Outer Tunic Mockup - Skirt

The skirt mock up! After cutting the Simplicity 4450 pattern in half at the waist, I then redrafted the skirt part of the pattern, making the skirt longer, and adding a wide angled flair to the side seam, to give the skirt the fullness and spin that the movie costume skirt has. I cut the skirt out, sewed it together, pinned it to the upper tunic, and wasn't happy with the results.

It just didn't hang right, and even with flared out side seams, it still didn't have the fullness or spin of the movie costume. The hem also hung straight across the front, straight across the back, and very gathered at both sides. Even with female hips and an obi wrapped around it, it still just didn't hang right, still straight across the front and back and lots of gathering at both sides. But if you look at the hem of the skirt of the movie costume, the hem hangs pretty much straight across the front, has some gathering at the sides, but in the back, the hem hangs with a bit of a wave.

So I went back to looking through pictures of the costume, and watching the way it flows and hangs in the movie (or maybe that was just a good excuse to watch parts of the movie again), and decided to try a different approach. One way to get that wave across the back of the hem line would be to make the back panel of the skirt extra wide, and then pleat or gather the top of the fabric at the waist line. Which, looking at the base of the obi in the back on the movie costume, the gathers in the fabric there look pretty uniform, which makes me think there is some pleating going on back there. So that's what I decided to try.

I scrapped my first set of skirt patterns, and drafted a new set. I brought the side seam flare in some on both the front and back of the skirt. And when I cut out the skirt back panel, I used the full width of the fabric, making the skirt back panel several inches wider than the back panel of the tunic. I ran a slip stitch by hand along the very top of the back panel of the skirt to make small gathers in the fabric, pinned the skirt to the outer tunic mockup, pulled the slip stitch to pull the gathers tight and uniform, then sewed the skirt onto the outer tunic. And the results were much better!

The skirt hem hangs straight in the front, has a little less gather at the sides, more like the movie costume, and the back hem has that waved hang to it. And the back of the skirt spins out much further on the second mock up than it did on the first. So I'm pretty happy with how the gathering method turned out, and will use that for the skirt on the actual costume fabric. And since the crinkle cotton and other fabrics I am considering using for the actual costume is much less stiff and has a looser weave to it than the muslin I used for the mockups, I think the gathered skirt will look, hang, and flow even better than the muslin mockup. But I guess we'll find out when I get there!

You'll have to pardon the "obi" in the pics. I wanted to see how the outer tuinc and skirt would hang with an obi cinching the waist line, so I took one of the scrap collar attemps from the inner tunic that didn't work out, and wrapped it around the waist and pinned it down to see how things looked. And of course, I'll do a blind hem on the skirt instead of a machine stitch, but hand hemming a mock up just wasn't going to happen!

On to adding the binding around the collar, and finishing up the outer tunic mockup!

Additional Pictures:

"Not to worry.  We're still flying half a ship."

- Obi-Wan Kenobi  (Revenge of the Sith)

Outer Tunic Research

So, a little on the outer tunic.  We know from the picture on the inner tunic research that the front of the outer tunic is not lined, hence the reason Ewan wore the dickie inner tunic.  And I'm assuming that the back of the outer tunic is not lined as well, again, the reason for the dickie inner tunic from the movie. 

However, we do know that the sleeves are lined.  I'm assuming so that they will flow better over the inner tunic sleeves.

But I have seen some debate over whether or not the skirt of the outer tunic was lined.  It would make sense for it to be lined, since it doesn't seem to stick to his pants much, but then this is movie magic, just reshoot the scene if the skirt gets stuck to the pants.  And websites I've looked at had pictures posted that hinted there might be a lining in the skirt, but it was hard to tell for sure. 

Then there was the picture that someone took at one of the costume exhibits while laying on her back and looking up under the skirt of the costume.  An Obi-Wan kilt check.  I love it!  But the picture looked like there was lining under the skirt of the over tunic. 

Finally, I hauled out my DVD, and yup, no doubt about it, that skirt is definitely lined!  I never noticed this before, until I was actually paying attention to his costume, and I had to laugh.  I'm surprised this scene didn't get reshot, considering the skirt is stuck on his belt!

So the skirt of the outer tunic is lined, but it looks like it is hemmed separately from the skirt fabric.  Yet, whenever we see Obi-Wan fighting, we only see one piece of fabric spinning around, not two.  So the lining must be tacked to the skirt somewhere, because the two pieces definitely flow as one.

And sure enough, it appears to be tacked to the hem of the skirt in the back, at least in the middle. 

And from a video taken by one of the guys at Crazy Old Wizards, when he got to actually examine the costume at one of the exhibits (lucky man), the lining is tacked down to the hem along the front of the skirt as well.

There's also been some debate about whether or not there is a waist line seam on the outer tunic that's hidden by the obi.  There is a picture of a waist line seam peeking out from under the obi on Mace Windu's costume, but we don't have proof like this for Obi-Wan's costume.  But I think the fact that Obi-Wan's outer tunic is not lined in front and back, but is lined in the skirt, is a pretty good indication that there is a waist seam on his outer tunic underneath his obi.

The skirt of his outer tunic is fairly full too, because he gets some serious spin on that thing while fighting!

Just watch the Mustafar fight, and you'll see what I mean.  And since Obi-Wan's tabards end at his belt in the back, unlike Anakin's, that's definitely tunic skirt twirling around.  So I'm all the more convinced that there is a waist seam hidden under the obi, and I will be building my outer tunic in a similar fashion.

I'm also beginning to think the back of the over tunic skirt is pleated a bit at the waist, to give it some of it's fullness.  I don't believe the front of the skirt is pleated at the waist, because it seems to lay fairly flat, with some random wrinkles around the obi.

While from the back, the way the skirt hangs, and the gathers in the fabric peeking out from under the bottom of the obi look a little too uniform not to be slightly pleated.  And pleats would help explain the fullness of the outer tunic skirt, since I don't think just flaring out the side seams would give it that kind of fullness and that much spin during fight scenes.

Another thing I've noticed with the collar of the outer tunic, is that there is no seam in the collar at the back of the neck like there is in the Simplicity 4450 pattern.  So that is definitely something I will be changing with the pattern, as no seam is more screen correct and no seam just plain looks nicer.

We also know that the collar on the outer tunic ends at the waist seam and does not extend all the way down to the bottom hem of the outer tunic like the pattern calls for.  Of course, now I can't find the pictures that I saw that proved this, but I do remember seeing it and it has been mentioned by others who have replicated Obi-Wan's Revenge of the Sith garb.  So I'll be doing the same with mine as well. 

So, with all that said, I have a mockup of the outer tunic just about done.  But considering it's getting late, and I have to clean up at least some of the fabric disaster in my living room, I'll have to put together the outer tunic mockup blog tomorrow. 

"Yes, well, if you could tell time half as well as you could stick a landing, we wouldn't be behind schedule now would we."

- Obi-Wan Kenobi  (Clone Wars - Hunt for Ziro)