but I couldn't be bothered to change it now. Both tacked ends got crossed, and tied in back and this created the shirred chest treatment.

Not... Terrible? Seriously, I apologize to the professionals right now.

I used a thin strip and tacked it over the strap of my halter-bra and then cut two more scraps and tied them to my upper arms. Since there was some issue keeping them on, I hollywood taped them for extra hold. Overall because of my own size and the weight of the fabrics I chose, the whole dress is a little too puffy for my taste. That said, I think it's a pretty good... facsimile? Hey it worked for the event and that was the important part.

No, no it wasn't.

And then...

I still had to come up with a dress for my friend who had invited me to the event in the first place and gave me about 12 hours to purchase materials and make the damn thing.

And it still actually came out nicer.

 I essentially made a maxi skirt out of a taupe jersey to serve as a slip. I then took a few yards of pink sheer fabric and folded it in half, leaving a gratuitous amount for a train we'd then sew up. I turned the tube dress into a halter by cutting slit in the casing to hold the neck strap (which my friend had to be sewn into) and then I used some gold trim I found at Discount Fabrics for a belt. The back train was then threaded through a bracelet and sewn to the collar. The whole effect looked quite similar despite being so hastily thrown together.

conclusion

The event itself was mostly "meh." As someone who's been to a few big costume events and worked as many, I was generally unimpressed with the shindig. The set pieces they got were sort of half-assed and after the acrobatic troupe at the beginning, the whole thing felt like a glorified Bar Mitzvah... Which in the end wasn't that bad...

Considering, at the bar and bat mitzvah's I've been to, I was never allowed to get adorably schnockered.

So the night was saved, and after the first episode of the 3rd season aired, I was given a better insight into how Shay's dress was actually supposed to be done. So I will perhaps revisit that later. I still need to decide what to do with all this awful sheer purple/grey fabric but the bra is back to being a bra. Overall I'm going to say that I don't think I'll be doing a costume like this again for myself. I'm happy I was able to throw it together at all, although I think I would have been better off slapping a flower crown on my head and calling myself a Tyrell. It goes to show that sometimes you can't really cut corners and expect to be successful so y'know. You win some, you lose some.




EMILIA EYEBROW APPRECIATION GIF:

Next time, probably my new Italian dress. WHO KNOWS? To be honest, I don't usually remember what I put in this bit when I post stuff.