One Last Knight

 Back when my sister and I started planning my Fantasy Fashions book, there were three costumes that I felt really needed to go into the final section with all the Fashion sized costumes. But none had been made yet.  I've since completed two of them; Elf Agnes' gown, and the Phantom as the Red Death...

The third, and final one is a knight costume for Matias.  I decided that I didn't want to make him the same kind of knight outfit as my three Iplehouse FID guys.  I wanted to do something different. In the meantime Matias was standing around waiting for me to decide what I wanted to make for him, so I made him a robe to keep him warm... 

​Years ago when my sister and I were making dolls together, we made one of King Arthur.  I loved that doll and regretted not keeping him...

So I thought I'd make Matias a knight outfit inspired by Arthur's costume.  I had been gifted a set of SartoriaJ's knight gloves that were part of Matias' full set, and they would be perfect for it.  I'd use real metal chainmail instead of the knit chainmail from years ago.  And he'd get plate armour sculpted out of Aves Apoxie. And since he was in service to the Elf King, and the Elven army had a dragon as their mascot, Arthur's dragon would be perfect too. So I chose two red brocades for the surcoat and started work on it....

It would be a lot easier to add the dragon motif before finishing the surcoat, while it was still flat, so I drew a dragon design onto the paper pattern piece....

Then I cut out the dragon and traced it onto the surcoat, and painted it with acrylic folk art paint.

It didn't have to be perfect, since I was going to embroider over the paint and add all the details with embroidery floss.  But painting the background saves a lot of work since the entire figure won't need to be filled in...

The finished dragon.  It looks like it's completely embroidered, but it isn't.  The original paint layer shows through more than half of it.  I find this technique is a great way to create something that looks like it's heavily embroidered, but in a fraction of the time.

All it still needed was a shiny red bead for the eye.

Then the surcoat was sewn together. It still needs some stains and wrinkles, but I'll do that later.

Meanwhile, Matias needed to attend a party, and he needed something to wear, so he borrowed Jude's formal tunic, and I tamed his hair some..

 The next part of his knight costume that needed to be made was the tunic underneath the surcoat. Since Matias was wearing Jude's tunic, I thought I'd just try the surcoat over it to see how it fit and looked, and to see if the pattern needed any adjusting. I also switched his one hand to the resin armour glove....

I thought he looked great, although he definitely won't be getting white ruffles at the wrist or neck. He will get a black tunic, onto which I will sew the chainmail sleeves and 'skirt'. Then once that's done, I'll wrap him in plastic and attempt to sculpt some armour pieces for around his neck and over his shoulders. But first he needs everything under the armour made so I can make it the right size to fit over top. I just hope I can do something fine and fancy enough to go with those amazing gloves.  And finally he'll need belts, and a sword of his own. But one thing at a time.