How to make a Jon Snow Costume without breaking the bank (The Cloak)
For the last piece of clothing for the costume I am now going to tell you how we fashioned the cloak. Luckily I still had enough of the hessian material to create a piece of fabric that reached down to the ground. My only concern was that it wouldn't hang as well as the original cloak (which looked like it was made from a wool/linen combination) and as we were doing quite well in keeping in with our budget I thought I would try and create the effect of a worn and crumpled, well worn cloak.
To do this I washed the hessian to give it an aged look and then roughly scrunched it together and tied it with string and left it on the line to dry. However, the overall effect wasn't what I had planned and after the material had dried I decided to attempt to make the creases more uniform in nature instead of creating a crumpled up rag!
The next thing I did was to roughly pleat large sections of the fabric and used tacking stitches to hold them in place. I continued down the entire length of the fabric and working slowly round the entire width of the fabric I ended up with a long, sausage shaped clump of material. To 'fix' the creases I set my steam iron to hot and vigorously ironed the material evenly around the entire uppermost surface.
Next, I snipped the stitches and opened out the material, still ironing down the length as it became unravelled. The final effect was fairly pleasing. I had used enough of the material to give the cloak a heavy appearance, and the creases definitely added an authentic element to the whole outfit.
Next we needed to find some fur for the finishing touch. After experimenting with some faux fur cushions from the sofa (which weren't too bad really) Sebastian decided that he would splash out on some genuine Scandinavian sheep fur to give the cloak that extra special look. This was obtained from eBay for £40, which at the time seemed like an incredible amount of money to splash out for just a cloak, but when we added it to the hessian material... wow we were all mesmerised. It was definitely worth paying the extra money for.
I gathered the top part of the fabric with some strong thread and left enough width so that it would fit along the side of the sheep fur. I trimmed the fur, to remove the unwanted white parts of the fur (later added to Katie's Ygritte costume) and sewed the fur along the top of the cloak.
To finish the cloak off Sebastian added the leather straps that hold the cloak on – although after reviewing the costumes on recent GOT episodes it is possible that the strap passes through the top of the cloak itself before being fastened at the back. Never mind, that is what cosplay is all about – the more that you learn - the more you can adapt and improve the costume... it is all part of the fun of being a GOT superfan!
Sebastian completed the costume off by adding the finishing touches such as an extra long belt, gloves and trousers, which he will explain in more detail in the next Jon Snow costume blog with a final figure of the total costing.
You can check out the video of the costume below, to get an idea of how it was all put together!
