Malekith the Accursed Build (Comics version)

[jessamygriffin]

With Halloween being over and just because I really enjoy Russell Dauterman's designs for THOR, I thought I'd take a swing at a non-movie Marvel character for a change. I've seen some great Jane Foster Thor costumes, but not so many of the wonderfully wicked Malekith.



Pro: relatively simple sewing here - black leggings, parti-coloured tunic with long dagging or Roman style tassets, cool make-up and wig.

Con: Stupid spikes on the pauldrons are going to snag the wig something fierce. Inexplicable silver piping on the tunic and sleeves - looks cool and Elven, but is it meant to be metal?? Also, haven't seen a good pic of the back of the greaves and the over-knee armoured bit.



Pro: wears Thor's dismembered left arm like a shawl?!? Gore/Cool/Weird bonus points.

Con: If I'd decided on this BEFORE Halloween, I'd'a gotten a zombie arm or severed hand much more easily and cheaply. I don't exactly know how I'm going to build a big ol hairy arm, but I need it. I really do.

Battle plan - Raid closets for materials first.
Draft test tunic.
Build tunic.
Apply star emblem.
Consider the silver piping problem.
Check closet again for suitable boots to build on.
Check if have black leggings/tight black pants? Probably do.
For extra skeezey villain factor, make leggings from pleather to match boots?
Draft belt, bracers and pauldrons.
Build armour bits from foam, attach fastenings, prep and paint.
Buy blue knit to match the blue make-up, make gloves that go all the way to shoulder.
Air-brush the blue knit for musculature.
Buy long white wig, do basic styling to sweep hair back and add widow's point, and braid it, put it away and never touch it until needed because it's gonna tangle like a witch.
Already have 100 yen shop elf ears - horrible things but I'm just going to paint them so why waste the money.
Contacts - in the THOR comics, I can't quite get what colour his eyes are. White? I know in other versions they've been white, or black, brown and in the animated version he has one blue, one yellow. I might spring for that odd-eyed look, since it's quite unsettling.

Severed Arm - buy large manly severed hand? build arm up from that with knit fabric coated in latex and with hair punched in to simulate flesh? Not sure what to do there - most zombie arms\hands aren't as big as Thor's.

 

[jessamygriffin]

The best fabrics I could pull out of the closet were suiting wools. Which, eh. Slightly itchy, but hangs well, irons well. Drafted and mocked up the main body, and added the Roman-style skirt. It zips up the back, and the rising collar is one with the body instead of separate collar piece.

The... star? Sun? pattern was done with scrap white twill and the black wool, backed with iron-on interfacing to keep it from stretching too much when I applied it.

I was going to just satin over-stitch the star edges, but had a better idea - finally use my machine's embroidery foot to do something nicer. The satin stitching on applique work often makes it look like a tacky iron-iron team patch or badge.

First time using this bad boy free-hand embroidery foot, and now I have seen what it can do, it's going to get a lot more use.

First, I backed the tunic with tear-away stabilizer.
Next, I edge-stitched the star outline onto the tunic.
Third, I used small sharp scissors (best for small details like the star rays) to clip away excess fabric. It left a lot of raw thready edges which were going to covered up by machine embroidery.
Fourth, I put on embroidery hoop on the fabric to keep everything smooth while working on the star.
Fifth, I dropped the feed-dogs of my sewing machine and used a zig-zag stitch to embroider the rough edges and give the star a bit more interesting texture.

This was done with just regular thread. I could have blinged it up more with silky machine embroidery thread but decided I'd rather it blended a bit more with the flat wool aesthetic.

Sixth - Clip threads, pull of the tear-away stabilizer.
Seventh - profit. The texture looks a lot nicer. Free-handing the edging gave the star rays a rough uneven edge which seems appropriate.

Next to do - apply these large silver... I'd call them buttons, or rivets, but they look more like massively over-sized spreadable brads you used to see for office folders or my old grade-school work books.

Also bought the blue four way stretch to make the glove/arm covers, since there's no way I'm going to blue up my hands with makeup- it'd make me and everyone else miserable to be smurfed up on clothes or con goods.

I got some super shiner silver to play around with for the pauldrons and piping. These are two types of silver knits. Considered silver vinyl but it didn't stretch enough and I'm going to be experimenting with applying this stuff over a rounded foam surface (instead of the usual foam + gesso + sanding + gesso [times infinity] + silver paint, I don't have much luck with spray paint). It's alarmingly bright silver, but I figured, hey - comic character and vain looking elf. I can tarnish-paint it down after if I need to.

 

[Yrien]

That applique ended up looking super neat! Great idea for it.