Costume Process To Become Barriss Offee

After picking my character, Barriss Offee, then it came time to find clothes, She is one of the few that wears a crush velvet cloak which thanks to RenFest I happen to have one. As for the rest, off to the lcoal thrift store. Which on the first trip I scored the skirt. Brand new skirt including it's tags for $1.75. Next trip out I find the first shirt for $2.50. Next I needed boots. I always wanted Doc Martens so I splurged and bought $125 knee high, zip up black boots (in hind sight I should have bought German Jackboots since I'll be needing them for my Juno and Starkiller costume)

Somehwere and somehow I decided to not go with a screen accurate version but instead the story board verion of her death. Well but she's a force healer so I'm assuming she survived. So time to destroy everything, except the boots.

With a day off from work and a rolling cutter in hand I set to work. I started on the ankle length skirt and cutting it from right thigh to left ankle. I cut that side up and laced it corset style. I sewed in a button to keep it secure just incase the lacing fails.

Next I attacked the shirt. It was a long sleeve shirt. I went cut happy with it. By the time I was done, there were no sleeves and a ton of slash marks opening up the shirt. OOPS. I ended up cutting the back out and lacing it up corset style. Then it was pointed out it looked too RenFest. TRASHED!

A couple months later a trip to another thrift store was in store. I found black turtleneck for $5.00, which was what I really needed to be more along with the shirt she wears. And yes a turtleneck in Florida is not really brillant but I need it for a costume. I hand over the shirt to Jeremy and he sets to work. I found a material to match the ribbed pattern on the front of her shirt. We now added in blast holes to match the ones in cloak and added holes to the front of the shirt.

Back to the cloak. I had fear of what we were about to do. I was originally going to make a second cloak and destroy that one but I'm not that sew savvy yet and since I never wear this other one I've had for 8 years I thought why not. The cloak was too long even in heels which I wasn't going to wear so I trimmed off the bottom 6 inches or so to use as a test piece. This was the fun part, we discovered that alchol in a spray bottle and a light makes a nice burn pattern. Considered that a successful test we plan to burn the entire cloak. We roughed up the bottom then after I asked Jeremy's wife if they have home owners insurance I commenced with the burning. There was one bad one where I sprayed a tad too much alcohol and it went up quick but we were able to keep the burning under control. Next it was to mark up the back, cut it and then burn the edges. I freaked at this because it was a one time shot. We jumped in and in no time all was well and it looked like it had been shot in the back.

Only thing left to do is finish the belt.