"It looks like something dyed in there!"

So following "The Quest For the Crossover Crinkle" there came the "Dyeing of the Crossover Crinkle". Or as I like to call it, "Making the Garage Resemble an Abattoir".

The pink crinkle cotton and the burnt orange linen needed to be dyed a rusty brown, so brown dye with differing levels of reddy tones had been purchased. I had also bought myself a large plastic tub approximately the size of a small bathtub. This was actually designed for mixing plaster and was bought from a builders' supply yard! I would recommend a similar setup for anyone wishing to hand-dye material. A larger surface area always yields better results and having previously done most of my dyeing in the kitchen sink I can say the difference is noticeable.

So at the point we started at, we had two very different shades of material, shown here with flash (left) and without (right):

As I explained in the earlier post, my first step was to try and get them closer by dyeing the pink cotton terracotta and the orange linen rosewood red.

Dyeing fabric in the plaster tub was a larger scale job than my previous experiences of dyeing a tshirt or pair of shorts in the sink. For a start it can't be filled from the tap so I filled it with the necessary 6 litres of 40 degree water by filling it with two kettle loads of boiled water and two of cold tap water. Then the dye goes in, dissolved in a jug of warm water, plus a small bucket load of salt (which completely eradicated our supply and resulted in some pretty bland cooking until the next grocery shop.) Of course I also took it upon myself to spill a portion of red dye on the garage floor so when the gardeners passed through the next day they must have been convinced we were slaughtering livestock in there.

The overall result of the larger dyeing receptacle is a shallower body of water with large surface area, so the fabric can spread out and dye more evenly. I did have to fold the fabric over on itself a few times but was sure to unfold, re-fold, and rearrange the material on the surface of the water as many times as was practical so as to get the most even result.

I also threw the peasant skirt in with the rosewood for half an hour to give it a warmer tone.

The end result has evened the fabrics out considerably here shown with flash (left) and without (right):

The difference shows up a lot more with the flash on, but as this was at close quarters I decided to take another photo with the flash from a greater distance to see how it might photograph indoors at a convention or similar:

The overall effect isn't bad but the colours I think need to be browner and a little less rich. In natural light they still show up very... well, orange. The next phase will be, I think, to over-dye with a darker brown to calm them down a bit, and quite possibly get them a shade closer. I know a perfect match will be impossible but let's see what we can get with a little perseverance and another bath full of salt and chemicals!

An Ebay Update Courtesy of Xena Prop Treasures

 Fellow blogger Secret Kabeiros very kindly keeps us all informed on Xena goodies on Ebay and has shared some truly unique auctions - costume patterns and design notes from series 5 and 6. Some truly awesome and fascinating bits of production memorabilia for costume geeks like me. Check out the blog entry and links here:

Xena Prop Treasures: Heads-up! Production pieces on eBay

The Many Garbs of Gab

It's been a stressful few weeks so in the absence of much progress I thought I'd share a little costume study for series 1.

I've already discussed the different styles of peasant shirt worn by Gabrielle in season 1, but I thought I'd do a quick episodic breakdown of the different outfits throughout the season. This first season exhibits the most costume changes for a main character, possibly because of the fairly fast evolution of Gabrielle from peasant to Amazon trainee to burgeoning warrior, and they had to incorporate those changes into her wardrobe for practical and aesthetic reasons.

The peasant dress is ditched for the shorter crossover top and matching skirt halfway through, as it would be fairly tricky for Gab to fight in a full length dress. There is, however, a prototype crossover outfit which appears only once in "Death in Chains", featuring a wider blue stripe than the standard variant, a red leather belt, and, bizarrely, the Amazonian skirt and necklace bequeathed to Gabrielle by Terreis in the subsequent episode, "Hooves and Harlots". I imagine these episodes were originally filmed with the intention of airing the other way around, but something caused "H&H" to be pushed back. Continuity issues aside, I am not particularly fond of the alternate crossover outfit. I find it a little too fussy, with the belt and the necklace overpowering the overall look, and the wider blue stripes a little clumsy on Renee's 5'4" frame. I can see why they decided to change it. Nonetheless, it's nice to see the Amazon necklace making another appearance, albeit a little out of synch with Gabrielle's initiation into the Amazons!

1. "Sins of the Past" - Peasant dress, long sleeves.
2. "Chariots of War" - Peasant dress, long sleeves, w/jacket.
3. "Dreamworker" - Peasant dress, long sleeves. 
4. "Cradle of Hope" - Peasant dress, green, short sleeves.
5. "Path Not Taken" - Peasant dress, green, short sleeves.
6. "Reckoning" - Peasant dress, blue, short sleeves w/ jacket.
7. "Titans" - Peasant dress, green, short sleeves.
8. "Prometheus" - Peasant dress, blue, short sleeves w/ jacket.
9. "Death in Chains" -  Alternative crossover top, Amazon skirt and necklace.
10. "Hooves & Harlots" - Peasant dress, blue, short sleeves w/ jacket, Amazon Princess kit.
11. -  24. "Black Wolf" onwards - crossover top and wrap skirt.

The Quest For the Crossover Crinkle

The biggest challenge with Gab costumes is already becoming evident - it is finding the right fabric! In fact, "right" would be a misnomer - it is finding fabric close enough to do the job. It has been brought to my attention that a lot of the fabrics used were specially woven or sourced from local companies to give the costumes an authentic look and feel.

So, while still on the search for peasant skirt linen, I decided, for the sake of variety, to turn my attention to the crossover set while I waited for my multitude of samples to arrive. In theory this seemed like a good way to keep myself occupied and alleviate the boredom of continually failing fabric hunting. In actuality it simply expanded my continually failing at fabric hunting to a larger scale.

Studying the crossover top, the first thing that draws attention is the fact that it's textured. There is a distinctive patten. I concluded that I should focus on matching this texture above all else, buy the fabric in whatever colour it came in, and dye it later. The skirt and top appear to be similar colours so I figured if I bought them both in a similar colour I could dye them both with the same stuff and get a near perfect match. So I gravitated towards textured neutral cottons and bought this:

Well that was rather stupid. I don't know what I was thinking with that one but it was fairly cheap so never mind. The hunt continued, and then, in an unexpected place, I found this:

This is my parents' tablecloth, acquired second-hand somewhere around the 1970s. But that looks remarkably like the crinkle effect I'm aiming for! It was generously donated to the Gabby Project and I gleefully skipped down to the haberdashery for the packet of bleach, got back, threw it in the machine and waited to see how it would come out. Well it came out.... exactly the same as it went in actually. So I was no closer to success and £6.50 out of pocket.

With ebay still yielding no results, I decided to brave the Fancy Silk Store. Now, the Fancy Silk Store in Birmingham is a wonderful place but going in there looking for stuff is no mean task. It is three floors of high density stock and you can lose an hour in there without noticing. There is only one place I know more evil in terms of sapping the time away from you, and that is Platoon, the army surplus store in north Manchester (if you like that sort of thing). FSS is normally pretty good at coming up trumps with the weird and wonderful. I had found their linen range rather lacking when I'd gone searching for peasant skirt fabric (not enough variation of brown) but they rarely fail so I thought I'd try for textured stuff and start throwing dyes around if necessary.

I have often found the staff of fabric stores rarely "get" cosplayers. Realistically their main clientèle can be divided fairly neatly into two categories: People who make their own clothes and are just after something to do the job, and rich middle aged women who are into arts and crafts and are looking for "something lovely" to make a teacosy out of. You walk in with a photograph of someone off the telly and declare "I'm looking for something like that. No not just a BIT like that. Not just in that colour or with that vague sort of pattern. EXACTLY like that!" and they look at you as if you're nuts. As such I have given up asking for help and prefer to be left alone to browse in peace. And fortunately the folk at FSS seem content to let me do just that. This may partly be due to the fact that they have so many different materials that even THEY don't know what they have in the shop. (They probably do, but I don't envy them during stocktake.)

Skirt linen (left), top crinkle cotton (right).

On this visit I gravitated, as I always do these days, to the cottons and linens section where I found my blue peasant shirt fabric. Their range of textured cottons was really quite impressive and I found several matching the striped crinkles of the crossover top. Slightly oddly however was the fact that they all differed in thickness and texture. It didn't come in brown at all, and the white was the thinnest and flimsiest of the lot, so in the end I decided to plump for the closest pattern in a coral pink. This makes the process of matching up the colours of the top and skirt even more complicated.

The skirt looks like a linen. All the early season skirts appear to be a linen in varying shades of brown, and thus far I haven't found anything suitable for a single one of them. Many of the linens I am ordering from eBay are turning out to be far too thin - thankfully I have got into the habit of asking for samples from eBay rather than ordering by the metre based solely on a photo. At FSS though, I found a dull orange linen that was nice heavy duty that frayed well - always important for that dishevelled peasant look. I was expecting having to dye both the top and the skirt of the crossover set in order to match them up, so it looks like I'd be throwing a reddish brown dye over the orange and a terracotta brown over the pink in order to try and meet in the middle around a kind of reddy-maroon-y-brown. Fingers crossed....

"You make me wanna dye...."

Sleeves - decisions decisions!

With a lot of the primary construction on the peasant shirt done, I had to start thinking about which of the two sleeve styles I wanted to go with.

Gab's summer look?

Now admittedly the shorter simpler style would be a LOT easier to do, and I believe is also the one that matches up to my fabric better. However, this style is, let's face it, the more boring of the designs and is, as a result, commonly hidden under the jacket. So, much as the lazy part of me is SO tempted to lop the sleeves off at the elbow and have done with it, fact is I prefer the longer ruched sleeves. The longer sleeves are also the style more often viewed without the jacket, in several iconic moments such as the pilot episode and Renee's credit shot. The shorter sleeve style does, however, make an appearance in episodes such as 'The Titans' when Gabby wears the mint green shirt, so I may make one of these at a later date with the short sleeves, for the sake of variety.

I have stated before in my first assessment of the peasant dress fabrics that the longer sleeved shirt exhibited a geometric square design, and as such I was unable to find a close match. The fabric I have found has more of an organic linear texture to it but nonetheless I like the overall silhouette of the ruched sleeves and would like to replicate that look.

The neckline of this first variant is also a little higher, with the lacing just below, as opposed to the later designs which are lower cut with the lacing running from the waist to the bustline. The lacing on these designs also threads through small fabric loops sewn into the front of the shirt, whereas I cannot see any similar loops on the long sleeved version. I prefer the lower lacing though, so I'll be using that. If I am true to period and use cord instead of elastic around the neckline, I can keep the option of altering the neckline by tightening or loosening the cord accordingly. I may have to see what effect this has on the lacing though, as it may work without throwing off the rest of the garment.

As such I am effectively combining features of both designs - the long ruched sleeves of the first variant, and the bodice style lacing and crinkled fabric of the latter.

You may be able to see above, there are two channels running down the length of the sleeve from shoulder to cuff. I have sewn these in, as well as sewing similar channels around the neckline and cuff themselves, while being sure to leave spaces where necessary in order to thread the cord in when it arrives. The channel around the neckline is rather narrow so I have ordered the smallest cotton cord I could find (3mm) and am expecting a lot of fun(!) with a darning needle when it arrives. I may have to take the sleeves in slightly to get the right look but, again, I won't be able to tell until I put all the relevant cord in place and see how the sleeve behaves when it's all gathered together.

Overall shape of blouse so far, without cords.

Sleeve channels and neckline channel.

Meanwhile, the hunt for skirt and sash fabric continues. The viscose for the sash was a nice colour for texture wise a complete no-no, and the skirt needs a red dye throwing over it in order to get closer to the reddish terracotta of Gab's series 1 skirt. The jacket is close enough to the overall look (although it has been brought to my attention by Phil Aldridge that the actual jacket is a woven mixture of two different blues, but until I find anything closer, I am quite pleased with my current purchase) so I will be carrying on with the jacket next once the shirt is finished.

My fabrics so far - jacket, shirt, sash and skirt.

Why Gabby?

So ok, here’s a big question I was pondering when I first dreamed up this blog. If I’m going to make a character from ‘Xena’ my inspiration for spiritual strength and physical fitness, surely Xena herself would be the obvious choice, right?

Well it’s true enough that Xena is certainly the driving force behind some of my emotional developments. The “Warrior Princess” theme is my ‘get up and go’ track of choice, and I am considering getting a WWXD bracelet to refer to when times get tough. This is all well and good, but as a cosplayer I like to have a more practical goal to aim for, so naturally the journey I’m taking involves at least one cosplay.

As it stands, I do not have either the skill or the budget to be Xena , nor do I look even slightly like her in terms of face or build. (There was a brief time long ago when I had considered making myself a Xena costume out of leather or leatherette and cardboard or plate metal but ultimately I kind of like playing characters to whom I bear at least a passable resemblance.) So I decided to look elsewhere.

Velasca, God of Chaos. Another cosplay I considered.

As a show, ‘Xena’ is abundant in beautiful costumes. I have considered a variety of other outfits from the show as well, either for aesthetics or for giggles. I’m also a Joxer fan and while I’m not adverse to crossplay (I spent a year running around as the Tenth Doctor) his kit also falls under the category of too complicated in terms of prop making. There is the option of genderbending which would give me a bit more freedom in terms of design but I reckon ultimately I’ll show my Joxer-love by cosplaying Annie Day from ‘Deja Vu...’ at some point. Yes I’ll have to work with leatherette again, yes I’ll undoubtedly wind up bleeding over my sewing machine, but hey – I get to wear my glasses as part of a costume! Velaska was another one I looked at, and may still do, simply as I have always loved her outfit and character. The asymmetry and fabrics of her outfit as awesome. I’ve also done Aphrodite, but (un)fortunately there are no photographs. However I do believe she is still lurking in a box somewhere....

Even further back in the mists of time I had considered a Callisto costume. That may have been more feasible than Xena, as most of the metal work in that seems to involve hitting rivets with hammers, and that’s something even I can do. But in terms of physique I am nowhere CLOSE to Hudson, and while I don’t rigidly cosplay only to my own build, I doubt attempting to look like her would do much for my confidence. Years of eating disorders have taken their toll and my body image is a shy, fragile little creature prone to go scurrying off into the woodlands like a frightened rabbit at the first hint of an unflattering photograph. And while I WAS able to slim down to spend a year as a moderately convincing Amy Pond, THAT didn’t involve a leather bikini. Facially I am more like Hudson than Renee, (wide skull, brown eyes, small chin, rather toothy grin prone to looking a little manic) but I’m probably a passable Gabby in terms of both face and physique. (Well, I say physique, I mean a physique I can reasonably aim for in the time I have without resorting back to unhealthy habits.)

So, Gabrielle looks to be the best in terms of both self image and costuming ability, but what of the costumes themselves? How do I choose, what to do, what to skip?

I agonised over which one to choose before deciding to do ALL of them: The peasant dress, the crossover twinset, the BGSB, the sari, the leathers, the red velvet, then most likely the Amazon Princess and Amazon Queen kits and maybe one of her one off dresses too. She has a lovely range of costumes which decrease in coverage throughout but increase in complexity, so I can expand my skills and fitness simultaneously as I work my way through the seasons. I’m going to be implementing many different skills as I work through the project, including embroidery, beading, weaving, leatherwork, prop making, jewellery making, and maybe even the odd bit of metalwork. And hopefully as each costume comes together I’ll have achieved the physique I want to look and feel good wearing it, and can, little by little, show some abs as I gradually regain them...

The ever shrinking outfits of Gabrielle.

Gab's Abs - a Xena Online Community Challenge

Some of the lovely folk on XOC.com decided to hold a little friendly challenge - to see if we can get abs like Gabrielle! Perhaps not quite capable of deflecting the strike of a sword, but maybe something kinda fierce looking and ripped!

It's been a while since I really had any kind of visible musculature of which to speak so it's kind of a big thing for me to start trying to get that back. I still have a some weight to lose but some planks, situps etc may well help along the way, alongside my usual three runs a week.

So I'm using this plan, albeit spread out a little so I'm using it on non-running days. It may take a little longer than the proposed month but hey ho...

Realistically if I can even do these I'll be thrilled, let alone get any visible effects. I probably need to shed another stone before any muscles, abs or otherwise, start to show but with running, situps, yoga and continued calorie control I'm hoping it'll all make a difference.

My starting point. Around 160lbs.

 Wish me luck!