(Photo from Witcher wiki.)
It's not a secret that I love the bitches and the witches, and therefor it wasn't hard to decide to cosplay Philippa Eilhart from the Witcher games. She makes her first appearance in Witcher 2, and she's quite the handful - powerful and powerhungry as she is. Her outfits are also simply to die for. This sorceress has got style! Her outfits vary somewhat from Witcher 2 to 3. It's basically the same dress, but the colours are different, and she doesn't wear sleeves in 3. I decided to make the Witcher 2 dress because I like the colours better and also because I really like the sleeves. It's not the easiest dress to make, but I'll try my best to explain how I made it.
THE UNDERSKIRT
The underskirt is probably the easiest part of this costume. It's a pleated, high waist skirt with a zipper in the back. I used a brocade curtain fabric - the same I used for the top part of the dress and the sleeves, just a different colour.
THE SLEEVES
Philippa's sleeves look very cool because they have that white fabric peeking through the red. This isn't as hard to sew as you may think, but it is a particular technique, and you have to know how to do it to make it look right. They're called slashed sleeves and you often see them on clothes from the Tudor era. I used this tutorial to teach myself this technique, as I had never done this before.
I made the slashed parts of the sleeves first, then I attached them to the middle, top and bottom part of the sleeve.
It should look something like this on the inside.
THE OVERDRESS
This part is quite difficult. The dress has a very speific look and I couldn't find any sort of pattern that resembled it, so I had to make one on my own. It took some trying and failing but I was finally able to make a mockup pattern that worked.
First I made the red patterned top as its own piece with a halterneck. The white satin bias tape and the golden trim were attached (in that order) to each piece of the top before it was assembled.
I then attached the two fabric pieces you see on the right to (underneath) the halterneck. They are not to be attached to the the back of the red top (even if it kind of looks like that in this picture). They are going to be attached to the striped part of the overdress later.
Speaking of the striped fabric. I was dead set on using satin for it. You can clearly see in the reference photo above that her dress has a shine to it, and I knew satin would be good for that. Unfortunately I was not able to find a black and red striped satin fabric that suited my needs. So I had to make it myself. I bought red and black satin, then cut them into a bunch of even strips and sewed them back together.
It was a tedious job, and I can highly recommend using an overlock sewing machine for this, if you have or can borrow one. Because an overlock uses more than one thread when you sew, it is way less likely that you will pop a seam (which you really don't want to do when this is all put together because it's going to be really hard to fix it). Also remember to iron this when it's done, so it looks neat and like one piece.
I then transferred the mockup pattern I made earlier onto the striped fabric (I'm sorry I don't have a photo of that). I also cut out the exact same pattern in a white polyester lining and sewed the striped fabric and the lining together.
More golden trim was then added before the pieces were assembled and attached to the red halterneck top.
In the above photo you can see how I attached those two fabric pieces coming down from the halterneck. They're simply sewn onto the top of the back of the striped fabric.
Lastly, I added eyelets to the front of the dress to keep it closed and laced it with a red velvet ribbon.
THE RUNE TRIMS
These were really fun to make, but it took me a lot of research. At first I didn't even know that the scribbles on Philippa's dress actually meant anything, but I soon learned that they are runes from the Glagolitic alphabet - the old Slavic script used in the games. When I learned that, I obviously had to try and find out which runes were actually on her dress and what they meant. I spent a lot of time on this. A LOT! And the task wasn't made any easier by the fact that the runes translate from Glagolitic to Polish (which I don't speak). I tried for a long time to find the right runes and then put the translated Polish word into Google translate to find out what they meant in English.
Unfortunately, there aren't really any closeup high res images of the runes on the dress, so there was a lot of guessing involved, and more than often the Polish word I found wasn't a word at all. I ended up figuring out one single word after having spent just about a month on it. That's when I gave up and decided to make something up myself. I used the one word I had figured out, which was "powerful", and then decided to use "Powerful sorceress" and "Magic protection". I translated that into Polish and from there to Glagolitic runes.
I wrote the runes on the trim with a fabric marker. "Powerful sorceress" and "Magic protection" is repeated on the ribbons all around the dress.
THE COLLAR
This is the part of the costume that I disliked the most in the process. I actually really hated it at one point - wanting to throw the whole thing in the trash because I was so frustrated.
I knew that I wanted to crochet the collar. While it would have been easier to make it out something like foam, I knew it would look better if I crocheted it. Also, because I was planning to compete with Philippa, I knew that a crocheted collar would weight heavier in a judging than a foam collar.
My mum is thankfully a crochet goddess and has tons of patterns at home, so I found an old pattern from the 1980s that resembled Philippa's collar very well.
Now, the reason why I at one point contemplated jumping off my balcony (which would have had zero effect by the way, because I live on the first floor) is because the collar needs to stand up. I was really struggling with this. At first I tried to starch it, but the starch didn't make it stiff enough. I then sewed a thin metal thread/wire into the collar, but it wasn't strong enough to hold it up well. I then used a buttload more of starch, which still wasn't enough. At this point I was so sick of the collar I wanted to barf. So I cursed a lot and cried a little, before I finally decided to try wood glue. And that, you guys, was exactly what I needed! The glue really stiffened the collar and kept i in place.
It was hellish to put together, but now it's probably my favourite part of the costume!
THE DECORATIVE "ARMOUR"
I don't want to call the things that Philippa has on her arms and hanging from her belt, armour, because it's not going to protect her one little bit. It's more like oversized jewelry. Either way, they both have quite a lot of detail, so it took some time to finish them.
The belt thingies are made from a base of cardboard and foam, coated with black worbla, detailed with a glue gun, then primed and painted.
I attached square rings to the backsides and looped fleather through them so they could hang from the belt. I also decided to coat the backsides with leftover fabric and ribbon from the dress. Most people aren't going to see this, but it's always a bonus in competitions to make things look nice on the inside as well.
The arm rings are made from a base of foam, coated with regular and black worbla (I was using scraps), detailed with a 3D paint, then primed and painted.
The 3D paint stuff I used for the detailing wasn't as effective as I hoped. It looked really good when I first put it on, but it sort of flattened as it dried.
Useful tip: I used twined furniture trim covered with worbla to make the twined decorations on the arm rings.
THE BELTS AND BROOCH
The belts are made from fleather, and I used my friend Pharamony's super useful tutorial to make them. The pentackle buckle on the small belt is made from foam and worbla, then painted.
Philippa also has this brooch on her dress that looks like a wax seal. I made it from foam and worbla, then painted it. It has the Glagolitic rune for "J" inscribed, which I have no idea what stands for. I've jokingly been saying that it stands for "Jaskier", which is the Polish name for Dandelion, who is the biggest ladies' man in the games. It's funny because Philippa is a lesbian, and she's probably the only woman Dandelion will never have :P
THE BLINDFOLD
The blindfold is made from the same red satin I used to make the striped fabric. It has an eyelike pattern on it that I painted on with fabric paint. I then added brown bias tape around the edges and velcro for attachment.
THE FINAL RESULT
Photos by Ingridbeast and Ardis Margrethe Gjerding.
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