Don’t lose your head - making Anne Boleyn

Written By AhriBelle Cosplay

When I was looking for references and materials for Boleyn I had a hell of a time, so I wanted to consolidate all of my findings in one spot! I’ll link all my materials below, so if you want to find them you can, and go through a few of my thoughts and processes that I discovered while building this.

References

To make things difficult from the start, every Boleyn is different, with the proportions, colours and fabrics changing between each version of the Queen. It took me far too long to realise this, and let to a lot of flicking back and forth between two shades of green tying to work out which was most accurate. Since “my” Queen was the Aussie legend Kala Gare, I decided to focus on the version she wears, which happens to have the fewest reference images. Of course. The 2 pages in the programme that show it well are my best friends.

The build

This costume is deceptively simple. For the top I created a pattern with the rough seam placement I needed using sewist.com, and then did several mockups to refine it. Scariest part was attempting the squares so they line up over the bust, it took a lot of drawing over the final pieces and clipping to be sure that the curve would work. The shoulders are reinforced with buckram in the central shape, and a stiff interfacing in the bodice. The collar also has a stiff interfacing sewn in, just to help with stabilisation.

For the shoulder pieces, I found it easiest to add the trim to a single piece of the vinyl, then stud it, then attach to the back piece using a zipper foot to get close to the studs. This would have been much easier with pre-studded trim. Regret. My sewing machine did not like having to go through up to 8 layers of vinyl and buckram. But we made it, to the horror of the discord fam.

The skirt took so many patterns to get right. I originally started with a circle skirt broken into 8 panels, and then adjusted to account for the number of squares between the cutouts to be accurate. I ended up using paper for the mockups, I needed a bit of stiffness to make sure the shape was working correctly, ideally they would have been vinyl but who can afford that. The cutouts were top-stitched to the green vinyl, then made into a top-buckram-bottom sandwich. The buckram helped with strengthening, and I ended up adding a layer of plastic boning along the bottom edge was well, which would have been better in with the buckram, but it’s mostly hidden by the binding. I bound the seams with the same PU leather trim as the bottom edge, but left a slit in one side seam. This lets me have access to a sneaky historical style pocket that’s attached to the waistband.

One of my favourite parts is the B necklace. It’s just clear plastic, metallic paper, and rhinestones, but it looks so effective. The armbands are stretch on the underside, so they slide on and off easily. The hairbuns are just pleather cuffs with studs added and tulle along the bottom side to allow them to be pinned into the wig.

I commissioned my boots from the wonderful Madeup and Marauding, they did the most incredible job!!!

I want to go back and reinforce the waistband with interfacing, I found when wearing it there was a tendency for the skirt to drop a little over time just due to the weight of it. The top also needs a lining, it’s scratchy! I’m using a Black Milk bodysuit for the base currently, and would love to upgrade to a more accurate version soon.

Materials are linked below, if you have any questions or would ever like to talk to me about Six feel free to reach out here or over on my Instagram!

AhriBelle Cosplay
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