Arya Stark’s Costume
This is going to be a brief explanation of the process I went through to make Arya’s shirt and jacket. If you’re interested in how I made Needle, stay tuned, that how to will be coming soon.
Unfortunately, the how-to on this build was a bit of an after thought, so my pictures aren’t all encompassing and don’t have a full break down of materials and steps, but I will try to make up for that in the description.
First, I needed to start with reference photos.
This is the look I was going for. Just from looking at the picture, I can break the costume down into 5 parts:
-Neck Wrap
-Shirt
-Jacket
-Belt
-Needle
The Neck wrap was a simple rectangle of fabric that I looped over and sewed together so no frayed edges would show.
The shirt was a bit more complicated. In order to get the pattern on the chest, I needed to make it a drawstring neck that would make folds when tightened. A few folds were sewn-in so that they would always be apparent, just in case the drawstring didn’t work.
This was the result of the drawstring neck. It was good enough, seeing as most of the shirt would be covered by the jacket anyway. The belt was the only part that was store bought and needle was made ahead of time (again, how to coming soon).
The sleeve length needed to get taken in so I put small slits in the fabric and ripped the excess sleeve off to give it a more naturally worn look.
This was the result of the hand tearing. I tried to match it to reference photos as much as possible. The shirt had a ways to go before it looked perfect but the fixes would come in time. For now it was time to start on the jacket which was the absolute hardest part.
I went to my local fabric store and found a bolt of cloth that was as close to the pattern on Arya’s jacket as possible (though not the right color) then cut that into a number of 3.5″ strips. The strips were then folded over and sewn together then the sewn edge was moved to the center of the material and ironed down. This became the back of the strip.
I initially stared with a much thinner strip to match what is used in the show, but working with them was next to impossible - kuddos to the actual costume designer.
Once the strips were made, I cut them according to a pattern that I made by laying excess fabric around the mannequin into the shape of the jacket. I kept track of which strips went where by numbering them with chalk which would easily wash off when it came time to dye the jacket.
The strips were pinned together and a .75″ leather trim was sewn around to keep them in the right shape. Then, I melted some beeswax and soaked some black string into it so It would gain some rigidity. This helped me from having to use a separate tool to thread it through the layers. I simply cut the end of the string to a point and used the string as a needle to guide it into the fabric.
While that was an effective method, I needed starter holes which I made by laying a tape measure along the edge of the fabric and piercing it with a brass nail every inch. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of this step but I can say that it is torture on your hands. The nails have to be threaded through both strips so the holes come out lined up and then they need to be jerked around to make the hole wide enough to thread the string through.
I started with the sleeves because it was the least amount of work and if the process didn’t work, I could start over without losing much time.
Next, it was time to make the jacket. Again, I sewed a tape edge around the entire thing and test fit the pieces on the mannequin. The jacket uses a thicker bottom edge which was accomplished by buying a sheet of leather 5″ thick and folding it over the bottom then gluing and sewing into place.
I decided to use a thinner strip on the front for the holes to lace it up, but decided to remove these later for a more authentic look and a better fit for my bustier client.
Here it is fully laced together. I marked out where I wanted the holes in the front, but those panels were removed before making the holes. It was time to dye everything which I did in a large plastic tub inside my bathtub.
This process was pretty messy as you can probably tell from the splatters all over the wall. I used 4 large bottles of Rit liquid dye with approximately 10 gallons of steaming hot water.
The jacket and neck wrap were left to soak for about an hour after being sloshed around for about 20 minutes to remove air bubbles.
The shirt was dipped in very briefly to give it a little color and the tips of the sleeves were dipped in periodically before hang drying so the color would settle in the frayed edge to give it a really mud worn look.
Afterwords, the tub was drained and everything got a machine washed and dried.
This gave me the exact look I wanted. I went in after the piece had dried to make the lace holes for the front. I did this by again marking them with a tape measure and burned them in with a wood burning tool. Burning them in caused the edges of the holes to seal so they wouldn’t tighten and disappear.
The smaller strips that I cut off needed to be edged and unfortunately I ran out of the .75″ edge tape that I used for the rest of the costume, so I took one of the 5″ bottom edges and cut a piece off for the edge. That didn’t bend around the edge quite as well since it wasn’t perforated like the leather edge, so I just sewed it to the front.
And that was it, the costume was finished.
Fits like a glove :)
Stay tuned for my Needle build.