Leliana Cosplay - Original Tavern Post by StarDustShadow7

[EA_Spectre]

Which cosplayer among us doesn't fall in love with a design full of armor, chainmail, and leather? When Inquisition trailers dropped and Leliana's new look was unveiled, I immediately started making notes on constructing aspects of her design. But where do you even begin? 

The "easy" bits

That's a good joke. Nothing on this costume is easy, but I decided to start from the lowest layer and work my way upwards. A nice stretch grey wool did the trick for Leliana's pants and bottom layer long sleeved shirt. Most of this is covered by the chainmail tunic, vest, armor, hood, and belts, but I found it necessary to create a foundation for everything to go on top of. I wanted to go with something stretchy, since it's comfortable, but also helped me obtain a wrinkle-free silhouette. This is a great place to sneak a pocket in for your phone, as the slits up the tunic make your hips pretty accessible! 

Chainmail

I've been cosplaying for over ten years, but this was a beast I had gone out of my way to avoid. BUT, great news for anyone else out there who wants to do chainmail weaving for the first time, it's actually surprisingly easy (just stupidly time consuming). First you'll need supplies! The go-to place online is http://theringlord.com . They have tons of rings, scales, and various supplies for any aspiring Dragon Age cosplayer. Normally chainmail would be made with regular metal rings, but this requires a pair of pliers to "close" the connecting ring, and are also quite weighty. Since I needed them to cover a significant portion of my costume, I started researching into RingLord's polycarbonate plastic rings. These are available in just a solid ring, as well as an option for "connector" rings which snap together easily. You only need a ration of about 1:3 of connector rings vs regular rings, which is nice since the regular non-connector rings are far cheaper. These plastic rings take spray paint and sealant perfectly, so you can weave them together and then paint them before sewing them to the tunic! 

I personally ordered 10g 1/2" rings for the non-connector, and 11g 1/2" clear SNAP rings for connectors (the g refers to the "gauge" better known as the "thickness" of the rings. The "1/2in" refers to the diameter. I tried out a couple of different sizes, and found that 1/2" was the best for my preferences, but feel free to get whatever size you feel works best for you if you go with the weaving method! Be aware: you will need A LOT of rings. For my height, I ordered about 4,000 regular rings, and 1,750 snap rings. This could vary from person to person, but get ready to settle in with some Netflix over the course of a couple weeks, it takes a while to put all of those together. 

So you've got your rings, now what? There are tons of tutorials online about how to do European 4-in-1 chainmail, but I found this video became my saviour to teaching me the basics. 

Chainmail cont.

Note that if you are using plastic rings, the clear snap rings take the place of the open metal rings that need to be closed through pliers. Instead, you can just use your own hands to push the snap rings closed until you hear a tiny "click". Doing this can initially be frustrating, and in the beginning, you unfortunately may find yourself spending a lot of time messing up. Don't give up! Practice makes perfect, and the Inquisition wasn't built in a day. It WILL click eventually and you'll be able to start weaving without a second thought. Work in one hour blocks and give yourself a break for your fingers and eyes to rest (or why not strain both of them farther by taking video game breaks?

Chainmail cont.

It will start to look like this! Hang in there, you can do it! I made my tunic out of a nice heavy brown twill, with vinyl for the fabric that would be lying underneath the rings. I used these vinyl panels as a guide for how big to make my chainmail panels. Once your rings are painted and dried, hand sew them on along the edges with a heavy-duty embroidery floss. Bad news bears time: this is almost as time consuming as weaving the rings themselves. Go to your happy place, the hardest part is almost over. If Alistair can go from illegitimate to king, you can power through too. You've got this <3  

Leather Vest

There are many different ways to do this, so don't feel obligated to do it the same way that I did! I have seen tons of incredible Leliana cosplayers make her vest out of all kinds of materials, from foam, to vinyl, to cloth, to burlap. I was using this costume as an excuse to learn some new materials that I've been shying away from, so I went with vegetable-tanned leather. The best resource I found for buying raw leather from was https://www.tandyleather.com - they frequently run sales, so I was able to get a nice cow hide for 40% off it's usual cost. Buying leather is an overwhelming experience for the first time, so here are some hot tips to help you out!

Oz? 

The thickness of the leather hide is measured in ounces. Because a cow hide isn't consistent, this will usually vary per piece by .5-1 ounces throughout the piece. A 2-3oz hide will be fairly flexible and thinner, making it easier to sew and move around in.A 5-6oz hide will be significantly thicker, this is the oz. I went with, and it's thickness allows me to make a rather audible ""knocking"" sound on it. This is a pure nightmare to sew if you have a non-industrial machine. I managed, but at the cost of going extremely slowly with a thick leather needle (and even then, I broke about 4 of them). The thicker oz feels more "armor-y", but the thinner could give you less of a headache in terms of construction. This is a personal preference choice, so go with what feels right if you choose this route. 

Craftsman? Oak-Leaf? Royal Meadow? Whaaaaaa?

This refers to the quality of the hide! Because the leather is coming from an animal, sometimes that cow could have burns, damage to it's skin from barbed wire, or a variety of other mishaps! Luckily for us, a little damage to materials just makes it look more authentic, so don't sweat the scratches and gouges, it ends up making your vest look even better. Craftsman is the "lowest quality" leather, It could have holes, insect bites, brands, etc. However, most of the time you can just cut your pieces around these imperfections (I had a hole exactly in the middle of my hide, but I was able to pattern around it). This is also the most affordable of the different types, since it's "costume grade" and not being made into a fancy couture belt or whatever it is that fashion people do with nice leather. Royal Meadow is the least-flawed, but three times as expensive! No thanks. Oak-Leaf is right in the middle. You'll be just fine with Craftsman if you decide to use leather from Tandy. I had plenty to make my vest, the shoulder pauldrons, and all the belts, hole-free!Let's talk about wet-molding! The benefit of veg tanned leather is that it can be molded, tooled, and dyed. Wet molding is the concept of taking your leather, brushing it with some water, and then forming it to a more complex shape, which the leather will naturally hold after it's dried. For example, the leather guards over the back of her arms (around the elbow) were a struggle for me to have my dry leather keep it's shape for. It's got a bit of a ridge along the top that I was scratching my head to get the proper shape for. By running my piece of leather under hot water, then draping it over a cylindrical object (I used my favourite tea tumbler for this), it helped keep the leather in a sort of "half a tube" shape when it dried. 

Leather Vest cont.

Also, while the piece was still wet, I was able to "roll" (just like rolling up the rim at Tim Hortons :D) the top edge so that when it was dry, it sat up, away from my arm. This is another technique that requires some practice, try it out on some scrap pieces of leather first to get a feel for it. If you mess up, you can try it again by re-wetting the leather, but the material will become more brittle with each use, so be mindful of this! 

But what about the colour? 

Vegetable tanned leather only comes in...well, tan! So to get Leliana's darker brown look, you'll need to use leather dye! https://www.tandyleather.com/en-usd/home/department/leather-dye/leather-dye.aspx Tandy has a large selections of dyes and finishes (finishers are necessary to seal everything in and make sure dye doesn't rub off when it comes into contact with water). Take a soft cloth and rub the dye into your leather using a circular motion. Be aware that the more dye you put on your piece, the more the pores will become sealed, giving it a "plastic-y" look! 

Belts

The belts along Leliana's upper arms can be tricky to get them to stay in place. Velcro to the rescue! I cut and tooled my belts from the aforementioned leather, and then on the underside, glue some industrial strength velcro. Stitch the other portion of it on your grey undershirt, and now you've got belts that will stay in place when closed. This will save you a lot of frustration of them moving out of place when you go to do....well, anything with your arm.  

Buttons

In addition to my brown vest closing with hooks and eyes, it also is held closed due to magnetic snaps on the underside of the silver Inquisition insignia (redundancy in helping your costume stay together is tedious when making it, but pays off in the long run! My hook and eyes once fell off during a photoshoot in the middle of a field at a convention. Instead of having to retreat back to the hotel room to repair it, the insignia's closures kept the vest together anyways. Now that's a victory a bard can tell tales about). But what is a good material to make the piece out of (and additionally, the extra buttons on her hood?)

Buttons cont.

Worbla is all the rage in costuming right now. Worbla is a thermoplastic, which is a fancy way of saying that the material becomes pliable when heat is applied to it, and solid when it cools. You can purchase it here: http://www.cosplaysupplies.com/store.php?s=UN4V 

When you heat up a sheet of Worbla (I use a heatgun on a low setting, but have heard others say they accomplished the same with using a hair dryer), you can form it into almost any shape you can imagine. It becomes almost putty-like when warmed. Try out some scraps first to get the hang of it. If you heat it up enough and squish it, you can turn it into a material that you can mold with - almost like sculpting clay. I used Worbla exclusively to make my buttons, and then spray painted them silver. Worbla does have a bit of a rough texture, which I didn't mind for this particular aspect, but if you want it to be smoother, apply a few coats of wood glue first before painting! 

Leg Armor

I have seen people use a variety of methods and materials for Leliana's leg armor, so this one comes down again to a personal preference. This time I took the route of EVA foam (another fancy term! It's basically those interlocking puzzle shaped fatigue reducing exercise mats you can get at Wal*Mart, Target, or any sporting store).  

Leg Armor cont.

This is another material that, when heated, can be shaped (similar to Worbla)! There are tons of tutorials online, a lot of Mass Effect cosplayers use this material for their N7 armor. 

If you score the back and remove some of the foam, you can then fill the scored crevice with hot glue and push the foam together to create fairly distinct corners. http://www.wmarmory.com/?product=foam-armorsmithing-vol-1-design-templating-fabrication-by-bill-dora... Bill Doran released an EBook that can tell you anything and everything you'd want to know about working with EVA foam, it helped me a lot since this was my first time using the material. 

The great thing about EVA foam is that it's extremely lightweight. To make sure my upper thigh armor didn't fall down, I hid a plastic click-buckle on the underside, with the other buckle piece getting attached directly to my grey pants. I can then use this buckle to fasten the armor to my pants directly, and then fasten it in the back to make sure it stays in place. Again, redundancy in attaching everything pays off in the long run! 

Paint that sucker!

Since foam is porous, it needs to be sealed before you paint it, or the paint will get sucked right in to the material. http://www.plastidip.com/ Plastidip is the go-to for sealing foam armor, a couple of coats of this and you're good to go! Highly metallic automotive spray paint can help give your armor that realistic battle-ready look.