Doctor Strange Cosplay - Tunics and Arm Wraps

Bonjour, friends!  For those who have stuck around even durng my year-long absence: you shall not go unrewarded.  For here arrives the first of many, many, many posts to come in this new season of the Adventures of an Elven Princess, concerning my latest cosplay for the latest Marvel Studios film, Doctor Strange. :D

And with just a day under three weeks until the movie premiere, I think it's wayyy past high time to get you up to speed on all the progress that's been happening in the past few weeks.  So let's get right into it -- just like old times. ;)

SO.  The first item of the costume to create, was the over tunic.  You can hear all the specific deets on that in the post over on my other blog, the Time That is Given Me (which I wrote before I decided to resurrect Adventures for all my costume happenings).  The gist of it, is that I refashioned this suit of my grandmother's into the tunic (because budget and the fact that it was just too perf for it). :D

I'm super pleased with how it turned out, and was a pretty simple refashion to do.  Oh, and I've replaced that pin with a button since that picture was taken -- hah!

Now, moving onto new territory: the under tunic...

Now, my grandmother used to own a lot of pencil skirts.  In total, she gave my sisters and I at least ten -- half of which were black or navy.  Which worked out perfectly for me, because it meant I got to make not just one, but both of Strange's tunics for free, out of some high quality and super cool looking fabrics. #budgetcosplayforthewin ;)

Apparently I only got one progress pic of the undertunic, for some reason or other, so I'll explain the process a little bit just to give you a better idea of what went into making it.

I used two pencil skirts.  The first one, which I made the sleeves out of because they're really the only part of the undertunic that will be seen much, has this crazy cool weave to it that almost reminds me of a motherboard, like, in a computer?  Weird visual, I know, but that's totally what it reminds me of. ;)  The second pencil skirt was a pretty basic weave polyester, I think, (I believe the one for the sleeves might have been wool), but that suited my purposes just fine.

As for patterning for the undertunic, for the bodice I just used the overtunic as a bit of a guide and free handed from there.  For the sleeves, I used a basic sleeve pattern that I had on hand, and made a few adjustments from there.

Those triangles are gussets for the sleeves, but I ended up not needing them.

Here's the overtunic as it is right now (plus the hem).  I just need to sew the front panels, and buy a separating zipper for the back and it'll be done!

Next up, the armwraps.  First, let's all take a moment to appreciate the packaging of my trims that I got all the way from Taiwan:

Gotta love that thin line between cute and creepy... but mostly cute... right? ;D  Take a look at the trims while you're oogling the bunnies too though -- aren't they just lovely??  Okay, not gonna lie, the velvet is a departure from the original costume.  Benedict's is some sort of basic cotton webbing from what is now visible from all the super detailed pictures that released after I bought the trims...

Okay, well, have to be honest here, I just didn't look close enough at the earlier pictures and kidded myself into believing the armwraps were actually made of velvet.  Because I wanted them to be velvet.  Because velvet is pretty and adds a marvelous fantasy feel to everything it's used in.

So, my fem Doctor Strange is going to have velvet armwraps, whether the movie version does or not. ;) #takethatalexandrabyrne

The braided blue stuff was a great find, though, because it is, in fact, quite screen accurate.  It's not an exact replica (we won't go into all the details), but it's pretty close.

That's what they're looking like currently.  They're just pinned, because I still need to buy some separating zippers for them (YAY for ease of getting them on and off! ;D).  Hopefully I'll be able to go to Joann for those (as well as the zipper for the undertunic) tomorrow... we'll see.  I'm also considering weathering them some?  The blues feel a little too bright right now... we'll see how it looks with the whole costume put together, though.

Well friends, I believe this is where I leave you -- until the next post, of course. :D  There's still quite a bit to tell of my progress so far...  the cape, the boots, the Eye of Agamotto (his pendant/TIME INFINITY STONE yes it totally is), the belts... ah yes.  This is quite the multi-faceted costume. ;)

OH MAN.  I just remembered that I need to do something very important.  Buying my tickets for 7pm Thursday night of  November 3rd... k gotta go :D :D :D