So as I mentioned earlier I’ve been trying to put together a hairpiece for my Queen Amidala costume. This is something I’ve tried to do for ages — finally attempted it in 2010 but gave up. So here we are again. Trying to make a hairpiece for a 12 year old costume.
But if I can make this work it means I don’t have to torture my hair when I wear this. Seriously trying to do this, with all the teasing and hairspray, turns my hair into a giant rat’s next until I can wash it out. And it takes like 30-45 minutes to put up. So it’s a pain.
So I pulled out the hairpiece I started messing with back in 2010. It’s my old, original Slave Leia braid. And as it turns out, it is completely FRIED. Like literally everything I do to it it frizzes and breaks and tangles like CRAZY. I really should’ve gone and bought a new one but nuts to that. All together I spent $3.19 cents on this because everything was junk I already had, except the fabric.
So anyway I got a structural piece made – Chase helped me put this together, it’s just two pieces of worbla, a little bigger than half-dollar, with 5 wires sandwiched between. I put that into the inside of the hairpiece (after taking the clip out – it still has the drawstring) and worked the wires through the netting. Then I cut foam pieces to put on top of the wires.
I’m not going to go FULL tutorial here – I want to actually wear it first, then next week I will post a full tutorial. Want to make sure this works first.
Originally I covered them in black knit, but the hair wasn’t giving enough coverage and you could see big chunks of black on the sides. So I ran to Hobby Lobby for some brown stretch material (uuuuuuuuuuugh I miss Hancock) and all they had was brown fleece. So I got a half yard of that and covered each of the foam pieces in that — mostly glue but some quick hand-sewing on the edges to get everything smooshed down.
Now they look like weird little mushrooms
I left the bottom uncovered so I could still poke the wire into the foam there. Then I hand-stitched each piece onto the netting of the hairpiece to keep them in place.
Here’s what it looked like when I was first playing with it, still had the black fabric on the foam pieces:
Wrapped each ponytail up and over the foam pieces, put another elastic band around it at the base, fanned the hair out. Then the excess hair at the ends, I wrapped part of it around the base to hide some of the fabric a little more, then braided it to keep it from being messy.
Looks pretty decent. I also sewed a comb onto the back of the netting to help keep it in place without needing a ton of bobbie pins.
Unfortunately it’s kinda heavy. IT was fine wearing for a few minutes. I’m going to have to see if putting my own hair up in a different way will help distribute the weight Saturday.
I also still have the excess hair in braids in the back, right now they are just tucked back up into themselves. I think I need to just bite the bullet and cut most of it off. It’s not like I’m going to use this hairpiece for anything else!
And some randomness because I posted it on facebook yesterday…
I keep thinking that I joined the Rebel Legion in 2002, with my first Padme Lake dress. But forum says I joined in Sept 2003 — so 2002 must have been when I started posting at theforce.net’s Costuming and Props board, and I joined with my Loyalist Committee dress the next year. So looking back through photos I think my first official “troop” as a RL member had to be Halloween 2003, Nightmarez Kid’s Days:
(click on it to expand)
And I’m surprised to see I already made the updates to the dress. For Dragoncon and the photoshoot we did right after my sleeves were still huge bell sleeves, so sometime within that month mom and I must have taken those sleeves up, and painted the trim.
Picture on the left is from 2004… MAYBE 2005. At the Big Scoop. I just included it because I always thought it was funny – I made dad pose for a picture with it and kept the polaroid, been hanging in my workroom ever since.
I still think about revisiting that costume. Pulling that sequin fabric off the bodice — taking the zipper out, lining it, putting some boning in and a lace up back. That would make the top workable. I could easily redo the designs on the front skirt panel and sleeves, and maybe do new trim on the jacket… etc. I don’t think I could get it RL standards at this point, without a redo of everything. The skirt would need another panel and obviously I don’t have anymore of that material! But I have the screen accurate velvet — I just went with it in black instead of dyeing purple because I thought it looked more black onscreen. But it seems a shame to let that fabric go to waste on a costume I know I could update and wear again. Maybe I’ll do a little of that before I shoot it on the backdrop eventually.
Annnnnnyway.