New year, new project

Eowyn from Lord of the Rings is one of my favourite fictional characters and I have been wanting to make one of her costumes for years. At the end of last year I decided on a whim that it was time to make one. I particularly like her ‘victory gown’ and her ‘riding outfit’. Both are in The Return of the King but only for fleeting headshots.

I have been on the lookout for some brocades for the victory gown for a while but never found anything so I decided to make the riding outfit.

As far as I know, there is only one full length picture of this outfit in existence:

Found here.

These online resources suggest that the skirt is split in front and worn with trousers, or possibly it is trousers that look like a skirt. I decided to go with the front split as that was also used for Eowyn’s ‘refugee’ underdress.

For the skirt I found a lovely grey satin in Cootamundra (Patchwork on Parker is an amazing shop! They don’t have a lot of dressmaking fabric, but almost always have exactly what I need) and I plan to wear it with the brown trousers from my assassin costume. 

I used an old 4-panel skirt pattern (for some reason we have multiple 1980s 4-panel skirt patterns) and attached the skirt, gathered in the back, to a rectangular waistband. The peak at the centre front comes from cutting the ends of the rectangle diagonally (making it actually a trapezium) to fit my waist properly. The skirt does up by being laced through 4 hand bound eyelets on the band.

Now, on to the bodice...



The Lord of the Rings images belong to New Line Cinema.