Leliana (Dragon Age: Inquisition) Write Up Part 2 - Patterning

Leliana (Dragon Age: Inquisition) Write Up Part 2 - Patterning 

Hi, everyone! Sorry for the delay in getting this part written up - after PAX East everything happened so much OTL

Anyway in this part I’ll talk about how I patterned the…chain mail dress…thing? Since this is a write up and not a tutorial I won’t go super in-depth into how I put everything together but just overall how I figured out how to piece everything together.

(photo credit for the first photo goes to JoBevvy) 

I modified New Look’s S0596 pattern to figure out the general shape of the chainmail dress thing (I seriously have no idea what to call it so I’ll just stick with chainmail dress). Though any pattern with princess seams should work.

The bottom two images basically show how I went from a sleeveless dress with princess seams to the basic shape of Leliana’s chainmail dress. I also referred to the Fabric Alchemist’s write up on how she made the dress. The part where I labeled “optional” is due to my irrational obsession with seam accuracy.

If you look closely, the edges of the dress don’t have mitered corners so I decided that I didn’t love myself and wanted to achieve this look by learning how to do inner corner seams. I watched this video a few times and practiced on scraps before moving on to the mockup to make sure I was confident enough to do it on the real fabric.

BUT if you don’t care that there isn’t a mitered corner - feel free to just use leather bias tape :,D

As I mentioned in the part one, I used the same fabric as the trim to support the chainmail since the chainmail fabric is see-through. Though it ended up making the dress way too heavy and almost too thick to sew through with my heavy duty sewing machine. I’d suggest backing the chainmail with duck cloth similar to how the Fabric Alchemist did hers. 

Like I mentioned earlier - I won’t go into too much detail on how everything was put together since the diagram above is the shortest way I can explain putting it together without taking 45345009 words to explain it :,) 

Some advice!

• Have the appropriate needles! Heavy duty needles or leather needles are ideal
• A piping foot is not necessary if you’re slow and patient - unfortunately I am not and like to sew fast. Having the piping foot really helped with sewing the piping and saved me a lot of headache
• Get a set of wonder clips - they’re super useful when putting together something really thick where pins wouldn’t suffice or for things that get noticeable pin holes. 
• Start with a full mockup before you cut into the real thing - I only made a partial mockup and really regretted not making a full one as I made some mistakes and wasn’t really happy with the overall fit.

Look at that nice clean piping - thank you based piping foot.

Wonder clips holding together two layers of leather, a layer of broadcloth, a layer of chain mail fabric, and corduroy bias tape :o 

I could go on about how this was constructed but that would take forever. Feel free to message me with any questions!