Celefinniel's Theoden Pages

The shirt, undertunic and black pants. Pants are purchased. Shirt is rose red German washable cotton velvet with a red suede tie. The tie and its placement was improvised based on the shirt worn by 'Boromir' shown in the costume shots at the end of the FOTR extended version of the CD, since there were no pictures of Theoden's costume for this layer at the time I made it.

The black undertunic is cotton twill with leather lacing. Metal grommets were used as the film seems to show them in the original costume. This view also shows the overlap in the split skirt. Using an overlap causes the split to take a shape similar to that of the actual costume when the wearer is stitting down, rather than just falling to the side.

The black surcoat layer. Embroidery schematic - 1 element. The schematic was traced off a large and detailed scan of the machine embroidery on the front of the black surcoat. Luckily there was at least one of every major element that showed well. Since Bernard Hill was standing at an angle to the camera, this design may be slightly more elongated than reality.

The schematic shows only the gold lines of the embroidery. The horse heads are a "red" that matches the sleeves of the under tunic. The teardrop shapes appear to be the black cloth of the background showing through, but could be embroidered as well. Certain parts of the design call for a finely laid down satin stitch, but those can be observed by checking the many photos of the original costume. The .pdf version of the diagram should print out for you with the major lines of the grid at 1 inch intervals. The scanned photo version may not do so. Check the measure first if you use that one. The .pdf will be a clearer print also. You need the Adobe Acrobat reader to open this file.

On the collar: remove the triangle designs at the back of the design and also the top triangle at the front of the design. This leaves a downward sloping collar (sort of a v-shape) which is what you want, NOT a mandarin or nehru type collar. Match both sides. You will know that you have the right match on the front design because there you will remove the top triangle design which is closest to the center opening. The triangle left on the collar will match up with the remaining triangle left on the front so that it will appear that both of them are there on the front design.

If this is not clear try looking at the finished piece.

This is the same embroidery that is on the collar of the green surcoat, which is worn under the armor. On that collar the teardrop shapes allow the green fabric to show through on the design.

For the front you will use two of each element for each side, overlapping the triangle shapes to get the full design. You can do more, but the original appears to use only two.

The bottom-most photo is the correct one. When I finally saw the tunic without the brown surcoat, I had to go back and unpick on of the bottom "triangles". It is'nt there on the original.

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