After completing four weeks of soul crushing work in the surgical
ICU, I've decided that I need some me time. And by me time, I mean
costuming. Alas, I do have my Anesthesia BASIC boards coming up on July 29th,
so I've decided to allocate 1 hour a day to
studying and 30 minutes of costuming. While 3.5 hours devoted to my
personal hobbies a week may seem excessively indulgent, especially for a
resident, I've decided that this would be the best way to stave off
insanity.
Anyways, my husband with his tall, stocky figure, and his curly black
hair (and blue eyes the color of the sea after a storm), is the perfect
cosplay for Jon Snow, so I've decided to go ahead and prep for a Jon
Snow costume. I myself will be costuming Margaery
Tyrell; who I very much admire for her strong use of shoulder
accessories as well as being the only character under the age of 40 who
knows how to play the game properly. (The other two being her
grandmother played by the still-so-sexy-Diana-Rigg, and Tywain
Lannister.)
After rewatching all the Jon Snow scenes from Season 3 (the Nights
Watch Jon Snow costume is so much hotter than his Wildling outfit so
I've decided to go with that one), and scouring the internet, I've collected a bunch of pictures that I feel do a good job of showing off the costume.
And after studying, I've divided his exterior costume into multiple parts:
1. His iconic cloak; appears to be made of a black pleated linen (you
can tell it's linen from the way it frays at the bottom) with a
Mongolian wool fur hide. The fur is either dark gray or black; it's
likely that they had one of each for different shoots
since it looks lighter in some frames. Might be the light though. He
has a leather strap that hooks the cloak in place in an X across his
chest. I'm not sure where it buckles since we never see it; but I think
it's likely that it'll be in the back (as inconvenient
as that would be in all practicality) but makes for a very clean and
crisp anterior.
2. His jerkin. As you can see from the first episode of Season 3,
Jon Snow wears multiple layers. He wears a thin cotton shirt of dark
gray, with a leather jerkin that he laces into place (I think he uses
hook/eyes in that episode for filming as lacing
a jerkin takes considerable more attention). On top of that he has a
second chest piece that I believe only goes on front. (You can tell when
he grabs it and runs outside.) For ease of use, I will be referring to
the first jerkin that laces up as his "under
jerkin" and his top piece as his "over jerkin". The over jerkin has two
buckles at the neck (and possibly all the way down; we never see), then
goes across the chest and buckles on the left with three leather
buckless. There appear to be no buckles on the
right. You can tell from photos taken from multiple exhibits. By no
means am I saying that there are no buckles, but if they are there, they
will be much further to the right and do not show up in any museum
costume pics, nor any episode. If someone out there
knows differently, please correct me. Also, the sleeves appear detachable, which makes sense for the timeline of the jerkin.
3. A kilt. At least I think it's a kilt? Apron? Something that
appears to be made of linen/cotton canvas quilted upon to make a kilt
like apapratus with a slit in the front for easy walking. I think this
would be useful for keeping your heat in, and also
for protecting your junk from the wind. Honestly, the Night Watch
always reminded me of the Scots so I'm just going to call it a kilt
though I doubt it's made of 8 yards and I doubt it's pleated in the
back.
4. Pants. Black wool. I think. You never see much of them and when you do they're always covered by snow.
5. Boots. Black. He wears way more detailed ones in Season 3 but Season 4 boots are pretty nondescript.
6. Black gloves. A Jon Snow signature.
7. A sword with a dog head on it. He does not appear to wear his
sword at his hilt but on his back. I might just omit this detail
altogether.
8. Ghost. To be played by our adorable American Eskimo, Gideon. (We
actually have two; the girl, Elspeth will be playing Nymeria)
I think numbers 4-7 will be store bought which leaves me 1-3 to make.
The cloak, I will likely make of cotton gauze for its ease of use and
it's light weight which will make wearing easier. The fur, I plan on
buying a pelt of wool from this distributor on etsy.
The jerkin(s) is(are) a different bag however. I will mostly discuss
his overjerkin as we only see his underjerkin in season 1, and S03E01.
It appears he has a more 15th century neckline in terms of his jerkin,
but then has the rounded waistline of a 16the
century jerkin. The mixing of timelines is appropriate since this is
pseudo-medieval fantasy, after all.
There is a center seam in both the front and the back as far as I can
tell and the seam appears to end at his waist for the over jerkin. The
jerkin then hangs below in an apron piece that goes down. The whole
thing is edged in leather then aged to look as
though it's been brutally beaten by the North.
I went with this pattern-
I then rounded the bottom of the jerkin. It looks like it's made out
of very thick leather, likely 3oz-4oz cowhide, but I decided to make the
whole thing from 1mm thick cowhide (or 2.5oz/ft weight) as my sewing
machine is strong but certainly not designed
for leather.
To make the pattern for the over-jerkin, I used these steps (which was remarkably simple).
1. I cut out two copies of the front piece pattern in leftover
fabric, but I changed two things about it- I rounded the bottom at the
level where the navel would be, and instead of having a curved front
opening, I made it a straight line. See photo.
2. I sewed the center seam one for two of the pieces with large
stitches and opened the pattern, then drew the shape of his jerkin on
it.
3. I cut it out, made my husband wear it, and modified it to best mimic the photo.
4. I cut a two feet by 1foot piece and attached it to the bottom; I
curved the edges to best mimic Jon Snow's. It looks like it ends about
upper/mid calf on a man. Since Kit Herrington is an average to petite
man (5'8"), I think they did this to make him
look taller. So it looks like the jerkin ends upper/mid calf and the
kilt appears to end right below the knee (just like a Scottish kilt!
Believe me, I know).
5. I cut the pieces and voila! Modified pattern. Note that this
pattern will not have seam allowances but that's always easy to add
later and for what I'm doing, I don't need seam allowances.
I then purchased approximately 20sq feet of 2.5oz black leather from this company.
Budget used so far: 95 for leather, 15 for jerkin pattern = 110.
Coming up next:
Sewing the Jerkin