Faramir's Coronation Outfit
Faramir's Coronation Outfit
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This costume, introduced in the film "The Return of the King", is worn by Faramir, Steward of Gondor, Prince of Ithilien, and Lord of Emyn Arnen, at the coronation of Aragorn as King Elessar. This far we've seen only the outer layers of this beautiful outfit:
The cloak and the vest seem to be made of dark blue silk? velvet with elaborate silver embroidered trims covering the edges. The sleeves look like velvet, too, of somewhat lighter shade of blue than the vest and the cloak, with quilting and embroidered stars of silver. Underneath these layers Faramir probably wears
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Starting on the 2nd of Jan. 2004, I'm going to make 1) the shirt, 2) the vest, and (possibly later) 3) the cloak. If the bearer of this costume will turn out to be enthusiastic enough, he'll do the breast and shoulder plates himself. |
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1) The Shirt
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The parts of the sleeves of Faramir's COF we've seen so far resemble closely those of the inner jacket of his Ranger Outfit: they are quilted in diagonal blocks, and they are long and tight in the wrists suggesting there's lacing in the inner side of the arm. So also the rest of the shirt may well be like the Ranger jacket with "enlarged" armholes, neck opening in the mid front with lacing, and a small stand up collar of the same pattern piece as the body of the shirt. The body may be made of some other material than the sleeves with only perhaps the panel covering the neck opening and the collar made of velvet. The shirt is possibly only hip length like the Ranger jacket. |
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I had an odd piece of light grey cotton velvet, which I machine-dyed dark blue. I was hoping for a little lighter shade of blue, but I guess I have to be glad it didn't turn out all black! Next I did a muslin drafting the pattern from an ordinary men's shirt and the measurements of my live model. The tough part was figuring out, what the pattern of the sleeve would be like. First I separated the "extended" parts of the jacket's sleeve from the front and back body parts starting nearly from the middle of the shoulder line and curving well under the armpit.The sleeve of Faramir's jacket is obviously made of one piece, so I united the front and back pieces of the sleeve of the men's shirt leaving only one seamline under the arm. Because the front and the back body parts were asymmetric (there's more room in the front), I didn't change the difference btw. the front and the back of the sleeve, either, so the sleeve is asymmetric aswell. Don't know if this is quite necessary, though; making the sleeves (and the front and back parts) symmetric would save some fabric. |
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This kind of "bolero" or "qvasi-raglan" sleeve would perhaps fit a little better, if you used small darts and gussets in the arm-pit, but as I saw no traces of them in Faramir's Ranger jacket, I just "added" the gussets to the sleeve pattern thus uniting the actual sleeve with the parts "taken" out of the front and back body parts. The result was good enough for me: the sleeve cannot fit perfectly, but as there seems to be right amount of extra room in the armhole, it looks like being quite comfortable. |
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First I went for the sleeves. Instead of stars I chose a simpler way to embroider the sleeves: metal coloured beads at the crossings of the quilting lines. And as I suspect seeing traces of quilting in the picture of Eowyn and Faramir I used silver coloured thread. I fastened the beads at the same time as I did the quilting, - very easy-going and quick work!
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When the quilting was done I sewed up the small seams in the upper ends of the sleeves (actually the sides of the body part going up to the arm-pits), and lined the sleeves with dark blue polyester lining material. Then I edged the wrist and side opening with silver ribbon (- a simpler way to do this would have been to use cord edge while lining the sleeves, but I couldn't find any cord matching the colours). The lacing in my sleeve is probably much looser than in Faramir's jacket; I was just being stingy here.
One sleeve ready. |
To be continued...
2) The Vest
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An ankle length vest, possibly held shut at the upper front by hooks inside the edges. High mandarin collar, the visible curve in the trim suggesting that the collar is of the same pattern piece as the body parts of the vest? (Requiring darts down the front and back pieces?) The Ranger outfit may again give some clues on making out further details. Like the Ranger vest also this one is possibly split at the mid back up to the waist, and on the both sides with lacing from under the armpits down to the hip. The Vest is edged in the neck and the front with silver embroidered trim, ca. 4 cm (1,5") wide, with a continuous floral motif (flowers of the White Tree of Gondor?) The embroidery is probably built onto a strip of the same dark blue velvet as the vest |
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Just for the fun of it - and, of course, to cut down the expenses, and being shy of the idea of actually embroidering around 7 meters of trims for the vest and the cloak all together - I'm again trying to find a short way round "purchasing" these trims. So I made a strip of dark blue velvet and edged it with silver ribbon. Now I have to fill it somehow with silver yarn and beads... To be continued... |
3) The Cloak
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Looks like the Ranger type of cloak without hood, semi-circle, ankle length. Wide neck without any visible closure (hooks?). In the filme the cloak seems to attached somehow to Faramir's cuirass or shoulder plates. Edged in the neck and front with silver embroidered trim with floral motif, ca 6 cm (2,4") wide. Probably lined with silk. |
To be continued...
