Roche’s Black Chaperon (For Temeria! Pt 1)

Firstly, an apology. This thing was neigh impossible to photograph with my cell phone camera! I’m so sorry for the quality of pictures, but I hope it’s enough to show the project off well!

Even Vernon Roche thinks the picture of his / my hat is bad … 

That being said, WELCOME BACK! These last few months have been crazy and I’m afraid my poor sewing machine has quite literally been collecting dust (even under the cloth that sits on top of it when not in use). I felt the need for a project last night though, and I’ve been playing a *lot* of Witcher 3 lately. Lo and Behold, the Historical Sew Monthly challenge this month was “accessorize”. This project was simply meant to be.

I didn’t know much about chaperons before this project. I’ve never made anything 14th or even 15th century before, even though I’ve been sorely tempted by paintings of houppelandes and fantastically huge sleeves. I was even only vaguely aware that this was an early 15th century hat and now definitely want an outfit to go with it. But that’s for the future. About the hat:

I found a very helpful link explaining the chaperon, how it came to be and how to make one. I highly recommend it:

Chaperon’s and How to Make Them

Let’s get another few pictures of Roche’s hat in here. It’s a thing of beauty. I think Temeria just needs to replace the lilies on their shields with this thing. If anything in these games screams “Temerian Patriotism”, it’s not even the wearer. Just this hat.

Granted, he isn’t exactly the happiest character in the series …

I started with a very non period material. I’m so sorry. Yes, elastic. I wanted the hat to be able to fit both myself and my husband, and this seemed like the best idea. The final product isn’t actually THAT stretchy, but it’s just enough to fit both of us!

  

I wrapped the elastic waistband in the sturdiest fabric that I had lying around a few times and stitched the ends in. The bunched up stiff white fabric stretched just enough, and had a bunch of fantastic folds in it which made the whole thing look just as wrinkled as the screenshots from the game.

From here I made a tube of the black fabric and inserted the headband in to it. It was still beautifully wrinkly, but also quite sturdy.

It was at this point that I realized I’d misplaced my measuring tapes. All of them. I searched my sewing room, my living room, even by my computer! No clue. I’m blaming the dog on their disappearance. In the mean time, I needed some way to measure how long the liripipe and “hood” portions should be, so I improvised with yarn 😛

  

Not the most exact way to cut, but hey … I was sure it’d turn out ok! Besides, what mistake can we make that can’t be either trimmed or stitched back in to place?

The string method turned out to be quite successful I think! 8/10 would use again in a pinch. So at this point I had the three pieces of the hat either done or cut out.

First I hemmed and attached the thinner and longer liripole piece. I made sure to gather it a little before sewing it in, and pinched the attached sides a bit. This gave it the poofy look as it drapes over the top of the headband.

  

And then I started in on the hood. This took the longest as it had to be hand stitched in to place around the inside of the headband, and I’m not the most confident in my own hand stitching yet. I may have built up more thread than was necessary, but let me tell you: this hood isn’t going *anywhere*.

I cut the hood to be twice the circumference of the headband, and I think this was the perfect amount. I’m sure for other styles you can use more or less (or cut in a circle as the last image in that first link shows). But for Roche, this amount worked perfectly.

  

That was pretty much it! I ended up trimming off a bit of the hood that hung too far on to my shoulder, so the end hood piece was more of a trapazoid than a rectangle, but overall I consider the “no pattern required” chaperon a complete success!

Here are some more failed attempts at my trying to take a picture of the final result. I’ll just have to go out in to the sunlight tomorrow and see if my husband can’t take better ones.

  

So now that I have the hat, I need the rest of the outfit … right? And this right here is where I remain a historical seamstress and not a cosplayer. I just can’t do cosplay. I don’t know, I’ve tried, I really have. But I find it so much more satisfying to make a dress that’s inspired by Roche and still be somewhat historically accurate than to actually copy the game’s model as exactly as possible. Here were the top two winning (so far) sketches. I’m leaning heavily towards the right one, just because I want to make the sleeves. I figure I could use a brown band or ribbon over the stripes to mimic his leather armor bits. I can mimic the chain armor with a grey kirtle or chemise underneath. Not 100% sure yet what’s going to happen (or even when), but I’m having fun thinking about it. And for now, I have this amazingly awesome hat that I can wear anytime I play Witcher! Thanks to CDProjektRed for the model, inspiration, and my favorite “not-in-the-books” character 😀

Here’s to hoping I made Buddy Roche proud! (Or Buddy Bro-che as I like to call him) FOR TEMERIA!

My Geralt would romance him so hard if that was an option. Hint hint CDPR!