It is done! Honestly it feels like a bit of a waste to have put so much tailoring work and expensive fabric into a cosplay garment, but... you know what, Geralt deserves nice things once in a while and so do I.

Breaking down the details - the zupan was made from wool coating with an acetate lining and faux leather trim. Yes, yes, I know, I broke my rules by using synthetic materials on this one. But there is a HUGE difference in price between acetate and 100% silk, and you just plain can’t get that much real leather trim in a continuous strip. They don’t make a cow that’s 8 yards long. Compromises had to be made.

There’s really only one major flaw in this project, and that’s the side seam being just slightly forward of where it should be. This mainly affects how the side slits hang. Grandmother did in fact mention it while we were fitting, so I have only myself to blame for not going back and fixing it in the pattern. Minor detail though, hardly noticeable when I’m in motion.

I guess there is one other big flaw once I put the whole kit on, which is that at this point it becomes impossible to hide my feminine waistline. Curses! Damn you and your straight hips, Geralt. But anyway the whole cosplay is really starting to come together. Just three more pieces to go!

First two days of my sewing week were almost all spent just on tweaking my pattern. I got lucky and found a pretty decent Butterick pattern to start with. The trick with this project though was converting the very shaped, feminine structure of this pattern into something that appears straight while still fitting me properly.

In the case of this pattern, that meant taking out princess seams and redistributing them into the front and back pattern pieces. Princess seams are those panels on the side; like darts, they’re a method of incorporating 3-dimensionally-shaped area into a garment to fit the wearer’s curves. I’m not nearly confident enough to attempt a full tutorial, but the process basically goes like this:

Trace a copy of the original pattern pieces for back, side back, front, and side front onto heavy paper

Pin the original tissue copies of the front/side front and back/side back pattern pieces together

On the heavy paper pieces, slash them open horizontally almost but not quite all the way to the opposite side (allowing you to reshape one side while retaining the same seam length on the other)

Gently reshape your front/side front pieces to straighten out the seam where they’d normally attach until you can overlap them evenly by the width of a seam allowance. Tape in place and use the same technique to join the back/side back

Use the original tissue pattern to make sure you’ve preserved the relative orientation of the seams, neck, and arm holes

Using the altered heavy paper versions of your now-combined front and back pieces, trace out a new copy of the re-drafted front and back onto paper so that you have a clean copy of the pattern pieces

If that sounds complicated and confusing, that’s because it is. Even my grandmother hadn’t made this pattern alteration before, so between that and another round of more subtle tweaks to the muslin afterwards, it took two solid days of work on the pattern before I was ready to start on the real fabric.

Random sewing tip from my grandmother: always make fit adjustments to a garment while wearing the underclothes you plan to use it with. By that she means to adjust the garment so that it will fit properly when paired with the rest of the clothes you plan to wear. But you can also literally perform pattern adjustments while clothed in the rest of your cosplay gear. It’s sometimes convenient and always amusing.