Sunday, November 8, 2015

Tho and the dinosaur- a tale of joy and serendipity

Our gracious and wise queen Caoilfhionn inghean Fhaolain (KEE-lin, it's gaelic, ignore the letters they added for posterity) has issued a garb challenge for Market Day at Birka for the East Kingdom.

Lady Syele von Heidelberg announced the challenge on the East Kingdom Facebook on October 5th:
"Greetings, people of the East! Her most royal Majesty Caoilfhionn has issued a Garb Challenge to the good gentles attending the Market Day at Birka. She desires to see the skill with needle and thread of the populace in interpreting the theme, "Characters of Pixar."
If you must, turn yourselves Inside Out in order to find the perfect Toy, Story book, or other accessory to adequately display your Incredible interpretation of the challenge. Even if it seems you might hit a creative Wall-e, or you are afraid Monsters, Inc-luding laurels, squire brothers, and apprentice siblings may scorn you, you must be Brave, keep your chin Up, and stay strong by eating nourishing Ratatouille.
Although it is a Bug's Life out there for those artisans who think taking on challenges is like Finding Nemo, those wounds inflicted by pins, needles, and shears will soon turn to sCars of pride and victory!"

Full disclosure: House Strangewayes, my household, runs the fashion show at Birka and we're stupidly fond of puns.

Most of us are choosing to go with characters from Toy Story:

Myself as 1530's Italian Lotso Huggin' Bear (I'll make a separate post)
Syele as Saxon Jessie
Jeremy (Mr. Syele) as Polish Buzz Lightyear
Elvira as Crannach Sid
Bianca as 1560s Italian Bo Peep
Erdene as Mongolian Slink
and
Thothreker as Viking Rex

In this post I'm going to talk about Thothreker Ogaefa, or as we call him Tho. Tho is our resident viking. He's a simple guy who chose his persona by the strict criteria of what era would allow him to wear pants.

He doesn't sew, I'm making him an outfit fit for a King... well, a Rex.

Lovable, but a bit dim.
Rex the lovable T-Rex from Toy Story


Now how do you interpret this into an outfit without it looking super-cheesy?

No.
That's a lot of look.

Well, he needs a caftan, and a new tunic and probably some nice matching pants. Maybe, if we're ahead of shedule I'll make him a hat too.


Male croqui are weird
Sketch for Tho's Birka outfit. 
The key here is going to be finding the right fabric that says "Dinosaur" without saying "GREEN AS ALL GET OUT".

So I went fabric shopping at my favorite store the Auburn Fabric Outlet where everything is $2.99 a yard!

I scored some amazing olive and tan wool, some green matelasse* and some lighter yellow rayon for the under tunic.

*Matelasse is a term for quilted upholstery fabric, not really suited for anything other than doublets or the occasional surcoat. It is usually quite stiff. A friend once made the mistake of ordering 8 yards from a home decor fabric website because she had never heard the term and thought it was a brand name of a designer.

The green diamond matelasse, yellow rayon and olive and tan wool diamond weave


This is another lesson in colors in pictures vs natural light. The first bolt is much brighter, the rayon more yellowy and the diamond weave looks brown here but is a distinctly olive green color in person.

Same fabric, different lighting.

I'm not sure which for the caftan I'll use, I'm going to let Tho look at them. I determined Rex's stomach is really a light yellow, not a green by looking at several screenshots.

Speaking of screenshots. Through my extensive Google Image Search research I discovered:



A Pixar short where Rex the dinosaur dresses like a viking!!!!!






How much more perfect could that get?!?!?!

We're trying to convince Iulia Agricola that we need R-E-X glass beads or maybe T-H-O glass beads. I did some research on period viking men's jewelry and found that they did not do the swags of beads, but occasionally grave finds would have 1-3 beads on a cord! Iulia is still needing some convincing but here's hoping.

Stay tuned for progress on Partysaurus Tho!


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