Sewing Plans 2026

Sewing 2026.

MAKE COVER FOR WHITE ROCKING CHAIR SEAT,
Cover the Couch!

The general plan is to make a prototype and wear it for at least 2 weeks. Then, making adjustments as necessary, to batch sew/mass produce about 4 or 5 of them. This is much more efficient.

1. FOR THE KIDS---sew it WITH them. Everyone over 7 helps make their own.
1. Ranger Cloaks for Everyone
2. Circle skirts for everyone
3. Desert Ranger Tunics for Everyone [Desert Medieval]
4. Pouches for everyone. Canvas and leather
5. Half Aprons for everyone [make 4 for me]
6. Hobbit Dresses 2026!!! FORE EVERYONE, FOR BEKAH’S KIDS TOO
7. Elven Dresses 2025 [for Each girl. T-shirt material for Irene, Ruhi, Ana. Use wovens for J,K,M,S]
8. !!!!Jedi Robes for ALL the Padawans [they help design it for their character] This is our Magnum Opus
2. SKIRTS
1.  4 circle skirts/gathered circle [brown, tan, grey, hunter green, olive green, dark red]
2. Victorian Skirt [tummy tissue redistribution]
3. Victorian Skirt with lacing adjustment. 
4. Victorian Skirt in sea green with black trim....[for Sherri]
5. 1 yoked double petti-skirt [copied from the 00's skirt], yoked tummy panel for tissue redistribution
3. Blouse Experiments
1. White blouse experiment---knit bodice, and woven long puffed sleeves….bottom puff, normal top, etc. Short sleeve, large hanging half sleeve, long sleeve. Woven sleeves, t shirt bodice, square neck
2. Anne Of Avonlea blouses---woven sleeves and yoke, knit body
3. 4 blouses [make tunic length, slit sides at hip??,] cuffed sleeve???
4.  1 blouse, open sleeve end [summer, trying to keep sun off but also heat away, experimental]
4. Medieval Tunics (3)
1. Desert Ranger Tunics
1. Half Sleeve
2. Foldable long sleeves...
2. T shirt tunic
3. 5 Plain olive green T tunic, brown closure. Fitted, but pull on. Trimmed and side-slit edge, tunic length. Want to make from linen.
4. Medieval fit n flare tunics for Jenny [so she can run in them]
5. Overtunics
1. [4-8 hrs?]1 brown/olive green Medieval Ranger-ish 'overtunic'. padded shoulders, sleeveless, front closure, flare out at the sides for movement, above knee length. Dunedein.  [experimental]
2. Jedi Robe, styled off of ObiWan's in TPM. Make the sleeves separate, so it can be worn in hot weather. Long sleeve under. Top tnic part.
6. FINISH THE JOB
1. Dirndle It. [at least 6 dresses...]
2. Go through woven blouse stash, taking in sides, adding puffed sleeves etc
7. DIRNDL 
1.  Bodice
1. 1 bodice
2. Experimental bodice from existing princess seamed womens shirt.
2. 5 basic cotton dirndls [like the blue one, but with a full circle] MASS PRODUCTION, BATCH SEW
1. olive green
2. Hunter green 
3. brown
4. burnt orange
5. crimson red with a hunter green skirt 

WINTER SEWING (Push off to Jan 2027?)

1. Medievalish, mens long sleeve shirts to tunic dresses (use the rebels shirt), basically, loose, but a tight waistband of contrast t shirt fabric and the rest of the shirt comes down long enough to cover bum leggings
2. Really cool belt thingy. 2 belts, looped together with slots for an additional 2 shoulder strap belts. Pouches for things---knives, waterbottle, tinderbox....wallet, keys, phone.
3. TIGHTEN all leggings
4. Add cuffs and pockets to the elf-coat
5. Tighten the sides and extend the sleeves for ALL my long sleeved shirts
6. Extend the sleeves of long sleeve shirts
1. Simple
2. extended point
3. dropped puff, brown honeymoon shirt [only for scoop necked long sleeve shirts]
7. MAKE OR Add tummy panels to all  underpants---to help with my scar tissue redistribution  

Brunette Eowyns and Human Heras: Thoughts on Cosplaying

Cosplaying is fun. I admit, I spent a good chunk of the last 5 years, saving pictures of really cool cosplays to my computer. I like dressing up, and I like stories. (Full disclaimer, despite spending hours of my life saving & researching cosplays, I have never actually been to a conference, or even a midnight showing, alas)


However, something I realized, sorting out the cosplays I particularly liked, is there are 2 things I value if I did cosplay--to look like the character, but also, to also be kind of like the character---if they were me. Sort of like capturing the "ethos" of the character, translated into the modern day me.


For example: An hours worth of make up on Princess Leia? Totally. Princesses have to keep up appearances. Princesses need to be careful how they dress, how they walk, how they look. So a princess would totally spend a lot of time on make up. Yes, Princess Leia is cool and independent. So that means she puts on her own makeup, and doesn't drag along a make-up assistant before battles. She's still a princess, you know.

So if I was pretending to be Princess Leia, then yes, I'd put on make up.

More than a minute's worth of makeup on Mara Jade? Think about it. Her idea of looking presentable when Luke was coming, was to wash her face in an icy creek when she hadn't had a shower in 2 weeks. (Specter of the Past). If Mara used make-up at all, she probably wouldn't put on any more than took 60 seconds....unless she was impersonating a duchess or something like in Allegiance. But most of her work seemed to be of the hijacking pirate ships and leaping over roof-struts to rescue hostages type of things.

I like this picture of her I found on the internet. Red gold hair on a blazingly idealistic 18 yr old.

So if I were pretending to be Mara, I wouldn't bother with make-up. (And whomever illustrated the cover of Choices of One should have thought about that triple-applied mascara....)

So for portraying an alien (like Hera Syndulla), a human girl wearing a realistic & weathered aviator suit feels much more "authentic" to me, than one wearing hours worth of make-up and prosthetics to look like a Twilek. (Because a Twilek wouldn't need prosthetics.)

That said, I think when I do get round to making Josh a Grand Admiral Uniform, we will go the whole 9 yards with the blue skin and red eyes and all, because Josh basically is Thrawn already. (minus the superhuman IQ. And Josh is a Christian. And a sort of imperialist libertarian. So not the totalitarian part either.) But when we do give Josh blue skin, we will do it authentically. So I will feed him colloidal silver, to turn his skin bluish-grey naturally.

That was a joke.
We will use make-up.

Ok, back to my pointless ramble....

When trying to be like Tolkien's characters, I feel like it somehow isn't really the ethos of the Elves of Middle Earth to be wearing lots of make-up or wigs.
To me, Tolkien's world is about the natural beauty of things, the grain of the wood, the rustle of leaves, the tangle of rocks and trees and stars, elven maidens clad in simple dresses, water bubbling over rocks from a mountain brook. (As much as I love the complicated velvet gowns of the movies, they don't seem to really match the people in the book). When cosplaying Lord of the Rings characters, I like it when cosplayers just showcase the beauty of their natural hair (even forgoing their "usual" modern hair products, straighteners, curling irons, etc) go light on the make-up, and leave the artificial wigs alone.
To me, a brunette Eowyn or a blonde Arwen is so much more "authentic" than one with a wig. And an Arwen or an Eowyn climbing a tree or making breakfast feels more "authentic" to me than one at a convention playing dress up (which I imagine would be very very fun, hanging out with like-minded people, and I would love to do some day. However, it's not capturing the "ethos" of the elves).

this cosplayer "Mela"dress made by "Gen", captures more of the "ethos" of the elves for me than any of the elves in the movies did with their make up artists and fake trees.

Same for medieval looks. I feel more medieval by trying to capture the ethos of it in my everyday clothing. For me, that means having Isaiah wearing a medieval tunic with his jeans as he climbs a tree, and wearing cotton tunics & belts with my modern day pants, as I play with the kids in the back yard, make dinner, and pray. Also while learning how to shoot. But we haven't got there yet....

**********************************************************************************
-------A long ramble on the subject of hair, probably of interest to very few-------------------------------

I prefer dark haired Eowyns to Eowyns with yellow wigs. (Practically, because you have to drop a good bit of money into a blonde wig for it not to look fake.) But also, I don't think Middle Earthers wore wigs, at least, not the rough-and-tumble early-medieval-Saxon-esque people of Rohan, living in wattle & daub halls (maybe flax or hair extensions, but definitely not wigs. That would be Roman).


For Star Wars, their technology is obviously very advanced, so wigs definitely existed. Princess Leia would be following in a long line of royal tradition to be wearing hair extensions & hair rats/padding. (Also, hair extensions have been around for as long as women have been able to cut off and save their own braids.)

Cosplaying realistic red hair is an issue unto itself. Sadly, a good chunk of awesome women in fiction have red hair :(
Black Widow does obviously dye her hair all sorts of colors, so dyed red hair for her makes perfect sense. (But why she straightened it in Cap 2, when they were running for their lives and hiding at Falcon's house, no one knows. She probably used an actual iron though, because she's awesome like that.)
However, with Mara, I wouldn't use dye. Firstly, because for a dark brunette to pull of red-gold, it would take something far far beyond my skill (probably professional chemicals at a salon). Secondly, because Mara would never have bothered to dye her hair, even when it would have been practical for camouflage (When she gets caught flat footed by a bounty hunter in Dark Force Rising who recognizes her by her hair). She wears a hood, though (Choices of One),so I would be a brunette Mara with a hood. But if you have blonde hair, and can pull off natural-looking red-gold hair......

Medievaloid Maternity Shift Dresses

So no baby yet.
Keep thinking "It's tonight!" and then, nothing....this kid is trying to prove me wrong, and show up late....

Anyway, I finally wore out my favorite maternity shift dress (the fabric just spontaneously burst holes in multiple places in a wash, kind of like the "Wonderful One Hoss Shay"), so a month ago I rubbed the pattern off, added cap sleeves, and sewed it up. (Didn't get round to photographing it till last week when Bekah was here)

I made it from a cotton IKEA tablecloth that I picked up at a thrift store a while back. The center stripe and facing are sort of medieval-inspired that I sketched up. I guess kinda like this picture of Ninth Century dress by Tom Tierney, the dress on the right.

From Dover's Medieval Fashions by Tom Tierney

I added gold accents, because gold and blue together look so medieval to me. In sunlight, you can see the gold a little better.

Here is a closeup of the trim. I stenciled it using this method, and printed it rather quickly and sloppily late at night with the justification that it was a mock-up. I used a cosmetic wedge sponge from dollar tree, and Tulip Metallic Gold Fabric paint. (Sorry the dress is wrinkled)

I've been expecting you for over a week baby....whenever you're ready...

How to Make Eowyn's Medallion Belt from Recycling: Analysis and Ideas

 I'll update this post with links to the finished belts as I make them.

I've been trying to figure out how to make Eowyn's Medallion belts for a while. Here is my write up and analysis of how to make Eowyn's belt. There's a full analysis on the alleyscratch website, which all these pictures are from.

Medallion Belt worn with her Green Gown

Medallion belt  on her White Wool Dress (really just a silver version of the Green Gown one, sewn onto a gold trimmed fabric belt)

Alleyscratch has a very good analysis, with diagrams and breakdowns of the medallions' constructions.

link to full page here.

The medallion belts are made of 2 medallions, a bigger central one, and a smaller side one.

front of belt.

Here are some nice fan-made examples that I have analyzed.

Yvette's Costume Site Example---clay and wire
Yvette (check out her amazing Arwen dresses, especially this one, scroll to the bottom of the page...) made them from metal clay and silver wire (scroll down to the bottom of the page to see them).
Like so.

close-up of Yvette's finished medallion, LINK HERE

Yvette's finished belt. LINK HERE

I don't think its necessary to make them from metal clay or silver wire, since baking the clay seems to tarnish the wire. Also, if you are going to paint it anyway, there isn't a need to use metallic clay.

 In my past obsession with wire-work, I've found steel utility wire is a lot cheaper than craft wire, and can be bent well with 2 pairs of pliers.
But if you want something that is really easy to bend with your fingers, skip the copper and get aluminum wire (which is still cheaper copper).

Yvette's version is lovely, and I like how she spaces the medallions nicely, it really gives it a medallion feel. Things I would do differently, is I like the medallions to be bigger, giving a visually thicker belt (which I think is slenderizing on fuller figures). I also would use a gauge 16 wire at least, as I think gauge 18 and above are a little thin for my taste, I like the wire flower loops to have more "pop."

Kairi G Design's version---3D printed plastic
LINK AND PICTURE FROM HERE. I really like the size of her medallions, they're a lot larger than Yvette's belt (perhaps even larger than in the film?). They were 3D printed from plastic, so its not an option for me

 Print my Props version---3D printed plastic.
You can hire people to do it for you....picture below

link to etsy shop here.

Mia's costume Site Violyns.tripod.com---metal rings and wire.
LINK HERE. This captures so much of the feel of Eowyn's belt, using instead of medallions, metal rings which the wire then is strung into, and spray painted.

Quite well done. LINK HERE. I like especially how she translated the medallion shapes to wires. I also like how nice and plump she made the "petals" of wire.

The finished look is quite good. I think the openness of the rings works especially well in the white belt version, since it works more on a lace-like feel.

From HERE on Mia's Costume site, more pictures and a write up

You could also do it with plastic rings for cheaper...

Cation designs ----Eowyn Inspired Belt from filigrees and jump rings
LINK HERE. I think this captures the most of the spirit of Eowyn's belt without having absolute screen accuracy. She simply strung together filigrees with jump rings (and also painted it a bit).

Pictures of her dress are here, her write up of the making of here.

It's real metal, so feels more authentic, and looks awesome. Filigrees are very thin stamped metal, that looks kinda like lace. Etsy is full of various filigrees, Hobby Lobby also has a fair amount.
I think this one especially looks reminiscient of Eowyn's belt. I wish it were just a tad larger though.

Antique gold scalloped round filigrees

I am going to make one using these filigrees. You can either string them together with jump rings and a lobster clasp (like her Green Gown belt) or sew them onto a fabric belt with trim/beading (like Eowyn's white wool gown belt) which gives you the option of more visually thickening the belt, if you would like.


Ideas for making Eowyn's medallion belt from Plastic and aluminum wire.
If you are going to go the plastic route at home, I would think a good start is to look at the alleyscratch break down of the medallion, and cut out the base metal part from plastic sheeting with a utility knife (on a glass cutting mat!). You could use yogurt lids, or pretty much any rigid plastic in the recyclying bin. Or craft foam. I would like to do it with something a little more rigid than yogurt lid plastic, maybe the bottom of those big plastic icecream tubs??? If you have an idea, please let me know in the comments!

Then you'd sand the plastic pieces with sandpaper, to make them more textured (and hold paint).
The wire parts I'd make from gauge 16 or 14 aluminum wire (since the plastic is soft anyway), lightly hammered. I want to use thicker gauge wire, because to me, a lot of the beauty of the belt comes from the wire loops not looking spindly.
 
Then you'd stack the pieces together with rivets through the centers. (preferably the big sewology push on kinds? Or furniture tacks with the ends sanded off, and bent with pliers?)

Lastly, spray paint with a darker color, and rub progressively brighter layers of metallic gold acrylic paint on it ($2 for those little 4 oz bottles from Walmart or Hobby Lobby) to make it look like metal (you want to go from the most "antique" colors of gold, to the brightest color of gold last, to give it depth.)

Ideas for making Eowyn's medallion belt from metal...recycling & steel utility wire! Cold forging!!
If you want to go the all-metal route, I would use can lids (6 oz. tomato paste, and frozen juice concentrate lids) opened with a NO SHARP EDGES CAN OPENER. (I don't know the correct name, except that there are sharp edges, just on the can, and not the lid, it cuts from the side, like this one). You don't want the lid part to have sharp edges, it will snag on your dress and cut your fingers)

You would punch the hole through the center with a hammer and nail (scrap wood underneath). This hole will be for the rivet, to hold it all together.

Because this is a sturdier version than the plastic, I am going to use real steel utility wire gauge 16 (so cheap at Lowes! BlueHawk brand at Lowes 100 ft for 8 bucks)
I've found with thicker gauge steel wire, the best shaping I get is with careful measuring, and using 2 sturdy pairs of pliers. I'd hammer it (carefully) lightly afterward, to help it keep its shape. The "seam" where the wire ends meet, will be at the center, where they will be covered up with the rivet.

I'd use real sturdy Tandy type of rivets for this, since I'm not as afraid to bang it with a hammer since its all metal.

Painting it, I'd spray paint it with Rustoleum matte dark colored spray paint, then build up brighter layers of gold with acrylic metallic paints and a rag.

Lastly, I'd string it together with jump rings.

This belt will not be screen authentic as it won't have large decorative holes in the medallions (if you had a punch and die set, you could do this easily), but the trade off is worth it to me to have something all metal, versus metal and plastic.

Ideas for making Eowyn's medallion belt from filigrees and fabric trim.
This is inspired by the belt on her white wool gown. You can get a lot more "bang" visually, with fewer filigrees. I really like these versions from redrose-online.de,

Check out their galleries, they're beautiful.

Gorgeous dress MORE PICTURES HERE.

From redrose-online.de HERE,. This is under this gallery. I love how visually thick it is. The neckband is amazing too.

And the belt on this is just...wow.

From redrose-online.de HERE (this is under the historic gallery) I just love how they used the square medallions, matching the color perfectly with the trim on the dark red. I think I am going to try something like this, on a brown or black velveteen fabric. We'll see.

These ones from Fashionsintime are pretty good too. Although I think those are more medallions and not filigrees.

from HERE from fashions in time

So here are a few of my ideas. You would use trim or braid, sewn with thread onto the fabric (a techinque called "couching"). You would sew the filigrees on, and could even do rivets or beading if you were feeling up to it. One of the advantages of this method is you could control the visual "thickness" of the belt, even if your filigrees were small, by how you placed your trim or braid.

I'm even considering using my stencils and fabric paint for the central fabric part of the belt, with the filigrees sewn on in strategic places as accents. I'd border the whole thing with trim or braid.

I'll update this post with links to the finished belts as I make them.

Arwen's Bridge Dress: Analysis and Planning

Analysis on Arwen's Bridge dress. (Analysis on Arwen's Bloodred dress here)
So here are some thoughts on making a cowl-neck, Arwen-inspired maternity dress.

I have now come to really like this dress, even though initially it was not my favorite from the movie. Maybe it was the fact it only showed up in a smooching scene.

Watching people kiss...especially when us as an audience is forced to be right up in their faces....is just, so, awkward for me. I mean, if its sillhouetted against a sunset, and we're kind of watching from a distance (like an unscrupulous 14 yr old might, say, watch the neighbor boy and his girlfriend kissing in his front yard, in this completely hypothetical situation...) then its kinda sweet.
But when we get camera angles like we're watching from 3 ft away while they're kissing....well...I'm pretty sure the hypothetical neighbor boy would have minded that....

Um, I love cowl necks.


This cosplayer made it so beautifully, she convinced me to try to make it.

Farothiel on Deviantart "Arwen's Bridge Dress"

Farothiel on Deviantart "Arwen's Bridge Dress 2"

Maybe its because the way she made it reminded me of my dream wedding dress (that, alas, I had neither the funds for nor the skill to make when I got married.)

From Carpetina.com here

from carpetina.com here

 Some other cosplayers who did a decent job...

Therese on the Alleyscratch Scrapbook

by Eryndis-Waldlichtung on Deviantart

Sidhe on the Alleyscratch Scrapbook

Sidhe on the alleyscratch scrapbook

Looking at all of these, I know I really like the cowl neck. 

I also like the look white chiffon hanging down....even in Therese's example with the little bit of chiffon, its still beautiful. I'll probably do sort of petal-like half sleeves...maybe removable...we'll see.

I think I prefer fitted bust, and empire line for this one...actually, I think I end up preferring that for all of Arwen's dresses....

While the exposed shoulder top looks lovely on these folks, I just can't get used to it on myself. Firstly, the tops of my shoulders BURN LIKE CRAZY (I don't even know why. But they do). And secondly, it looks (on me) a little too night-gownish, I think.

So, onto practical construction...

Ta'anit Isis made some cowl neck shirts, and made this handy infographic.

from Ta'anit Isis HERE

As you can see from her pictures, her cowl extends under the bust. 

As my bust will be full of milk, I don't think I want it accentuated any more...so I will only slash my pattern (the red lines) to above the bust apex point.

My favorite part of her design, is how the back shoulder extends to the front, where the cowl actually starts. This is an ideal way to add in a gathered shoulder, without having to worry about the shoulder, or the cowl, becoming all untucked, because they are actually separate pieces.

The other thing I love about this design, is I can make it nursing accessible by having 2 layers of "fronts", the under-front is just there to form the armhole and keep the shoulder line, its neckline will go under the bust. Then the over-front layer will be the cowl, but where the pleats are, its actually just hooked (2 sets of skirt hooks?), making it simple to open and nurse, and hook it up when you are done.

I will make my own infographic at some point to illustrate....

Baby and Toddler Elven Dresses with Belts

Here they are, actually finished.

They just really needed belts. (Making of posts, here, here and here. I made Keziah's elven dress out of a dark green Men's T shirt, and Jenny's out of 2 bright red T shirts.

Things I'd do differently next time:

1. Interface the neck on Jenny's....the weight of the sleeves kind of pull it down.
2. Use heat-n-bond when applying the belts onto 2T and under dresses.
3. Make 2T + belts out of canvas or something firm, and just slip stitch the sides onto the belt.