So I'm making a weird thing, Pt. 3. Katniss Cowl Progress

Last progress update, hopefully the next pic I can share will be a nice photo of me in the whole costume! I only have to do the vertical braids to fill in the front section, and then some finishing touches. I'm going to tack down the neck a bit on one side to force the slouch because it's supposed to collapse a little over there.

So I'm making a weird thing, pt. 2 - Katniss Cowl Progress

Just a quick progress post!

First, the original for reference:

And where I'm at:

May or may not be bigger than hers, but oh well, making this up as I go along. Next up is the body, those braids will follow the long one draped around the front. I can see why the original took Maria Dora and an assistant a couple weeks to do, this is pretty labor intensive. So far I've used 3.5 skeins of yarn. A lot of people have said it's impractical, but when I tried it on to pin up the long braid I got quite warm, I'll have to try it out during the next polar vortex XD

So I'm making a weird thing; Katniss' cowl from Catching Fire

I can't rave enough about Hunger Games: Catching Fire! I've seen it 4 times in the theater so far. They are very true to the book and it's so perfect. I, of course, want to make all of Katniss' costumes. I've started with one piece though, since I can add it to my original Katniss Hunting costume:

I just have to put black pants with it to make it accurate for Catching Fire. She will wear the jacket in Mockingjay also, and if I can get my old Singer treadle machine working and buy a hide of leather, I want to make the jacket proper. This lucky ebay find, though, has most of the appropriate shapes. There is one other addition to the Catching Fire version of this costume, and that is the cowl:

It was made by Maria Dora specifically for Katniss, based on a design she had already done. It was altered to be more practical for shooting. Apparently the internet is going nuts over this piece. If you search "Katniss Cowl", you will get hundreds of results of people trying to make their own, it's pretty remarkable. Sometimes I take on a costume I wasn't initially planning on doing simply because I think I figured out how it was made. That's the fun I have with costume making is figuring out the puzzle. Now let me first say that I am not a knitter. I only know the basic knit stitch, and I taught myself the basic crochet stitch for this.

I can't tell yet if I'm making it too big or not since I don't have much of the body done, but I'm kind of proud of the technique I've worked up (and I have no clue what I'm doing, I feel like freakin' MacGuyver here) Hopefully I can get this done before the last snow of the year and arrange some kind of photoshoot!

Also? It makes a great cat bed.

-edit 01/12/14- I'd shortened the end of the "y" and added the next row of braiding...