I Made a Fantasy Victorian Lord of the Rings Ensemble

I'm not usually one to gravitate towards cosplay or fantasy costuming, as much as I love looking at it and have a deep appreciation for both. Lord of the Rings is a different story. I grew up watching the films, and Tolkien is a literary genius. There's always so much to absorb with the series. That's why when I heard about the new Lord of the Rings show, which actually premieres today, and yes I had to time the release of this video purposefully, I knew I wanted to sew something Lord of the Rings. But, since I wear historical fashion, I also wanted something I'd actually be able to wear more than once, and just as an everyday type of outfit. That's when it dawned on me I could design a Lord of the Rings meets Victorian ensemble. The first thing I considered is which Lord of the Rings race I'd want to portray. I decided to base my ensemble off of Galadriel and the Elves in general, as I feel like they share a lot of similarities with the Pre-Raphaelites specifically. One of my all-time favourite paintings is this one by John Everett Millais, called Apple Blossoms, or later on it was called Spring. It was painted in 1858 or 59. It depicts some youthful women lounging in a spring orchard, and was painted from a Pre-Raphaelite lens. It's an incredibly charming painting, and it gives me very Elven-like energy somehow. Except for the hidden Grim Reaper scythe on the right of the painting, since Elves are technically immortal, so I guess that little bit doesn't really make sense. It's a pretty cool feature of the painting though. I decided to take inspiration from the painting for my own look, specifically this woman in green. It looks like she's wearing some type of mid-Victorian wrapper, and I've made plenty of those in the past, and already have a pattern I love, so I thought that'd be a great place to start, and I made some preliminary sketches. I chose to make my wrapper out of this extremely drapey and lightweight embroidered pink cotton lawn, as firstly, I already owned it, and secondly, its drape creates that deeply ethereal quality, along with the nature-related aspects of the floral embroidery. Then, no Elven ensemble would be complete without a cloak. I had some wonderful pale green silk satin in my stash, which I felt would be ideal for an ensemble mimicking the energy of Galadriel. Now that the planning stages were done, it was time to actually start constructing the ensemble. In the end, the entire ensemble was hand-stitched, and it took around 130 hours to construct. Here's the entire process. Beginning with the cloak, I utilized a pattern that I pulled from an antique late-Victorian cloak in my collection. I have this pattern available for sale on my website. Instead of keeping it the original size, I extended all sides quite significantly to get the longer style you tend to see Elves wearing. I decided not to go floor-length with any garments, however, as I still wanted this to be something I could wear regularly after the video. I also made this decision to cut the cloak on the bias, which you don't see done as often in the Victorian period, but in my case, it was so that the drape felt more waterfall-like, as I believe the film's cloaks were also cut on the bias from what I can tell. Now that my pieces were cut, I stitched up the center back seam, as I did not have enough fabric to cut the cloak all in one piece. I stitched up the darts, four in total, on both sides of the shoulders, and I also drafted my own pattern for the hood. In this case, utilizing a diagram I found online and adjusting it to the measurements of my own cloak's neck opening. I wanted the hood to have as little gathering as possible, so the measurements needed to be extremely precise. I really wanted to add embroidery to my Victorian meets Lord of the Rings cloak in order to mimic the style of embroidery on Galadriel's cloak in Lord of the Rings. You know, this one. Interestingly enough, a lot of the embroidery on the Elven cloaks in Lord of the Rings is inspired by Art Nouveau, which fits right in with our Victorian timeline. Even though technically I'm sort of sitting in a different decade, there was just one problem. An aspect of sewing I really don't have a lot of experience with is actually embroidery, and whilst I know some of the main stitches and how to form them, one part that always stumps me is how to transfer a self-drafted pattern or drawing onto multiple parts of a garment so that they're uniform. That's why I utilized the sponsor of today's video to help me out. Browsing Skillshare, I came across Heidi Sternberg's wonderful course called Hand Embroidery 101 Foundational Stitches and Techniques. I worked through some of the sections of this course, which shows a number of methods for how to transfer an embroidery pattern to your material, various stitches you can do, and so on and so forth. I went with the tracing paper method and drew out my design, then used carbon paper to trace the design onto the actual fabric. This Skillshare course was extremely helpful and one of the most comprehensive demonstrations that I've seen. I'm a massive fan of Skillshare because I consider myself to be a lifelong learner. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for anyone who loves learning and wants to explore their creativity and learn new skills. They're ad-free so you can stay in the zone whilst exploring new skills, and they have new premium classes launched each week so there's always something new to discover. Skillshare's entire catalog is also now available with subtitles in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German. Best of all, the first 1000 people to use the link below will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare. So if you've been thinking about improving a specific skill, this is perhaps the perfect opportunity. Once I had my embroidery pattern all transferred over thanks to Heidi's Skillshare course, I was able to start with the actual embroidery. I decided to use the outline stitch to complete the linework, and the first half of the cloak took around a full day of embroidery to finish. I then asked my patrons whether or not I should add beading, and they pretty much unanimously voted yes. So beading it was. That took about another half day for the first half of the cloak. At this point, the cloak did feel incredibly reminiscent of Galadriel's version. I also planned to continue the embroidery pattern onto the hood, but I actually ran out of time with this project. So that's something I'm going to do one evening when I want to complete some calming embroidery. I attached the hood to the cloak body and finished some of the raw edges, but again due to time constraints, I have a lot of raw edges that I still need to finish. I feel it's important to show these unfinished parts because I don't think it will take away from the final reveal, and it's also vital that we normalize works in progress. I decided to leave the cloak unlined so it could drape as much as possible to again solidify that ethereal look. And in this upcoming week, I'm also going to go back and add facings inside the cloak over the embroidery to help protect any of the exposed threads. I also tidied up the neckline where the hood meets the cloak body with a strip of bias tape that I made from some of the same silk satin. For the gown itself, I utilized one of my favorite patterns, Laughing Moon number 118. I can't recommend this pattern enough honestly, this is the third wrapper I've made from it, and they all turn out looking slightly different, but always very wearable and versatile. I cut out all the pieces, firstly the two front panels that are cut at a slight angle, and then a large rectangle back panel which will get cartridge pleated. And finally, a back bodice piece. I also decided on bishop sleeves, however, I wanted them to be even poofier and larger, so I altered the sleeve by extending the volume at the wrists and keeping the volume around the arms eyes the same. The bishop sleeve is very common during the mid-Victorian period, and it also fits right in with the timeline of the painting I'm referencing, whilst still kind of having one of those drapey elven feels. I also cut out a standing collar, along with a layer of cotton organ deinterfacing, and two cuffs, again with more organ deinterfacing to help add stiffness and support. I decided to only line the bodice portion, and selected a green linen as the pink outer fabric is ever so slightly sheer, so that green undertone gets to peek out ever so subtly. I sewed up all the main seams of the dress, aside from the rectangular back panel, and then pinned the green lining at the bodice, and started adding finishing touches to the dress. I stitched down the center fronts, securing them partway with twill tape for some extra support. For the back rectangular panel not yet attached, I cartridge pleated it. I felt that ¼ inch small cartridge pleats would produce a very wonderful effect, and I'm actually really happy with how it turned out. Once I cartridge pleated the panel, I stitched the side seams up with backstitches and secured it to the back bodice panel, whipstitching each cartridge pleat into place individually. Then I finished the inside raw seams with a mix of flat felling and fell-stitched twill tape. For the sleeves construction, I took the altered bishop sleeve pattern and sewed the seam up with backstitches, then finishing the raw edges with flat felled seams, because I decided to leave the sleeves in line so that they'd be as drapey as possible. I also attached the cuffs and sewed tiny gathers at both the wrists and arms eyes, in preparation for attaching them to the dress. I had to fiddle a bit with how to set the sleeves, as I tried two different gathering methods and wasn't really satisfied with either one. So this bit was quite time consuming, but in the end I got a sleeve that I was happy with. Then it was really just the final touches on the dress. I hemmed the entirety of the dress and attached the standing collar. And lastly, I sewed on some hooks and eyes, though because of time constraints I sewed on as few as I could get away with for now, but I will add more this upcoming week when I finish the gown. Now that both the cloak and dress were done, for the most part, it was time to move onto the leaf belt. I measured around my waist to the length where I wanted the belt to stop, and drafted a design which is essentially a thin belt that gradually grows and transforms into a leaf. I cut this design out of my green silk satin, the same one I used for the cloak, and spent the next few days embroidering the veins whenever I could, again using the outline stitch. I decided to freehand the design rather than making it uniform, as I wanted the veins to feel a lot more organic and messy. To finish the belt, I cut a layer of cotton organdy for interfacing, but trimmed away all the seam allowances. And I also didn't add organdy to the general vicinity where the belt would be getting tied, that way it would be easier to wrap the material. I cut a second layer of the satin to line the belt with, sandwiching the organdy between the front and the lining of the belt, notching and flipping under the seam allowances, and securing the lining with a bunch of whip stitches. The belt was finally complete, and it was way more work than I actually initially expected. I found this antique Victorian sideways leaf brooch on eBay, and felt it was such a wonderful historical representation of a brooch similar to the Leaves of Lorien. You know, the brooches that Galadriel gifts to the members of the Fellowship. I used this to secure the cloak in place. Finally was the circlet, or the elven crown. I wrapped mine using rose gold soft wire, and I followed a very simple tutorial here on YouTube, which I'll put in the description box if you'd like to make your own. Now all the elements were complete, well, they were complete enough. And the fun part could finally begin, getting ready for the reveal. I hope you've enjoyed watching this construction video, and the concept behind this look. Thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you in two weeks for another video.