Tag: Larp

Busy

I’ve found myself a summer job. I clean the homes of old people who cannot do it themselves anymore. So for 4 weeks now, and one week more, I hop on my bike every morning and afternoon and work for 2-3.5 hours at a stretch. Vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms and toilets, making spider webs go away etcetera. It’s been quite a lot of fun actually. The cleaning itself is boring, but the conversations with the people are really nice.

I have found out that there are two things that connect practically all old people together.. They all have barometers and orchids, and are generally offended if you do not want a cookie with your tea/coffee (they also do not approve of drinking just water, it’s got to have flavour). If I’m not hungry I feel like I’ve upset their whole day by not wanting the food they offer. Still, I’ve enjoyed myself, some people I like better than others (and can hear me better).

With all that work (5-6 hours a day), I’ve felt quite busy. Although, really, I’m not very busy, I have all nights off so I should not complain. I’ve knitted a little, my sleeves now have 8 stripes, with the ninth being the next two lines, and I’m supposed to have 14 I think, so I’m at least halfway done now.

Well that was project 1. Project 2 is a medieval type dress for larp (inspiration) that I’m putting together using a light fabric with brown and silver swirls for the bodice and front, a dark brown for the skirt and top of the sleeves, and a lighter brown for the bottom of the sleeves (the fabrics were perfect, but there was only 3 and 2 meters left of them). I don’t have that pattern but I’m trying to make it work by adapting other patterns and some divine inspiration (or just normal inspiration really). It’s going quite well, although the light fabric is printed really really off grain, so I’m having to do some strange damage limitation. When it’s finished, I’ll try to show that. The personal deadline for this project is September 6th.

So it’s one more week of helping old people, then school again. That in combination with attempting to finish my projects, and all should be well. Now, further with the second project, since its deadline is closer. Enjoy the creatives too!

Full Larp Costume

So here it is, in its entirety: my larp costume for the Ravenskeep event on May 17-20 2012. Prepare for a photo-heavy post, people.

First up: the full view (apart from the boots).

  

Left the top, in the middle the bottom half, including the usually very heavy brown bag and boots. To the right the side with a water sack and a ‘lock-picking set’.

And the pockets from close up, including content:

 

Thread left, pins and needles right.

 

Keys left, home-made pencil right (glue a graphite bit in a stick, really easy, really satisfying).

 

Salt left, and more pockets with more vials with herbs and an ink bottle (with a black cap)

 and even more pockets and vials!

I was really quite happy with the outfit although it did pose some technical difficulties. Sitting down on something low (for example: the ground or tree logs) is very difficult, because stuff might fall out. Running in the skirt is also not advised. However, it did hold up well, and the main issue I had, was with my overfull bag which hang on my hip bones (see also the picture up top), making the bones ache a bit. So I could probably improve the function of the skirt, snaps? perhaps. Overall, I’m happy about that though.

However, I have not made my mind up about the event itself yet. There was enormous chaos in the beginning (Friday night) and on the Saturday I had a scare which kept me out of it for most of the day. Sunday was really nice, because I got a task and figured out something I could do and felt really useful. I like feeling useful!

I’m going to have to see if I go again, of course also in combination with the always difficult part of figuring out the schedule at the university.
I think I might prefer not being the same person for 3 days straight, but that might change once I actually figure out the things I’m supposed to know in the game. (Pretending to have knowledge on the history of the country without knowing anything about the country is really difficult, that’s for sure.)

On to the next project! I’m thinking a t-shirt.
Happy crafting!

Larp Over Dress

I don’t know if it’s a real word, but the last section of my Larp costume was an over dress. Somewhat coat like, with a lacing closure at the front and no sleeves. The top part was based (partly) on the Franzi vest pattern from Burda style (here). Admittedly, it doesn’t look anything like it any more, but I used the bones and then just cut the bits away that did not correspond with the vision I had.

I made the straps thinner, cut the back a bit deeper, trimmed of the bottom so it was straight,  cut a section away from the front to create the square neck and made it too small in front so it would not close (on purpose). Then I added a square section of the curtain (yes, it was made from a curtain) with pleats to the bottom of the vest part. I also drafted my own facings for the top section, and added a ribbon to each front section, sewing it at approximately 1.5 cm intervals so I could thread a string through it and lace it up. There are also two pockets in the front sections of the skirt part, where I just left a bit of the front hem open (more pockets, yay!).

All in all, I’m really satisfied with this piece, it turned out pretty much exactly how I wanted it. It was really comfortable and I didn’t have any problems while wearing it.
So here it is:

 

 

From left to right: the complete overdress; the pocket in the lower left hem, the inside (completely finished) and the closure through which a string or ribbon gets laced. The bottom of the ribbon gets tied together to close the dress at the front before lacing commences. It helps in the process and looks nice in the final product.

Again all wrinkly and stuff, but this will be remedied with a bit of laundry and an iron.

Tomorrow the final part of this series: the complete costume!

Larp Shirt

It’s possible that you’ve seen the shirt before, I wore it during Carnaval last year. However, I made some small modifications. I added another layer to the sleeves, because I was afraid I would be cold. I think it helped so that was nice. I also chose to loosen the string that ran along the top of the neck opening, so I could wear it below the shoulders.

It’s based on a free pattern from Burda style (here), which  I adapted to have long sleeves (basically just drew the line of the sleeve a lot longer, until it hit my wrist). I normally have a hard time wearing off the shoulder items, because I feel the need for hiking them up. However, the straps on the skirt made it feel as if there was something on my shoulder, so it didn’t bother me at all.

Of course a picture:

It’s quite hard to see the double layer, but if you click the picture, squint and focus on the attachment of the right sleeve to the bodice, you’ll see the bodice is lighter in colour. I know it’s all wrinkly too, that’s because I wore it for an extended period of time, and it hasn’t been in the wash yet. It will be, sometime soon, and then I’ll iron it, and it will (hopefully) look all nice again, this is just an indication of how it looks.

Tomorrow, part three: the over dress.

Larp Skirt

For my bottom half I made a skirt, red with two blue stripes down the front. I also added a gazillion pockets to it. I was playing a character that liked to collect things, preferably shiny things (buttons, coins, helmets..), and had to keep them close.

Eventually I had the skirt finished a couple of hours before I had to leave for the actual event. With all the stuff in the pockets, it would be quite heavy so I added straps to the top to keep it in place, which worked quite well, although they did lengthen a bit over time and I had to open the buttonholes higher up on the straps. There was no pattern for the skirt, just a couple of trapezoid pieces stuck together, I added in the blue because I felt I did not have enough room to move. The blue certainly did help, and I like the pop of additional colour.

Anyway, here is the final result:

 

Left the real finished product and right the original idea. They do look somewhat similar right?

I just counted the pockets and there are 40 individual pockets to put things in, although there are only 31 pieces of fabric attached. Some bits were divided up into three to hold small vials of herbs and beads.

The left bottom side (right when I’m wearing it) is still empty, that is because I figured that if I would be really bored I could whip out the needles that were in the white pocket that was the most left one still on the red fabric. From the grey pocket in the middle at the bottom of the skirt I could take the thread and from the big black pocket on the back (you can see a bit to the far right) I’d take a piece of fabric and attach it. It turned out that there was no need for stitching more pockets on, but the bits of fabric did help as towels to clean our bloody hands, after an earth quake.

So the skirt, its pockets and their contents proved useful. Tomorrow we will visit the top under layer: the shirt.

 

Larp Costume

So the past weekend I spent running around a camp with tents in the woods. That’s not how I was supposed to view it though. You see, I was running around the city of Ravenskeep, with all its magnificent buildings, including a nine story high tower of the magicians governed by Arcanus (quite difficult to imagine if you just see a tent).

However, you cannot pretend to walk around a magic medieval setting without a somewhat period costume of course. Ok, mine was not very period, but it didn’t have a zipper, so that’s one thing at least. I did make it by machine, but that was because of laziness and time issues.

The next couple of days I will post a series on the complete costume I made for the first 2012 Ravenskeep event. It will go from bottom to top and under to over. Starting with the bottom part, the skirt, tomorrow.

Ps. Can anyone explain why zipper always shows up as being wrong in the WordPress spell check? I do not understand that, since I thought zipper was a nice and common word that people do actually use..  (also, why is WordPress underlined with the red line.. they should know their own name, right? Or am I even more of an idiot than I already thought?)

Costume(?) Plan

In May I’m going to go to a LARP with a friend of mine. For this I need an outfit. I have a plan, and it is quite costumey, and I don’t know if it’s going to work, but I hope so.

I’m envisioning myself in a skirt that has a lot of pockets. The character I want to play is somewhat like a magpie, always collecting shiny things. And not shiny things, and wanting to know everything (ok, maybe that’s not magpie, but it’s fun). So I want to be able to put all the stuff I ‘collect’ into something, in this case, a skirt. I want to make the skirt out of a red-ish linen that I’ve had for a larp purpose for years (it’s the only bit that is big enough for the skirt I want to make). Then I want to add pockets, a lot of pockets, in different kinds of fabrics. I found bits in blue, red, black, more blue and more red, so that should be fine. I also have some wool left over from my mantle. This could serve well as pouches I think. I have made a sketch (see below), I just haven’t really figured out what to do with the back. I can’t really put stuff in pockets, if I put pockets there. Since sitting comfortably is quite a priority for me, especially if I’m going to be running around the woods for days, I need to be able to sit if I’m tired.

Any ideas?

Here’s the sketch, the text is in Dutch, and also not very interesting:

Sketch

The third figure is empty, because it’s a template since I cannot draw freehand figures very well. I can draw one half of the figure, and than fail at reproducing it, so I scanned it and copied and pasted and voila!