Sorceress Nicci

 When I finally settled on Nicci as my literary character, I also decided I wanted to upcycle something as part of her costume (I had missed last year’s FR competition, so this is also in homage to that). I had a kimono I’d been intending to upcycle into a garment or other craft (as is commonly done in Japan): a plain black, summer-weight linen, and unlined. I figured since Nicci only wears black, that this would be a good choice to use. 

     

However, because the fabric is translucent, it would need something else worn with it (either as a lining or a separate garment). I decided that I would make a kirtle-style dress as an underdress, following the general descriptions about low/wide neckline, fit, and closure in the series (particularly “Faith of the Fallen”). In the book I chose, her dress is described as “fine” and “exquisite” and “like a queen”, so I knew some part of her costume would need something fancy and elegant about it - and that became the seed of the idea for the polonaise-and-kirtle ensemble, with the overdress being the fancy part. In previous books in the series, Nicci is described as wearing a simple black dress, as befits a Sister of the Light (though in secret she really is a Sister of the Dark, having pledged her soul to the ruler of the underworld in return for “subtractive” magic, having been born with the “additive” side; having both makes her very, very powerful). So, I didn’t feel too bad about making her underdress relatively simple, since it was accurate for her character.

I did a rough sketch of my idea on paper. There’s a Thierry Mugler evening gown I adore (the black velvet one with glass beading at the VA museum), and I really wanted to mimic the neckline for at least the kirtle. I drew the overdress initially with the same sleeves as that Mugler gown, but once I started draping, realized it was a bit too modern and that I didn’t have enough kimono sleeve fabric to make it all of a piece without looking off. 

Preliminary rough idea sketch

 

I also knew that “black” can get very boring if everything is the exact same shade and texture… so I deliberately varied the fabrics and trim I chose. I went with a thicker, more rigid, and yet (slightly) fancier (embroidered) fabric for the kirtle since it would have no trim aside from a separate girdle and - except the neckline - be very plain in cut. In the books, even when she wore “simple” black dresses, Nicci always was described as being more stylish than others’ basic dresses. She grew up wealthy, though her mother had guilted her into being ashamed of being well off due to her father's skill as an armorer, and had taken every chance to dress Nicci up in expensive little-girl dresses and make her do menial chores for others to show her that she wasn’t any better (was in fact worse) than they were. Even so, Nicci’s taste for fine fabrics hadn’t been diminished. 

The kimono linen was a lighter, warmer black, and seemed homogenous unless you look closely, when you can see the different widths of some of the threads though the touch is very smooth and crisp. The black and silver beaded trim was a cooler black, but because its base was organza, the warmer linen mixed nicely, resulting in a good transition between the linen and kirtle when seen together. The black organza ribbon was also warmer, but deeper than the linen, so by having one edge free it made the color transition work as it overlaid both linen and kirtle. 

I knew I wanted velvet somewhere, but not too much, so I chose to use a full spool of wired velveteen ribbon for the girdle as yet another texture contrast. 

I debated between making a black knot-and-hoop closure for the bodice, but the mock-up I did was underwhelming, got lost, and made it look unfinished. I tried various pins, broaches, and even necklace chains, but though the silver was good, it was too bright and too “hard”. I had casually looped some white-grey-silver twisted cord around the girdle as a fake “buckle” look, but that was too bright for the outfit and I hadn’t gotten around to removing it. A piece of organza fell across it while I was pinning the skirt trim on, and that dulled the cord enough to look like an antique silver, which was perfect. Oh, happy accidents. So I created the bodice closure out of the cord, then covered it with the same black organza ribbon, and made the fake “buckle”, too, and also made a cover for it. 

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To the making… 

I first created the kirtle. I had some black cotton suiting I had started to make into some kind of single-piece dress almost a decade ago (literally cutting out arm holes from a single width of fabric and sewing the top of the straps together, before losing inspiration and putting it back into the stash). Ironically, the placement of the arm holes still worked: the back portion was nearly perfectly fit, and the two finished selvedges met perfectly to form a front center seam.

The fabric formed a very tight tube, so I cut a back and two side gore slots, and thankfully had another piece of the fabric large enough to use for four gores: solid triangles for front and back, and center-seamed at the sides. I liked the idea of the dress having movement, so left the side gores’ center seams open from the knee down (those edges were finished selvedge). 

I let it hang for a few days and then trimmed the skirt to length and hemmed it.

 

  

I trimmed the bust portion of the neckline a little to shape it but otherwise left the rest alone to finish later. I then sewed lacing holes up the remaining center seam from the gore to the top of the neckline (the rainbow pins mark the locations of where the holes will be).

I tried it on inside out, pinning places with excess fabric into darts to sew down and trim off so it would be mostly fitted (leaving some room for body size fluctuations). 

   

I then trimmed and folded and draped my way to a neckline shaped like the Mugler gown, and hemmed that as well.

  

 

The kirtle was done, having taken me a couple weeks to complete (given all the hand sewing).

     

I crafted the lining for the overdress bodice from some medium-weight black linen, using my usual method of “drawing with pins” (pinning the shape of a piece onto the fabric in accordance with my measurements and referencing photos of the garment or piece), and then cutting it out. I did the back piece first, since that was familiar from making a robe à l’anglaise (with a single full-length back piece fitted/pleated to a bodice lining for shape) and a saque. I made the back lining have overly long shoulder straps which ended just below my collarbone to help with fitting the front panels. 

   

I had never done a cutaway/zone front gown before, and that was the type of style I wanted to make, given a few 18th century fashion plates and portraits I’d seen of gowns in that style. I started by cutting out two overly large mostly-triangles and pinning one edge each to a side of the back lining. I then draped and pinned one side while wearing the lining until I got a shape I liked, cut it out, and used that side as the “pattern” for the other.

          

I ended up making the look and style of the overdress neckline and front closer to a military-inspired riding habit than a true polonaise (which are sometimes triangles, though sometimes straight like an anglaise) or zone front (“pure” triangles or with curved long edges along the torso), but I think it works. I sewed the lining pieces together, and then put that on my dress form (seams out so the inside of the overdress would be clean) over the kirtle already there so I could see how it looked together.

  

I trimmed the neckline of the overdress a bit more to better complement the kirtle neckline (not match it, since the overdress would be more like a jacket), then hemmed the lining edges.

 

Now came the hard part. Until this time, I had been within (kirtle pattern and gores, overdress bodice lining creation) or just outside (fitting the kirtle, determining the overdress bodice cut) my comfort zone. Now I was leaving it entirely: trying to conceptualize how I would take a garment designed in rectangles and intended to be worn in a very linear fashion and cylindrical silhouette, and adapt it to the loosely-fitted, body-following bodice and abundant, retroussée skirt of a polonaise. 

When draping and pinning the intact kimono onto the form led to me realizing I couldn’t use it “as-is” (there was too much fabric in the wrong places and too little where more would fit or flow better), I decided I needed to disassemble the kimono into the pieces I would use by undoing the seams: the sleeve pieces, the thin strip of lining, the collar, the collar-panels, and the front-wrap panels, leaving only the two main body panels intact as a sleeveless robe. I set aside everything but the sleeve rectangles and the robe. You can see the robe already had a fitting seam (which I'm pointing to) on the back which was used to pull up excess length (rather than cutting the fabric) so it could be extended in the future if the kimono were remade; I left it alone, since it fit fine. You can also see the stripe of navy silk down the inside center seam hiding the join of the two robe panels.

       

I then took the robe and put it on the dress form over the lining and kirtle, pinning the shoulders, side seams, and back neckline to the lining. I pinned the shoulders of the robe where they fell on the lining, leaving a bit almost like a cap sleeve overhang and a bunch going up the neck that I would remove later.  I folded the front panels under in a rough approximation of the edge of the front panels to see what it would look like. I trimmed the back neckline slightly to follow the lining shape better. I then sewed where I’d pinned. I also pinned on the sleeves so I could play around with ideas for them.

  

Now the easier part of the hard part was done: time for handling the front. I first loosely smoothed the lining and the kimono front panels together and pinned them, then trimmed with an up to 2” seam allowance in the shape of the lining panel on the one side. This resulted in a piece of fabric that was a rectangle with the top narrow edge at a sharp angle instead of flat. I unpicked the seam between that remnant piece and its back panel, and then used that remnant as a pattern for the other size. When both were removed, the overdress looked like a tuxedo jacket with a single floor-length tail. 

      

I then fitted the kimono fabric to the lining with a lot of pins, and a couple darts pulling the fabric flat from that new curve to the side seam and sewed those down. I then trimmed off the seam allowance I didn’t need, turned the edges of the kimono fabric under, and sewed them to leave a slightly longer turned hem over the lining edge as I had done for the back neckline.

  

Now to figure out the overdress skirt. I wanted to use the two front panel remnants I had cut off to “fill out” the back of the overdress skirt, but it took multiple pinning and draping attempts before I finally figured out a way to do it (I hoped) that would only require unpicking the center back seam up to the mid-back fit-seam. I had been trying it all out with the back fully intact because I only have the one kimono and couldn't do a mock-up, so it wasn’t possible to really “see” how anything I was trying would actually look until I did it. I had been considering keeping the seam intact and making two gore slits in the center of each panel. I quickly realized that wouldn’t work unless I made each remnant panel into two shorter triangles sewn into a full triangle gore (which would be at most thigh high given the fabric I had left, and that was too short because the flare needed to start at the hips to not look weird), and that the flat narrow center section between them would just look odd or else be bulky if I tried to make it retroussée. 

What I ended up doing was sewing the long edges of each odd-shaped rectangle to the unpicked edge of a back panel, and then sewing together the two angled short edges (so the flat short edges met and continued the hemline). The back seam had a thin length of navy silk that had been used to cover the seam, so when I had unpicked the seam, I left it full length. Once the angled short edges were sewn together, I then reattached that silk so it continued the clean back seam line to the now-outside edge (the shorter long edge of the remnant), then cut off the remainder of the silk. Sewing the two pieces like that formed a shape like a flat-angled bustle. I gathered the top of it (the shorter angled side) together at the point where the two original back panels met, and stitched it up like a retroussée skirt (final photo was after it was sewn, with the organza trim pinned on). 

    

    

Since the main dress was finished, I moved on to the trim. While pinning the trim, I realized the fit of the bodice was too flat (the panels stood out straight down rather than following the body shape), so I added a small dart at the bust on each panel to make the fit closer.

I had two yard(ish) pieces of black-and-silver beaded organza ribbon trim. It was literally just enough to drape/fold corners and pin to follow the edges of the bodice starting in center back. It was about two inches shy of where the bodice bottom edge met what had been the side seam, so I decided to add a length of plain black organza trim along the vertical edges of the overdress, making the ends “bubble-gather” to a point(ish) like how I’d made the beaded trim come to a point. I had whipstitched the beaded trim along both edges to attach to the bodice (it made the silver thread borders look more textured, and did double duty pulling back into line many of the silver threads that had come loose - the trim had been in the remnants pile).

         

   

For the plain ribbon, I simply running-stitched it along one edge about half the width of the ribbon from the edge of the fabric so half the ribbon was “free”. It provided more texture, interest, movement, and contrast (with all the black on black) than simply attaching it like I had done the beaded trim. 

             

            

Lastly, I sewed on the sleeves and did the last-minute hemming on some of the edges. For most of the project the sleeves were only attached at two points with pins, but when I tried it on again near the end I realized that the full “cold shoulder” look wasn’t going to work - it was too messy - so I connected the center of the top of the sleeve to the robe so there was only a thin gap between the robe and sleeve top. I didn’t want to fully close the gap because that would be too much unrelieved black.

Finally, I made the bodice closure and the fake girdle buckle out of the silver-grey-white cord covered by the black organza ribbon. The loop part of the bodice closure is a simple piece folded in half and twisted, then sewn in place. I took a piece of ribbon and wound and sewed it over the finished hoop. The knot part is another length folded in half and knotted at the folded end, then also wound and sewed into black organza ribbon. It can be worn looser (knot visible in the loop) or more fitted as I did for the photos (knot pulled through, loop twisted to form another separate loop, and knot pushed through that, cord pulled tight so the loop part reaches across the full gap, and knot end tucked behind the bodice front. The buckle was a much longer piece of cord, again folded in half and twisted, and then shaped by winding around the girdle where the two girdle ends tie before then draping to the floor separately. I made a sleeve out of two small pieces of ribbon (one sewn in a loop, the other sewn to one end of the loop to “bridge” between the two ribbon sides, with the other “O” of the loop open for both girdle tails to pass through). 

            

The dress form I had gotten a few years ago when I was younger and a bit slimmer, so I had to pad it out (using a pillow and corset) for the appropriate width though the shape was more round as a result. It still fit me when I put it on. I did take a few photos in front of my mirror once it was done.

                 

This past weekend I went outside to take “action” photos (my husband was my photographer) and also took a few more shots in better light against a plain background.