Viking Costumes – Making Of

I made these costumes for our very first Larp Event. It was about a traditional Viking feast so I wanted to keep the costumes authentic. I did a lot of researching about the fabrics, colors and patterns for the costumes. As you all know I am a perfectionist so finding the right fabrics was quite hard. I went to a lot of fabric stores, a big fabric market and also ordered some of the fabrics in the internet. The main probem was to find fabrics with the typical textures for viking clothing ( for example fishbone and diamond).

I finally found all the fabcrics I was seaching for but I had to dye them. I don´t have the possibilities to dye them naturally with plants, so I took the good old simplicol colors I alsways use to dye my fabrics. You can also mix the colors. Here I mixed orange with green to get a more natural looking green tone.

The problem here was, that the fabric was 100% wool and wool is more difficult to dye then any other natural fabric (exept of silk). Wool can become felted when you abruptly heat it or cool it down, and the water have to be 60° celsius for over an hour. Oh and you also need a loooot of vinegar. But you also find a full description “how to dye wool” in the instruction sheet.

A roasting thermometer is perfect to check the temperature

Don´t forget to stir every 5 minutes.

This is how the fabric looks after I wasched it out. On this picture the fabric is not 100% dry, whe it is fully dryed the green tone gets a bit brighter.

I also dyed another piece of this beautiful fabric orange. Actually I wanted to make a second apron dress, but I had not enough time before the con… as always ;P

These are all the fabrics I used for my costume and for Ralfs. It looks pretty cool when you combine different textured fabrics with plain cotton or linen fabrics.

For me it is the first time I tried to hand stitch something, and it was more fun than I thought. And because I am a crazy cat lady I decided that my viking character need some cats on her dress. It is kinda relaxing and I love to chill on my sofa and hearing an audio book while I am stitching. Haha and yes, Ralf bought definitively too much yarn.

I added this beautiful tablet weaving braid to my apron dress.

Super important for an authentic viking look: the brooches and the chains.

I also used the hungarian braid stitch to hide the sewing machine seams on the apron, this took me forever. But it was worth it.

For Ralph I made a typical viking coat and added some hand embroidery and also some beautiful tablet weaving braids. I didn´t made them myself (shame on me), I don´t have the tools and the time…but I definitively want to learn it.

I also added some embroidery, this is the normal (and super easy) chain stitch, the hungarian braid stitch I used for my dress takes a lot more time.

This is the belt I bought for Ralfs costume, actually I wanted a belt with more of these round rivets, but they were damn expensive.

I know that using real fur for costumes is a very controversial. I don´t support using real fur for any kind of clothing, but I had these old fur coat from my grandmother and thought why not recycle it for a scarf.

This is the finished cloak. I am soooo happy how it turned out.

To keep me warm, my dress has a lot of layers. 😀

 

Photos from our photoshoot with eosAndy and Skyhunters in Nature.