What I feel like any time I say I'm going to be better about posting....

     So I find my biggest draw back in social media is I'm never sure how much people want to hear or what they want to hear. I can ramble on forever as excited as can be but then I panic and second guess myself. This usually leads to me deleting entire posts and getting stuck on what to do next. I don't know how many times I've typed and deleted the post about the Not This Day Dress post. At this point I'm having to remind myself that this is my project to do with as I will and write about as I see fit. Although I sometimes struggle to put my thoughts into written word I am still going to do so. It may take me a bit to wrangle my thoughts and get it down correctly but I am going to do it. There may still be gaps in my productivity be it money issues or me struggling with my anxiety and depression but I'm working to close those gaps up. Thank you for coming with me this far.

Until next time,                 

 Ashley                           

The Return of the Blogger

    You may not want to know how pleased with my self over this post title. It is about the same amount of satisfaction you get from a really bad pun. But it also brings great news, I'm back from an unscheduled and unannounced hiatus. I am sorry for being away from this for so long. I've actually got to work on quite a few looks in the time I was away from this blog. So that time away was not wasted and I am excited to share these looks with you.


                                                                                             Stay tuned and until next time,
                                                                                                                       Ashley Fee

Pippin Knight of Gondor

 

Photo by Arian Hormozi Photography

This dress. This dress is my baby. My cheap, made of cotton and fabrics I stole from other costumes I had, baby. I didn't really make it with the mind of "This is going to start me on this huge project". I made this dress because I wanted something Pippin inspired to meet Billy Boyd in that wasn't quite cosplay.

Another done by Arian Hormozi Photography.

   To begin with I had to figure out how was it going to relate to Pippin. I have no knitting skills so making his scarf was out. Plus making a vest, skirt, and blouse Hobbit inspired felt like I was cheating and just copying Mouse's Cosplay's Bilbo costume. So I found myself in a bit of a pickle. And when in doubt do you know what I do? If you guessed re-watched Lord of the Rings you are correct. If you didn't you should keep it in mind because that is pretty much what I go straight to.


    In Return of the King there is that scene where Pippin is basically demanded to sing by Denethor. I love that scene. It's striking seeing the harshness of Denethor compared to the more gentle and young soul of Pippin. Pippin -bright, happy, and mischievous Pippin- singing something so solum and sad strikes a cord. For here is Pippin who is still young and still had somewhat of a childlike confidence and who seemed to feel friendship with every one he met and still feels guilt for the loss of Boromir and then heres damn Denethor who just sent his son off to his death and is eating his dinner seemingly unbothered by it. Here is someone who is full of heart and then here is someone who is almost heartless. Here is someone who in a time of sorrow or fear would rather keep people close and here is someone who will cast others away not caring that they are hurting as well. The scene holds greatness for me in the parallels of those two characters. My only complaint is "Edge of Night" isn't longer.
   
 
   Plus Billy Boyd sings like an angel. Have you heard "The Last Goodbye"? If you haven't, do so. It makes me cry. Which my friend Charlotte and I informed him and he apologized and we had to explain, "No, its a good cry."


   But back on topic. I was watching that scene and loving it like always and I realized that Pippin's Knight of Gondor tunic is a bit more distinctive than his shire clothing and I could probably play around with that. This led to my journey of trying to find good reference photos of that specific outfit. Which turns out I suck at doing. Literally I could not find a good shot of the front of the tunic when I needed it. So I just kinda went off of what I could and hoped for the best. Which frustrated me later on when I did find a good reference photo and discovered I put two of the stars in the wrong place.


   The dress itself consists of two parts, the main dress and a red circle skirt. The main dress being the black tunic like bodice piece and sleeves. The red skirt I had actually ripped off from my Sailor Science Bros cosplay I did last Fanime with Charlotte. Luckily enough for me I had already had yards upon yards of black cotton fabric, so the only thing I needed to get was the silver trim and the fabric for the sleeves. I chose a light grey fabric for the sleeves to be kind of reminiscent of the chain mail that he wore. I wanted it to be an inspired look and not come across too costume like and making chain mail would be tedious and costly. The white fabric paint from a previous project so that was on the plus side as well. A problem arose with my stencil plan for painting the White Tree of Gondor it did not work as well as I had hoped it would and I had to go back and hand paint over it again hoping to smooth out the edges.  I went to bed the night before the con a bit wacky from lack of sleep and terribly frustrated with the dress all together.

Dear stencil it would have been nice if you had done the thing and not messed up.

At this point I was like this is gonna be super nice or super bad.

   Waking up that morning I kinda saw the dress with new eyes. It actually looked better than my sleep deprived brain told me it did. Throwing on the wig on with it just kinda completed the look. I had even made a Merry bear wearing a little Rohan vest to go with it. Charlotte ( Evil Queen Cosplay) was kind enough to loan me her cloak. She even made my Merry Bear a cloak to match! And by loan me, I mean she's pretty much let me steal it as I still have it in my closet and I keep forgetting to give it back. I swear some day I'll return it.

ITS ALIIIIVE!

    Meeting Billy Boyd in this dress was 4 different kinds of awesome. He enjoyed the dress and to be honest I nearly cried tears of joy. I got super overwhelmed and shook pretty bad which lead to my friends teasing me over it for the rest of the day. But to be honest I didn't really mind.

Most people who know me know I try not to smile too big in photos or else I
look like an idiot. But in that moment I could not care less. I was far too happy.

     In a true hobbit fashion we went out and had a picnic for tea time outside the convention area. Where I, in true Pippin fashion, stuffed way too much Lembas bread into my face. Have I mentioned that Charlotte is a chef? Truly the best kind of friend any hobbit could have. The goodies she packs when we go places are so flipping good. She even gave Billy Boyd some of the chocolates she's made. He enjoyed the colors and was nearly convinced they were bouncy balls.

Yet another by my ever lovely Arian Hormozi Photography

   On a sad note, I shall not be able to wear this complete outfit again for a while. While traveling to Sacanime in January one of my suitcases was stolen and unfortunately within it were my Merry Bear and the wig. The dress was happened to be in another suitcase, thank Yavanna. Or else typing this post would have been entirely too depressing. I hope to find replacements for it soon though!

Arian Hormozi Photography

        To end on a funner note, a friend of mine gifted me an Epiccosplay wig at Sacanime and I discovered that with a brown wig thrown on top it becomes, as my friends affectionately labeled it, a "pin up Aragorn" look.

Photo by Pio Buenaventura

    Until next time,
        Ashley

So what started this?

   So what started this? What do I mean by this? Well I guess "this" could be defined a few different ways. But first to define this I have to define me. My name is Ashley Fee. I'm currently 20 years old although I'll hit 21 next month. I'm almost three years into being an adult. Which is a scary thought for my mother considering she caught me laughing into my dinosaur oatmeal yesterday. Which I'm totally unashamed about.

   I have been a cosplayer since my sophomore year in high school ( I'm far too lazy to do the math on how many years thats been) and a nerd far longer than that. I was always the kid on the play ground who had their nose in a book and I couldn't be bothered with those around me. Because after all books couldn't hurt you like other children could. Well sorta, I remember crying over the end of Old Yeller in third or fourth grade in the middle of class and my teacher trying her best to tell me its okay but it wasn't because oh my god that poor dog and why did it have to be so sad....

  It was sixth grade I think when I picked up The Hobbit. I had read C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia in fourth grade and loved them. So I wound up doing a report on Lewis in middle school. It was in writing that, that I first came across the name Tolkien. Nothing too in depth, just about his and Lewis's friendship or something. I actually didn't read his works straight after that. There was this program called Accelerated Reader or AR for short ( Do they still have this program in schools? Was it all over the United States?  I really wouldn't know. I remember it was supposed to encourage kids to read but just wound up making some kids really bitter towards reading because it wasn't encouraging them it was forcing them and being forced to do something was no fun. I enjoyed reading but I was one of the few.) I used to go through books far too quickly to the point where the librarian would tease that she was going to run out. I remember sitting there staring at the shelves in the library because my pickings were slim because I had already read through so much and we weren't supposed to reread stuff in AR. So I came across Tolkien's stuff sitting neatly (as neat as  school library books could sit) and vaguely remembered coming across his name in my Lewis report. And I thought to myself, "Well, I haven't tried these yet." And try them I did. I read them in about two weeks or less. Because dear lord they were good. I have heard people accuse Tolkien's works of being a little long and wordy and to that I blow raspberries because to me they were perfect. This man laid so much foundation for the societies he created in his books. He gave his made up world so much history and such lively characters. He built companies and friendships whose loyalty ran so very deep. And I admired these friendships. I was a lonely girl who read far too much. Of course I admired it.

     Fun fact, I didn't realize the movies existed until about a year later. I came across the VHS tapes of Return of the King and you could hear the angels sing because holy frigging baby hobbit in a basket there were movies. And so I watched that first. YES, I WATCHED RETURN OF THE KING FIRST, SO SUE ME. It was what I had and so it was what I watched. And it was beautiful. The way the characters were portrayed, the scenery, the battle, everything was so beautiful. Seeing that thing I loved actually on screen warmed my heart. Seeing the characters I felt kinship with be actual people was a dream. Theres something amazing about seeing your favorite books become movies, it takes them from something imaginary to something thats almost real because you can actually see it, almost experience it in a way. And I think it was there my love for Lord of the Rings was truly cemented.
   
    And then when I was in high school the Hobbit movies came out and I loved them. I didn't get to be apart of the first Lord of the Rings hype but no one could keep me away from being excited about the Hobbit movies. Even the purists who were throwing fits and saying they sucked because OMG how dare they add a romance and how dare they add more orcs and blah blah blah. To me it was more of something I loved and thank you so much to anyone who was involved with it because now I had more to watch and enjoy. But you know whats hard about trying to be about that hype?  It was hard to find any clothing that wasn't just a t-shirt with a photo or to find Lord of the Rings merchandise in stores much less any that wasn't going to cost an arm and a leg. In a time where one could got to Hot Topic and pick up tons of stuff of Avengers and such it sucked to see my main love blown over.
 
   So whats my point you may ask. What am I leading up to? Well I'll get to that. Patience my dears, although bless whom ever has read this far. To explain where I'm going with this I have to explain some of my convention life and The Geek Fashion Show. As I have mentioned earlier I cosplay. What better way for me to show my love for characters and series than to pour my sanity into making costumes right? Doing this I have actually made quite a few good friends in the convention circuit. And one of these friends allowed for me to model for her in the Geek Fashion Show at Comikaze in 2014. Which was an amazing experience. To wear some one's original geeky inspired dress on stage was so much fun. And I got to be one of the pretty girls and I loved it. I cant tell you how much of a confidence booster it was. All I can say is if you ever get the chance to participate in one do it. It was at this show I saw 1138 Clothing's Smaug inspired dress on Alexandria the Red and a couple months later I bought it. And I was not usually one for buying dresses but this one embodied something I loved and I had to have it. Which got me inspired and thinking why am I waiting for people to make dresses that embody the things I love, why am I not doing it myself. But me being the lazy little hobbit I am I didn't do anything with that train of thought for while.

My first Geek Fashion show Comikaze 2014.
Designer: Unicorn Sushi
Models left to right: Raychul Moore, Steff Von Schweetz, Ashpash Cosplay(me), Glimmerwood
Photography: Eurobeat Kasumi

1138 Clothing's Smaug inspired dress that I totally fell in love with modeled here by me.
Photo credits to Karl Muller.

 

Until September of last year that is. Billy Boyd was going to be at Wizard World San Jose. Billy freaking Boyd. Pippin. Oh my gosh. I was so excited. But it also got me thinking what does one wear when going to take a picture with one of their favorite hobbits? I could cosplay or wear a LotR t-shirt but I wanted to get a little more creative than that. I wanted to do something a little different. And so I made a dress inspired by Pippin's Knight of Gondor outfit. Billy Boyd loved it. And holy crap I shook so hard after he complimented it. I was so overwhelmed with joy. Not only did Billy Boyd like it but quite a few of my friends did to. The number of people actually surprised me. I was inspired and decided I need to do more. And thats what leads us up to here.

My Pippin Knight of Gondor inspired dress.
Photo credit to Arian Hormozi Photography.

   Seven paragraphs in and I'm finally getting around to explaining the name of this blog and what its for. What is Lord of the Seams? To be honest its a name I came up with at like three in the morning one night and it stuck and I hated myself for liking the almost pun the the next morning. But it seemed like an appropriate title for for a Lord of the Rings based fashion project. I have decided I'm not going to wait for some one to make the clothing I want to wear. I am going to make it myself even if it may drive me to madness. A lot of this is going to be a challenge for me but one that I will learn form and hopefully one that will be worth the effort. So stick with me over the next year and we will see where this path may lead.