Five Fantastic Beasts

My friend and I went to the global fan event yesterday for “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.” They screened the first ten minutes of the film at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood after a worldwide question and answer session with the cast. Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, and Dan Fogler were in London with the director David Yates and the producer David Heyman joined at the end by J.K. Rowling, while Colin Farrell and Jon Voight were in LA with us.

I wasn’t one of the fans that dressed up and went to midnight premiers when the Harry Potter films first came out so I’d never really been involved with the fandom, but I have to say it is amazing how dedicated the fans are and how much they love the Potter universe. My friend and I dressed up yesterday (she was Newt Scamander and I threw together a modernized Queenie) because there was a costume contest and we thought it would be fun; she won third place! I can only imagine how satisfying it must be for J.K. Rowling and all those involved with the subsequent films to know how many people’s lives have been touched and how much joy has been created. As an aspiring writer I can only hope that someday I too will have readers that will be affected on some level by my work.

I’ve mentioned before how much I respect Eddie Redmayne, and you all know that I made my friend a Newt Scamander coat and vest for ComicCon, so I therefore have a vested (no pun intended) interest in “Fantastic Beasts.” Seeing the fans worldwide was phenomenal and we all found out some exciting news (along with the actors it seems). J.K. Rowling wrote the screenplay for “Fantastic Beasts,” her first time writing a screenplay, and she and the producers had planned on probably doing a trilogy of films. Turns out that they’ve decided that there will be five films. Five films! Exciting news for us fans and perhaps a bit overwhelming news for the stars, but I’m sure it’s a welcome surprise for them as they all seem genuinely happy to be a part of this.

I have to say that the ten minute clip we got to see made me even more excited than I was before– I’m definitely looking forward to when the film opens in theaters November 18!

P.S. They had some of the costumes on site and Newt’s coat is dark blue not teal… No matter, I’m still proud of the one I made 🙂

“Wowzers!”

Eddie Redmayne and Katherine Waterson at the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them panel ComicCon SD 2016

My friend that went to ComicCon as Newt Scamander made my day when he texted me from San Diego on Saturday. He was at the panel for “Fantastic Beasts and Where to find Them” which featured, amongst other members from the cast, Eddie Redmayne. Now since I wasn’t there I can only recount it as it was told to me, but my friend was very near the front, dressed in the coat and vest I made and his family and people around him were calling attention to him.

This is what my friend texted me (I’m leaving out my interruptions and incoherent texts of joy scattered in the conversation):

“I have news for you. Eddie Redmayne saw your coat. And your vest. From like 4 feet away. As he handed me a wand. And he said something.”

I wrote back: “What did he say?”

He answered: “‘Wowzers!'”

He saw my work– Eddie Redmayne, whose skill and work as an actor I admire greatly–saw my work. And he liked it.

I couldn’t stop smiling after my friend told me. Of course I’d hoped that somehow Eddie Redmayne or someone involved with the film would see my friend’s cosplay and maybe think to themselves “ooh how fun that someone made that, looks pretty good” but having that hope come true is something else. Amazing. Simply amazing.

And then, as if that wasn’t cool enough already, a couple hours later my friend told me he’d just had his picture taken by Pottermore. In the coat. How awesome is that??

I don’t think I have a way of expressing how this whole thing makes me feel, except “Wowzers!” That just might become my new favorite phrase 😉

Newt Scamander: Mission Accomplished

ComicBookMovie.com

I’ve been busy sewing these past few weeks to make sure everything is ready for ComicCon and I’m pleased to announce that I made the deadline and my friend was a hit as Newt Scamander at Con.

As expected I faced a couple of bumps along the way; for instance I realized that the collar wasn’t the only thing I needed to edit on the pattern I was using– the back of the coat needed small adjustments as well. It was easy to fix though, all that needed to be changed was how the back pleat looks. The tail feathers I’d mentioned before serve as part of the pleat and I simply added another panel behind so that the fold opens nicely. I’d been so focused on the front of the coat up until that point that I neglected to properly check out the back. Luckily it all got fixed so crisis averted 😉

The inner lining layer took me about a day to finish– I cut the pieces, hemmed the edges, added the interfacing and sewed it all together. The pattern calls for shoulder pads but unfortunately the ones we bought didn’t really add much shape to the shoulders so we skipped them… I suppose I could still technically buy thicker ones and sew them in if my friend really wants them so it’s not a pressing issue.

The details of the coat, like the leather trim on the pockets and cuffs, are what give it that extra special touch and also what gave me a little bit of a challenge to overcome. The only leathery fabric that we found at JoAnns was an outdoor fabric but it actually feels really nice and is easy to sew. It comes on a wide roll so we only needed to get a couple of inches but even that gave me more than enough to experiment. The thing that worried me most was whether or not my machine could handle sewing a leathery material, especially if it’s wrapped around layers of wool. Thankfully everything worked out and I only sacrificed one sewing needle 😉

At times the layers got a bit thick and I had trouble sewing it with my machine (so I sewed little bits by hand) but mostly it all went smoothly. I took at least an afternoon to figure out the best way to do the pockets– thing is that there are actually two pockets either side, at least that’s what it looks like from the various photos and I needed to come up with a good way of making them. I’ve never done pockets before so I made a few drafts before actually using the coat fabric. At one point I asked my friend if he needed all pockets to be functional and he said no but I wouldn’t have been satisfied with a so-so job so I made them all functional. I’m quite proud of how they came out in the end.

After finishing most of the coat— all except the buttons and the bottom hem— I busied myself with the second part of the project: the vest. The mock up was pretty easy to make and the linen for the actual garment was great to work with (though it wrinkles so easily!). The scariest bit of the vest was doing the buttons. I’ve never had to make buttonholes before so having to do six on the vest and one on the coat seemed daunting. I decided to use a tight zig-zag stick instead of the buttonhole function simply because it looked better. Also, making the buttonholes themselves wasn’t the scary bit, it was hoping that they were all even and that the threads didn’t tangle underneath that worried me. I tested and tested to make sure I knew what I was doing until finally I figured I was ready to tackle the real thing. I’m pleased with how they came out— I worked slowly and always double-checked things along the way.

I think that’s enough commentary for now, I’ll leave you with some photos of my process. As always, feel free to send any questions if you have them!

Ines 🙂

P.S. Photos of the full coat and vest with detail shots will follow since I couldn’t get good ones yet.

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Tetris with coat lining.

Pin things carefully so your pieces are uniform.

Inside meets outside.

Finally sewing pieces together.

Lots of firsts for this project: men’s clothing, coat, collar, sleeves, pockets, vest, buttonholes, buttons…

Close-up of the sleeve and edited collar.

The leather detail on the back of the coat. Let it not be said that I skip things simply because they won’t be seen 🙂 You can also see the zig-zag pattern on the underside of the collar if you look closely.

Tight stitching to keep the leather in place.

Test for the leather trim on the cuff and the band on the back of the coat. Always good to practice first and then do the real thing.

Back band with buttons.

Buttonhole and button.

Mark, iron, pin, sew! All the pieces are ready and the interfacing is applied to the parts that need it.

Eeeeeeeek! Buttonhole time!

Phew! That one turned out nice 🙂 It’s a good idea to pin the ends of the buttonhole so you don’t accidentally cut through the edges and ruin the work you just did. As you can see, the buttonhole is smiling and so am I 😀

Newt Scamander 2.0

 

Up until now I’ve only ever designed and made women’s clothes: dresses, corsets, skirts. This coat project is a challenge not only because I have to base it on something that already exists and will be well known (with the added pressure that it’ll be seen by many people later this month) but also because I’ve never made a coat before and moreover I’ve never made any men’s clothes, period.

 

Usually I design for myself– it takes the issue of checking the fit on someone else or making adjustments and finding a date to do all that out of the equation. Plus then I can keep whatever I make and have a one-of-a-kind piece. Also, if I mess something up it’s only me that has to deal with it and nothing is really lost.

 

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had a few commissions (a prom dress, a space dress, a skirt) and that I participated in a fashion show a few years ago where I showcased four designs. The great thing about commissions is that there is a deadline, which is definitely a motivator for me. Otherwise I can drag projects out almost endlessly because there’s something frightening about finishing a project and not having another one lined up…

 

Anyways back to the coat (before I tangent off and start a completely different and potentially lengthy discussion). I don’t have any formal sewing or design training or background so I can’t exactly draft a pattern for the coat from scratch (not given the time constraint anyway; I don’t think I’d trust myself quite enough at this point). So to overcome that issue my friend and I looked for and found a pattern that I can work with. It’s not completely as we need it to be so I am making adjustments but overall it works.

 

One thing I needed to change is the collar. My friend watched the trailer for “Fantastic Beasts and Where to find them” countless times and scoured the Internet to find as many detail shots as possible for me to use. I noticed that a trench coat that I have has some similarities to the one Newt Scamander wears so I traced those pieces out and added them to the muslin mock-up I made. I was thrilled when I saw that it ended up working! It did take me a good part of the afternoon to try things out and keep adjusting but I think it’s well worth it because it moves the project forward (obviously– I’m one step closer to my goal, woohoo) but I also feel accomplished that I learned something new, which is always good.

 

Anyways, here are some photos I took to document what I’ve done so far. Feel free to ask any questions if you have them– I’ll certainly answer whatever I know 🙂 Meanwhile here are a couple of my little insights.

 

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Making a mock-up serves a couple of purposes and especially if you’re working with expensive fabric it is definitely worth making a draft using a cheaper fabric (like muslin) beforehand. First: you get to know the pattern and can work out any issues or troubles before using your real fabric. Second: you can see what the finished product will look like and make any adjustments that you think will improve the final piece. Third: you can check the fit of the garment and decide whether the size you’re making is indeed the size you want/need.

 

With a coat the top part is the bit that needs to be fitted so that’s why I only made a mock-up of the top (the back panels have the “tail feathers” so that’s why those are there– they do also help to give a sense of the length of the coat which is great). This is already the edited collar– as you can see one side is a bit different from the other– it’s not the neatest work (because I did make a few little errors), but it gets the point across and I could see what it will look like on my friend. Always a good idea to have the person you’re making the piece for try it on early in the process and throughout. For instance on me the collar looked like it’d need to be taken in a bit more to accentuate the split (left side in photo above) but on my friend it was fine as it was (right side above).

 

Also, you can see I accidentally sewed the front and back pieces together with the front dart facing out– not supposed to be like that (and it won’t be on the final coat haha) but I figured it wasn’t worth undoing all the stitches for something as trivial as that. (On a black dress I made myself recently I did accidentally sew the darts for both back panels on the same side and because I was working with tulle and lace and the stitches were tiny I couldn’t undo the stitches so I just had to cut the pieces out and sew them again. It was a little irritating but it was fine in the end– luckily I always buy extra fabric just in case something goes wrong so I didn’t have to make another fabric run ;))

 

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And a close up of what the collar looks like on the under side– I added the strip between the back panels and the collar and I’ll be sewing a leather piece there as well to match the coat from the movie– let it not be said that I skip details because they might not be seen. (To be honest I’m not sure if it’s a design element— this leathery piece— or to provide some additional support, but it’ll be there one way or another).

 

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Maximizing the utility of the fabric while minimizing waste is a bit like playing a wonky game of Tetris: you shuffle the pieces around until you get them in the most condensed space possible so that you have plenty left over for corrections or other projects.

 

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The first cut is the scariest! Cutting into a piece of fabric for the first time is always a little nerve wracking because it’s finalizing the arrangement of the pieces (usually– unless you’ve got tons extra of course and you can do it again), it commits you to work and makes a sewing project real. Until that point the garment exists largely in the mind as a fantasy but as soon as the pieces take physical shape that changes. It’s a good change and can lead to lovely things, of course. The first cut is a little bit like the first mark made of a blank sheet of paper by a writer, the first pencil stroke in an empty sketch pad, a blinking cursor in a word document, or the first brushstroke on a white canvas— full of potential, inviting, yet somehow also a little daunting.

 

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Hellooooo coat! All the main pieces of the outer fabric are finally cut. Now I’ve got to do the same with the lining and interfacing and put it all together!

 

 

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Newt Scamander

My good friend has attended Comic-Con for the last few years. Usually he dresses as Sherlock Holmes, the BBC version starring Benedict Cumberbatch. This year though he wants a new costume: Newt Scamander (played by the wonderful Eddie Redmayne— whom I adore) from the upcoming film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them based on the work of J.K. Rowling.

He has asked me to help him with the costume so we have been coordinating and searching for the right materials for a while now. We went to Jo-Ann‘s the other day and got the remaining fabrics and things for the project. I’ve been working on the muslin mock-up to test the pattern I’ll be using and I’ve been adjusting it as needed.

Here’s what I’ve got to work with. I’ll probably be posting updates on my progress and of course a photo of the final product. I hope it turns out as he wants it!

Wish me luck 😉