My major summer cosplay project was Evie Frye from Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. I played the game with my roommate and thoroughly enjoyed the costume, story and character of Evie Frye – plus they final put and female playable character in one of their main titles so I felt the need to throw some money at Ubisoft as positive reinforcement. Evie Frye brings me to three Assassin’s Creed cosplays, and in someway it feels very full circle, given that my first AC cosplay was an own design Victorian Assassin.
You can see more images of the final cosplay in my portfolio, and grab a pattern in my store. For more information on how all the costume pieces go together, watch my YouTube video:
Overall Evie Frye was an interesting construction experience, it felt simultaneously both a big challenge and also a fairly straight forward task. The skills I used to create Evie Frye were all ones that I had a fair amount of experience using, however, this cosplay required me to push the limits of that skill to do it do the best of my ability. Sewing, patterning, draping, casting, painting to name a few.
This cosplay would not have been possible without the amazing support of my Patrons.
I also had the pleasure of live streaming a significant portion of the cosplay, which will hopefully help give some insight into it’s construction. As always if the resources still leave you with questions feel free to ask!!!
Outer Jacket
Listing it as one piece makes it sound so simple in it’s construction… So I am going to describe it in the parts and rough order in which I constructed it.
Firstly fabrics:
- black flocked denim
- black denim
- 4-way black stretch pleather
- non-stretch pleather
- satin peachskin red
- satin taffeta red
- Quilted pleather
Upper/Main Jacket
The initial pattern was created by starting with a muslin of my princess seam sloper (that I have final made). I then pinned it to my dress form and drew the lines for the seams where I felt they should be for the jacket based on the design. I then cut the mock up apart, and determined the materials that each segment would be, either plain black denim, black flocked denim (both from Joann) or stretch pleather. After cutting out of the final fabric I reassembled the jacket, (sewing together the square corners needed some extra care) and also I forgot several times how the shoulders were assembled.
The back ended up needing a bit more fiddling. I needed to re-cut the center back yoke and center back portion to be smaller, and I had to sew in the tabs where the laces would be attached so that is would be inserted into the stream. Once the front and back were more or less assembled, I adjusted the fit as needed, this mostly involved making the font sections fit closer (It needed to sit open, while also still looking fitted). I then added the bottom two panels of flocked denim, these needed to be shaped slightly and ended up having a seam roughly in the center to get them to lie flat on the hips rather than stick out.
Next came the collar and the quilted pleather lining. Because I didn’t want to add bulk the pleather lining was only a facing on the collar and the edge of the opening. The collar was pretty simple I did need to keep track of which side was meat to overlap, but essentially it was a rectangle cut in the quilted pleather and stretch pleather. The finishing on the seams was done in stages, some before and some after the collar and facing was attached. It involved top stitching single or double fold black bias tape over all the seams that were intended to be visible.
Sleeves
Like the main jacket I made muslin mock up of the sleeves to size and figure out where the pleather stopped and started. After assembling the final fabrics I top stitched on the chiffon ruffle, and added a strip of 1 in wide ribbon to add the texture on the upper arm. I then added on the sleeve cuffs to end just above my knuckles. The seam was left partial open which I then bias taped to finish.
Tails and Butt Floof
The next potion of the jacket once the base was assembled was all the floofly butt bits and the supper sneaky red tails. The main back floof was done by cutting a triangle and pleating it to provide the right volume (about three folds on each side of the triangle). This was the edged in the bias tape.
The tails were created out of a red peachskin satin, roughly rectangular with a slope so they were shorter in the front than the back. The edging was made with the black denim fabric, before I sewed the strip I used the fronts of silver snaps to create the silver circle button like things. This also helped weigh the red tails down but did provide a decidedly not sneaky jingle to the coat. The back section also had two triangles, and rectangles also out of the black denim to overlap and close the gap more or less (because this is what was on the design). Seriously very little of this made functional sense…
Finishing
The finishing touches included making the front Celtic knot claps. These were sculpted using Sculpy to make a master, I then created a silicon mold and cast them using using polyurethane. They were painted black and then silver. More snap tops were used where the silver buttons needed to be, and one functional snap was put on
the top to hold the jacket closed per the reference images.
Other finishing touches included the eyelets and lacing on the back (I wanted black ones, but I ended up coloring silver ones with nail polish), the mysterious chain at the back and probably some more snap fronts…
Cape
The cape could be considered part of the jacket because technically they are sewed together, but I didn’t make the cape until after the jacket was competed. The cape was relatively simple. I used a similar process where I drafted it out of muslin and then drew the lines where I needed to seam the different fabrics. I then cut out the final fabric, stitched it together, and finished the seams with bias tape. The red under portion was made with dark red satin taffeta, and was cut about an inch longer and then sewed at the neck seam. Both pieces were sewed directly to the jacket at the neck.
The straps were made out of non stretch pleather, that was folded over and hot glued, with the silver buckles were sourced from strapworks. The straps were affixed in place with the snap top, and the bottom half of the snap was attached to the outside of the main jacket to help the whole cape stay in place by snapping it together. Some reinforcing cotton was also used because snaps and stretch pleather don’t mix.
The cape potion was made with the red peachskin satin, and the Assassin Symbol was simplified and attached using a stabilizing applique spray and then zig zag stitched all the way around. The bottom pattern was made using some paisley upholstery fabric (I failed to find appropriate ribbon), folded over and top stitched. The cape was then folded to provide the right width with he correct drape and stitched to the underside of the black layer of the shoulder cape.
Inner Jacket and Hood
The inner jacket used the basic princess seam slopper, I chose not add sleeves because I was already going to be melting in the layers of pleather, it just seemed like a better idea. I split the princess seam pattern down the center front and extended each of the sides out so they over lapped above the bust line. This would allow for the wrinkles and bunching that I wanted to get around the neck, I lined just the top portions of the grey fabric so that a small amount of the dark red taffeta would show when it was closed. Closures were added with hooks and eyes after the bias tape was stitched around the outside edge.
The hood was frustrating, for as costume with so many erroneous seams, this was the one place on the reference images that didn’t show a seam where there would need to be one. I made a draft of the hood in muslin to figure out where the seam that sits diagonally across the top would go, the hood was constructed so the other (required) seam was in the center back to allow the shape to round properly. I created a matching lining in the red taffeta, and finished the edges with light grey bias tape.
Before bias taping the whole hood I free hand drew on the embroidery using 3D fabric paint. At first I tried to mimic the original drawing but I gave up and instead went from something between eldritch runes and filigree.
To create the collar, again I didn’t want a complete undershirt due to melting. I instead made just a fake collar, out of a double layer rectangle of white cotton fabric with interfacing to make it stay stiff. I also added a yoke of white cotton to help keep it standing upright. The collar snapped closed with a small snap, and the back of the collar was stitched to the back of the grey under jacket to keep it in place.
Belts and Bobs
There were layers of belts needed for this, of course because who doesn’t need lots of belts, not Evie Frye that’s for sure. The first layers is the red sash, this was a red strip of peachskin satin with finished edges that Velcroed at the back, I made sure it was more of a trapezoid than rectangle shape so that it was better fitting. The wrinkles and pleats in the fabric were stitched in place where the Velcro was attached.
Over that were two belts that I had to custom make. Both were created with a base of felt with pleather hot glued around it, to produce structure and the right texture. The belt buckle for the top belt was made with worbla, slightly shaped to have the curve. The surface designs were made by sticking thin rolled pieces of worbla over the top, then smoothed with about 3 layers of wood glue. Final details were added when it was painted silver with some weathering touches. This belt snapped together in the back, rather than worrying about making the buckle at all functional. The second belt had two smaller straps over the top that were riveted in place, and those buckled in front using small silver buckles.
Hidden Blade
This was assembled by cannibalizing the replica hidden blade form the Ubisoft store. I used the spring loaded blade, the the poison dart, and knuckle section (which all would have all been tricky to do from scratch at my current skill level).
I recreated the main leather portions of the vambrace, so it would better fit my tiny tiny lady wrist. The black portion was made by hot gluing a layer of non-stretch pleather to the front and back of a piece of craft foam, this gave a thick and study portion. The brown section was made with craft foam cut in the pointed shape with brown pleather hot glued over the top, I stretched and glued a small section so it was intentionally wrinkled to match the design. The gold section was worbla, over craft form smoothed with 3 layers of wood glue and painted gold, it had a cut out and small rivet tabs attached to accommodate the sleep dart section from the replica blade. These three sections were then glued together with E6000, and the sleep dart was also glued in place.
I added a smaller pleather section that connected to the small buckle that ran across the knuckles and around to the palm of the hand, these were also glued in place. The black trim around was glued in place and then the knuckle guard from the replica was glued on top. I added elastic finger loops to the brown pleather under the knuckle guard to keep the hidden blade in place while being worn.
Various decorative details were added with strips of appropriately colored pleather and riveted in place. The left off some of the buckles that should have been there because at this point there was just too many buckles. A few more bits of elastic were used to keep it in place on my wrist. The blade portion the just slips into place in the gap on the back.
Boots
The boots were done fairly last minute, at this point I didn’t have the energy to put all the detail into them that would make the 100% accurate. I instead made simpler boot covers out of brown 2-way stretch pleather. To fit them, first I created a mold of my leg by wrapping it in cling film and tape, then cutting the mold off. I used then used this to create flat pattern pieces.
Essentially it became two leg shaped like things that I stitched together down the center front and back (based on this tutorial). I then gathered the fabric under the toes so they would slip onto the shoes I wore underneath, and made sure there was a hole for the heal of my shoe. Lastly I glued a rubber shoe pad to the bottom so I might not just fall competently on my butt while wearing them. Because Assassins should be graceful right?
