Endor Leia Poncho

So this year has somehow become the year of Star Wars costumes, more or less pushing all my other costume plans to the wayside. Which isn’t too big of a problem considering the fact that all of these costumes were on my master list to begin with.

Well, kind of.

While I have toyed with the idea of making an Endor Ground Mission outfit for Leia since I do want to do at least one Princess Leia costume, I ultimately decided I would be making a look from her stand alone comic series instead. I’m not a super big fan of camo to be honest and I don’t want to deal with that helmet situation.

However, a cousin of mine is getting married in September. And the reception is Star Wars and Harry Potter themed with a strong encouragement to wear a costume. How could anyone pass that up? Of course my mom and I don’t want to be too outlandish with our looks, so after we took a full set of our own unique Jedi robes off the table we settled on two outfits that can be wedding appropriate.

So I am wearing medal ceremony Luke Skywalker (look for a post about that coming relatively soon) and my mom is wearing Endor Leia. After a fashion. Her outfit under the poncho will be similar but ultimately a wedding appropriate look.

Which long story short meant she needed a cape. And seeing as I am the sewing member of the family, the duty fell to me. Rather then purchase camo fabric I just used some white quilters cotton that I had laying around from when I made my swan princess gown and my mom will dye the garment on her own at a later point in time.

Now, this garment was a hassle. Mostly because of the hood piece. After the struggles I had with this one piece cowl hooded nightmare I can only conclude that the hood was for fashion and not function. Which is probably why nobody ever puts theirs up in the movie.

The poncho I made isn’t exact to the movie proportions wise, the width is altered. In the film when standing the side parts of the ponchos comes down to the elbows (or a bit below the elbows depending on the actor) but the one I made only comes to about the mid point of the upper arm. About where a tee-shirt sleeve would end. This was mostly due to the limited amount of fabric I was using, but also so the garment doesn’t get too unweildly to wear at the reception.

After I found the largest piece of fabric and cutting it away from the rest, I folded it over so that the garment was longer in the back and shorter in the front. This was measured against my mother, who is about five to six inches taller then me, and has much narrower shoulders. I marked with pins where her shoulders started and stopped and where I would need to cut the neck hole.

Once the neck hole was cut the poncho itself was actually pretty much done. I hemmed all four sides down with a double rolled hem and it was looking pretty good when I tried it on.  It was at this point that I thought this was going to be a one evening project (sans dye job) and I would be able to move on to working on Luke the next day. Alas, I was wrong.

Side note, I really need to get different light bulbs because mine really give off a harsh yellow cast that makes all my pictures look like they’re in a light sepia tone. Drives me nuts. Anyway.

The hood is honestly the bane of my existence and I had to do it twice. Technically I should have done it a third time because I still made the cowl piece too big but I did some frankly brutal hand stitching and fabric manipulation to deal with the excess fabric I ended up with. Which was maybe a blessing in disguise because it did help the hood keep it’s shape.

The biggest issue with the hood was the front part of it. It isn’t like a standard jacket hood in that the poncho has a cowl front. No visible seams from the front or side in any of the screen shots and promotional stills I was using as a reference. And after scouring the internet for a cowl hooded poncho tutorial I found nothing that was helpful to get the right look so I had to suss it out on my own.

What I decided on was one long piece that had a single back seam along the hood itself, which would join the strip into a loop. I did this by having the front of the cowl collar be cut on the fold. I used a large mens hoodie hood as my pattern and just traced around it, adding a little extra room to the seam to give it some more volume.

Then like a lunatic I pinned the hood to the poncho and put the whole thing on my body. A dangerous undertaking that I don’t think anyone should replicate. I had a lot of close calls with pins against my face and eyes when taking the garment off and I found approx. three pins in my hair over the course of the next day or so. Don’t do it.

Anyway, I made the cowl piece too long, sewed it on but ended up with way too much fabric at the sides. So I had to seam rip if off and make a whole new hood. Which was better, but I still doubled the neck measurement when I should have halved it so I still had some excess. But I didn’t want to have to make a third hood so I strategically pleated the excess fabric into triangles that I then folded back and hand sewed into the inside of the hood. Which ended up looking pretty okay, to be honest.

So the very last thing I had to do since I am not part of the dye job was to insert the slits in the front for Leia’s belt. I used a belt my mother owned for measuring how tall each slit needed to be, and I just treated them like very large button holes.

And then I was done! I have to admit I do really like wearing this. My sister also had it on at one point and was just walking around the house doing things in it. My mom even wants me to make her another one for her to wear out in the actual woods when she goes hiking out of some water resistant fabric. So I guess I have some more of these nightmareish cowl hooded things in my future.

Really it’s the hood that is the source of all my misery.

But yeah, it’s done and I have all the materials I need to do my next project which is Luke’s yellow jacket. So stay tuned for that in the near future guys!

Cheers.