I've wanted to make this outfit on and off since "The Fellowship of the Ring" first came out. It's the outfit Arwen wears when she's being chased by the Nazgul, taking Frodo to Rivendell. Very basically, the outfit consists of a grey suede bodice and skirt. The skirt is petal shaped at the hem. The sleeves have a silver design embroidered or painted onto them, sleeve caps, and are petal shaped on the bottom half. There are undersleeves of a crinkled, metallic silver fabric, which you can see underneath the suede ones. There is an underskirt of a ligther shade of grey, possibly silk chiffon or china silk, which you can see billowing out as she rides, so there must be a fair amount of fabric in it. This skirt is a bit longer than the overskirt, and also has the petal shaped hem. She also wears leggings or riding trousers, made from some sort of stretch knit? Not sure on the colour, but it could be a grey/plum colour - you don't really get to see these. The outfit also has riding boots and gloves.

As far as accessories go, Arwen wears the Evenstar pendant, and has her hair done in three herringbone braids. She also has her sword, but I'm not going to make that. The bodice is falsely closed with sashes at the front and the back (apparently there is an invisible zipper and hook and eye at the front of the bodice). The smaller sashes at the front are twined around a huge silver 'buckle'.

Research





Fabric & Materials

Bodice & Overskirt: Grey faux suede. Sleeve design is silver fabric paint.

Underskirt: Crinkle chiffon a shade lighter than the suede.

Undersleeves: A cream silk with silver metallic thread through it.

Leggings: Grey faux suede used for overskirt and bodice.

Accessories:
Boots - I bought some suede knee length boots in tan.
Buckle - Sculpey, painted in silver acrylic paint.

Construction

Bodice

I've never drafted princess seams before, so this was my first challenge. I decided the easiest approach was to draft up a basic bodice (ie seams at the sides and front and back). Once I was happy with the fit of this, I added in the two princess seams at the front, allowing for seams, then got rid of the seam in the back. I then shifted the side seams more around the back. This left me with one seam down the centre front (for the zipper closure), princess seams either side, and back side seams. It sounds more complicated than it actually was. Once I mocked it up, it only needed a few alterations to fit. Note that the bodice doesn't need to be a snug fit at the sides, as the two back sashes, once tied together, bring in the extra fullness.

There is a slight v-shaped dip in the front and back of the bodice.

The next step was to draft in the rolled collar. Collars and necklines have never been my strong point, but there are helpful instructions on ACS.

I self lined the bodice.

I bought a perfectly matching lace for the collar lining. Unfortunately I had to hand sew it all in, which was a pain in the butt, and very time consuming! The look was effective though, so I think it was well worth it.

The front closure is an open ended invisible zipper, with a couple of hooks and eyes at the top to finish it off.

Two sashes are sewn into the back side seams, right at the bottom where they meet the skirt. Tied together, these pull in any extra fullness that the bodice may have. For the front sashes, I sewed in loopholes in the princess seams for the saches to go through, then wound the buckle through them at the waist.

Sleeves

Even with the instructions on ACS it still took me ages to get my head around these sleeves. I won't go over them again - they are pretty much as described on the site.

The cream/silver undersleeves are just a normal sleeve shape, which flare out from just below the elbow. They ended up not being as flared out as I had wanted, so I just added in a gore from my forearm to the wrist to make them flare out more. This fabric doesn't fray, so I didn't have to hem the edge of the sleeve - which gave the right look, as it doesn't appear that her undersleeves were hemmed at all.

I was really happy with how the sleeve embelishments turned out although again, it was very time consuming. I printed out the sleeve design from ACS. I then pinned some dressmaker's paper to the sleeve, pinned the printed design over the top, placing it where I wanted it to be on the sleeve. Using a pen, I traced over the pattern - really hard. It actually tore right through the paper, but it was the only way to get the pattern on, as the tracing paper turned out pretty useless! It didn't matter if I got some pen on the sleeve, as I was painting over it anyway.

Once I had the pattern traced onto the sleeve, using a really thin, round pointed brush, I painted the design on in silver fabric paint.

Overskirt

The skirt consists of four panels (two front, two back), all open at the sides, ie they aren't sewn together. They extend to mid calf, and at the front the curve up slightly into a petal shape. They are sewn directly into the bodice. I shaped the top slightly to fit into the curved shape of the bodice, to ensure the skirts would sit flat, and not do funky things at the top where the bodice curves.

Underskirt

The underskirts are similar to the overskirts; they are just longer (reaching the ankle) and are sewn together at the sides, but open at the front and back. Mine didn't turn out as full as I'd like, so I'll probably add some fabric in there when I get some time.

Leggings

I was going to buy some different fabric for these, but I couldn't find anything that would even look half decent, so I used the suede. I used my Jedi pants pattern, bringing in the seams a bit to make them more into "leggings". The top is elastic.

Accessories

I made the buckle out of Sculpey in silver. I didn't take any progress photos of this unfortunately. Basicall, I rolled out the Sculpey into the thickness I wanted, the cut/rolled out the different shapes that made up the buckle. I found it really hard to keep it all neat, and it's a pain to work with, but I got there. I baked it for about 15 minutes, then gave it several coats of acrylic paint in sterling silver. I finished it off with a gloss varnish.

I found these really great boots on sale. I'm really happy with them, they have the right look and are so comfortable to wear.

The ribbons at the front and back are blue polyester, but without the satin shine, so they match better than normal ribbons.

And of course, I wore my Elf ears to finish the whole costume off.