Court of Owls Costume Finished

 Hi everyone, I have got an hour to myself so I thought I would do my write up of my Court of Owls costume I made for the comic book convention at the Royal Armouries in Leeds in November.

Beware the Court of Owls, that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch, behind granite and lime. They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed, speak not a whispered word about them, or they'll send The Talon for your head.

The court of Owls are basically (if you didn't check out the above link) the bad guys in DC Comic Universe. They started in the 1800's and that is what I decided to do for my costume and since I love steampunk I decided to steam it up alittle. I wanted to make as much of my own costume as possible so I started with the jewellery. I wanted a statement piece for my neck, I think it turned out pretty awesome if I do say so myself!

I had an awful time tracking down a suitable crinoline until I happened across a UK seller on evilbay, its a minefield of expensive what planet do they think you are on and overseas sellers from china that would take far far too long to arrive. So I ordered this one, its number 10 on the above link. Here it is letting it fluff out from its squashed packaging with Tigeress looking slightly confused by it. She spent ages just walking around it looking for a way in! Too funny!

So the next step was to create the black skirt, I went to a new fabric shop in town called the Fabbardashery. Wonderful shop, super helpful. I came away with a huge amount of fabric in jet black super quality cotton and some clock printed fabric. The black skirt was simple, sewed it up the edge sewed a piece of elastic in the top, stood on a chair and had my mum pin the bottom, hemmed it and done. Then came the bustle, ahhh what fun that was! Having never made a bustle it was quite interesting! My lovely friend Vili came over to give me a hand. We sewed the clock fabric and backed it in black so it looked like a pillowcase. Made a belt with a spare strip of black and worked out how wide the bustle needed to be on my hips. The piece of fabric is 44inch wide so we then gathered it into the small width required and sewed on the belt. We attached it to a chair and started bustle making. It is pretty simple really, get some pins and stab yourself loads while you faff and work out how to make it look good.

Above left we have the bustle tied to a chair while we pinned it, checked it then sewed it in place and above right the bustle done with corset and skirt and crinoline on to check it looked good together.

I literally finished the whole thing the day before so getting up at 6.30am on the Saturday I got dressed and conned my mum into taking me to the train station where we were all meeting to travel together. I didn't wear my corset on the train as I fancied being able to breathe at that time in the morning, I did put it on on the train and got a fair few funny looks by people in the carriage. It was quite hard getting in and out of the car, I felt like I should have been in big fat gypsy weddings. Speaking of weddings, on our way up to the convention from Leeds train station 2 random foreign men congratulated me and Ross (picture below) on our marriage...... so did a few other people...... No we aren't married, my fellah was at a different event in York so missed all the convention fun!

So here most of us are in all our Court glory! A couple were missing from the photo, both the above one and below one were taken at about 9.30 in the morning, and it was COLD! Like my fingerless gloves? looked good with the costume but not very practical!

The final photo below was taken in the bar at about 3pm. Not bad for 3 hours sleep and a hectic day of posing for the camera for more people than I can remember and chatting away about costume making to more people than I can remember too.

It was a totally wonderful convention but I was totally shattered by the end having just days before recovered from 2 weeks of the awful Norovirus. My bustle looks alittle flat in this picture, I had been sat down just before it was taken, I think I only got to sit down for 15mins the whole day! Cant wait for next time and to see what everyone comes up with to go as. We were the only co-ordinated group so we got rather a lot of attention!

Thanks for visiting
Clare