Hans, part 1

While some of the stages of this have been done out of order, I'm trying to finish one piece of the costume at a time, so I can also break it into posts as each is done and "something" is accomplished. At the same time, documenting makes me realize just how overly complicated I seem to make things for myself...I don't know why, but I always end up making more work trying to get things "just right".

So Hans, from Frozen. Working on this for Katsu. First off, his shirt.
Yeah, that thing that you see about 4 inches of at the collar and below his jaunty little magenta cravat or jabot, or whatever it should be called.



When getting the materials for this costume I tried to stick to materials that both made sense in the context of the movie, as well as what they physically looked like in terms of texture and appearance. In the case of Hans, much of his outfit looks like it is made of wool and silks. His shirt is kind of a weird shade of blue, it's not really a light blue, it's not dark either. I'd say it's kind of a "bright royal blue", really. I looked all over for a fabric in that color, or close to it, that also looked similiar...so a fabric with a little bit of sheen and a slight bit of texture. Initially I looked at dupioni and shantung fabrics, and even a few taffetas, both silk and synthetic faux silks, but everything was way too light, dark, or not even close.

Then I randomly came across what looked like the perfect color fabric, in a Jo-ann's.
Unfortunately, it looked like this.




Yeah... it's some sort of polyester taffeta, with this blue-green mesh sewn to one side of it. The color is a bit off with my camera, because my phone takes terrible pics with indoor lighting (and it also kind of sucks in general), but it was such a good find. A little bit of sheen, a nice medium shade of blue, and just a hint of a shot color to it. Of course, I would have to deal with the fact that it was not only crushed up, but had this mesh sewn all over it. Well, I've "uncrushed" this type of fabric before (when I worked on the "Fancy Dreamers" outfits and was on a mad scavenger hunt for 20 shades of purple-pink, I had to take what I could get). Plus, the look might be a good stand-in for silk, with the iridescence and texture, at least from a distance and...you know, while not really looking that much like silk, lol. Better than waiting around for the "perfect" fabric...that has left me dead in the water with productivity before.




Well, an overly long time with a seam ripper, and quite a few episodes of Bones later, I now had the mesh off. Now, to try and flatten it out with the iron. After all, I want to keep a bit of the irregular texture to it, but I obviously don't want it to look like this. Also, I definitely need to flatten it out to cut out, otherwise I will end up with crazy-shaped wonky pieces in the end. First, I threw it in the washer with some Milsoft...that stuff works wonders, it's a fabric softener that makes even the most papery of taffeta gain a bit more drape, and with some it's almost miraculous. Look it up if you're curious. It's mainly for silks and natural fabrics that have been dyed, but I've tried on all sorts of fabrics with pretty good results. Plus, both it and the water should relax the fabric a bit, and then I can iron it while it's still damp.




So it's really annoying to try and iron several yards of wide, slippery fabric. Really, really annoying. But here it is about halfway through. You can see that there is still some "grain" to it, but it's not longer all crumpled and gathered looking...still kinda crease-y though, so a bit more ironing is needed to make it just a texture, and not "I like to leave my clothes crumpled into balls before I wear them". Lots of steam and patience is the key here. Just a little more and it would be ready to cut pieces out, without having to worry about all the creases making things terribly off.




Derping around with muslin, face cropped because it was megaderp mode.




This is probably one of the slightly more accurate shots of the color. Just piecing stuff together here. Also, I don't know if other people do this, but I like to tie off the threads at the end of a dart rather than backtacking with the machine...it help it not do the stupid "dart bubble" that it likes to do in certain fabrics, and as everyone knows I'm infamous for leaving long threads when I finish a seam, so...it's kinda easy. I generally don't clip them until the very end, lol. In the groove, you know?




Aaaand here it is, done. With a possibly temporary stand-in scarf. Not sure how I feel about this one, going to try a few things. But want to get the right "feel" for things.

Whee,  now for, let's see...a vest, pants, and simply-yet-overly-adorned jacket, nay, tailcoat.
Pants next, then vest, and finally the coat. Not just because it's the more complicated piece, but because I want all the proportions right.

It's like the costume is practially making itself! sigh.