Eivor Cosplay: Skirts and Pants
I’m making a Cosplay of Eivor from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and today I’m making the bottom half: pants, skirt, (faux) leather skirt and details.
Screenshots From the Game
Once again I’m starting from some screenshots I took out of the Assassin’s Creed Valahalla game on ps4. I took off the top half to better see the skirts. It looks like the leather skirt is made of two halves split in the middle (as opposed to at the sides) and is made of a bunch of ‘scrap’ pieces sewn together.
There’s also a lot of detail here, the major parts of which I’ll try to capture in my Cosplay interpretation. There is also a green linen skirt underneath the leather one that can just be seen peeking through.
Eivor is also wearing pants under the two skirts, these seem to be almost loose leather pants but as they’re not going to be very visible I won’t worry too much about the accuracy here.
Finally I took a last screenshot zooming in on the buckle detail.
Now to actually making the thing! I started with the fabric skirt. I started with a pattern for a shorter skirt I had already and traced the pattern onto separate pattern paper and elongated it at the same time.
Making the Linen Skirt
I transferred the pattern to some calico and didn’t worry too much about the bottom of the fabric and left it a bit of a random shape. I sewed the sides together leaving an opening at the left side so I could get in and out of the skirt. I also folded over the top to make a channel to put a cord to keep it up over my hips. Then I went at the hem of the skirt and cut it roughly.
Making a Duct Tape Dress Form
I don’t think I made a post about the dress form I made a while ago that I’m using here: I used the duct tape method of creating a dummy that more closely matched my body shape. This just involves wearing an old t-shirt, covering yourself with glad wrap and covering your whole torso with duct tape (you’ll need a friend to help with the back!) You then cut yourself out of this and can stuff it - I had an old dress form as a hand-me down that I used as a base and covered it with my duct tape dummy and stuffed it with newspaper. I adjusted the height of the dummy to match my own height and then put the skirt on the new me!
So back to the thing; I roughly cut the hem as jagged as I could muster at this awkard angle near the floor. I also used a metal brush I had lying around to make the bottom edge as rough as possible. I also tore a few holes in the skirt and roughed it up again with the metal brush.
Dyeing the Skirt
Next, this skirt is the wrong colour as Eivor’s is green so I decided to try another new thing: dyeing fabric. I thought this would give a more authentic colour than the fabric I could pick up at a shop; those colours were too vibrant to look like Eivor’s and it’s a good excuse to try something now. I used Rit All-Purpose Dye and dyed it according to the instructions on their website. I weighed the skirt which was 138g which corresponds to needing 40ml of dye in 4L of water. I also used 1/3 of a cup of salt and a slurp of dishwashing liquid in the hot water. I used about 25ml of Dark Green Rit dye and 15ml of Navy Blue Rit dye. I used tongs to continuously stir the fabric and left it in the bucket for almost an hour, making sure to come back and stir often. I did also use the Rit Dye Fixative afterwards to make sure the colour stays.
I was really pleased with how the skirt turned out. The colour is a lot more washed out than I was expecting but this is absolutely perfect for the time period in my opinion and much better than the fabric options I had found in the shop. Fabric skirt is done!
Pants
Next I went with the pants, after one failed attempt at making pants that were far, far too big for me I decided to buy a cheap pair of pants which were the same colour (initially) as the skirt. So I dyed these too! I didn’t take a before shot but here is the after picture where they’re a darker shade of brown.
Faux Leather Skirt
Finally I could move on to the main event of the lower half; the leather skirt. I got some faux leather-looking fabric on sale so I cut this into rough shapes using a combination of patterning on my own body and on the dress form.
I used the same strategy here as I used for the bracers where I’d punch a hole in the faux leather using an awl, then sew using some faux leather cord threaded onto a large-eyed needle. I’m thrilled with the results of this technique, I think it looks really authentic. I just need to think of a way to rough up the too-perfect-looking fake leather.
I made the skirt in two halves just like it seems Eivor has in the game and made sure it was really asymmetrical with a bunch of patches.
I bought a normal belt to hold up the two sides of the skirt over the top of the fabric skirt. I deliberately made the front show a bit more of the underlying skirt.
At the back it just overlaps itself and shows much less than at the front.
I also made a side panel with some other spare faux fur fabric to add some more detail.
I finished this piece in the same way as the other fur pieces by folding down the edges and hand-sewing around the edges.
I tucked this fur piece into the side of the belt in the same way as the leather skirt.
The Belt Buckle Detail
The final detail I wanted to add was the belt buckle. I made this and another medallion in the same way I made the [hidden blade detail(/things/cosplay/eivor/2021/05/08/eivor-bracers-blade.html) - first by loading the screenshot into Fusion 360 as a canvas, tracing the shape and mirroring the design this time around 2 axes. I then laser cut the pieces out of 3mm EVA foam. This time to keep the design spaced out properly because there were so many small pieces I used masking tape over the top of the cut pieces before moving them off the cutting bed, then removed the excess foam leaving the design in the right places. Then I glued the design using contact cement onto a circle of foam I also laser cut the same size. Once the glue was dry I removed the masking tape but it did leave some residue that you can see in this picture.
I then primed the medallions with Plasti-Dip as with the other foam pieces I’ve made and painted the top layer with silver acrylic paint.
Finally I attached the medallion to the front of the belt.
I’ve decided to leave the skirts here for now; there’s plenty more details I can add later but I wanted to get a minimum viable costume for my deadline first and could embellish later!