Birgitte Silverbow
The Wheel of Time

Inspiration: I love attending JordanCon, the Wheel of Time literary convention based in Atlanta, GA. It had been a few years since I cosplayed anyone from the series, so I wanted to remedy that with a new costume for 2017’s convention. I chose Birgitte because she’s such a fun character: strong, audacious, and with a bizarre sense of fashion.

Materials/Construction Details: I purchased the jacket and cropped the bottom and sleeves. I wanted it to look more militaristic, so I used the cut off fabric to make epaulets for the shoulders and sewed brown bias tape around the edges and other details. I replaced the buttons on the coat with silver ones with embossed arrows on them. I finished the coat with a golden horn lapel pin to represent the Horn of Valere.

The waist cincher was made out of two tones of red suede, complete with steel boning so that it functioned like a corset. The leaf designs on the front are made of lace with silver embroidery on top. The pants were dyed bright yellow and then I used sunflower tint-it spray to give the bottoms a gradient look. I gathered the bottoms of the pants with elastic, which is hidden beneath the boots. I designed the bracers and constructed them out of two tones of brown vinyl with hand sewn embroidery floss accents.

Wig: This wig was actually intended for a Rapunzel cosplay. I had to shorten it quite a bit and fix up the braids, but after that it was ready to go!

Props: I purchased a prop Legolas bow for this costume. I sanded down the sharp plastic edges on the toy, then primed it, and painted it silver. Using a tiny brush and black acrylic paint, I went over the details of the design on the bow to give it some weathering. I replaced the original bowstring with a metallic silver one.