Thursday, April 3, 2014

Assassin's Creed - Part 1

Before I became a full-time freelance costumer, I worked as a nanny for two different homeschool families. Given that I was also their tutor, I spent a lot of time with these kids and they became pretty special to me. So imagine how excited I was when the oldest decided he wanted to commission his own costume from me! (My husband, being an Assassin's Creed fan, was also pretty excited.)


I used McCall's 5446 as a guideline for the white tunic, as I had the pattern on hand and the lines were pretty much exactly what I needed. I lengthened the torso a bit, and changed the neckline slightly, simple but important modifications.



Assassin's Creed fans will note that there is only one layer to this tunic. My client and I were trying to make this as easy and economical as possible, so we passed on that layer. (Easy... ha... you'll see...)


However, since my client wanted to use this piece for parkour as well as cosplay, it needed to be durable and easy to wash. I used a blend broadcloth and lined it with cotton muslin.


It's always difficult to complete slits when lining is involved. Sometimes I handsew the peaks to get an invisible seam, but that wasn't going to matter with this costume since the belt would be covering it. So I just topstitched it down.




I sewed the zipper into both the broadcloth and the lining at once, so there would be no raw edges on the interior. I


I just used a sturdy plastic jacket zipper.




I'd sewed the collar in before adding the zipper, so that the zipper could extend up into the collar. The final step to finish it involved pinning down the loose cotton and topstitching it to again avoid raw edges on the interior.


(Here you can see what it looked like pinned from the outside)


Read Part 2 -The Sleeves and Hood!

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