Solo Masquerade

[Amelia]

82nd Winter, Nighttime, The Silk Palace

The Azure Festival had always been one of Amelia’s favourite events. The dresses, the masks, the food and drink – all of it! She had many fond memories of past festivals, even if day the after she usually suffered from a sore head. The hangover was worth the memories though, and to Amelia it was just another sign that the night had been a success.

But this year the young woman’s enthusiasm was lacking. She would not be wearing a custom-made dress. She would not go shopping with her closest girl friends to buy masks and jewellery specially for the festival. Not only could she no longer afford such luxury, but there was a less than slim chance she could take the time off work. Each kina was a precious, rare resource that Amelia needed to squirrel away to save and scrimp. The mere thought of her monetary desperation made her knuckled turn white with frustration. Who had caused all this trouble? No-one other than her own father. A mere two seasons ago his long-term affair was discovered and that little snake of a man, instead of fighting for his family and proving his loyalty, high-tailed it out of Lhavit, taking his income with him. The financial impact of his departure had deprived Amelia of the finer things in life, and she had to truly come to appreciate the meaning of the word compromise.

The harsh truth of her new financial situation had resulted in several reactions from Amelia: self-pity, frustration, upset, jealousy were all now close acquaintances of the blonde’s. But now, she felt suddenly resilient. She would not let that man ruin her fun. Likewise, she would not be wearing a designer dress to the festival this year, or even an expensive mask – but so what? Fashion and accessories were only part of the fun (albeit the glitzy and glamorous part). Amelia could have just as much fun wearing a…. cheap dress.

The thought that now sent cold shivers down Amelia's spine.

But she simply refused to give anything up on the mask. After all, she had not maintained a precious and strict skincare routine to hide her porcelain-like skin behind any old mask. If she were going to wear one, it would have to be fabulous.

She had thought long and hard over what her mask should represent. As she now lived on Sharai, it would have to somehow resemble an animal, but that did not exactly limit her choices. Should she go for the bold choice, like the Wolf (Dangerous but beautiful), or a more playful option such the Snowshoe hare (and she certainly did look good in white). But, after much painful deliberation, a decision was made: the Kinell Kingfisher. Though miniscule in size, the bird had a gorgeously bright plumage and such hues would complement her skin tone delightfully. It would be a bold fashion statement – if done correctly.

So Amelia set about designing her mask. All her previous ones had all been made of leather, and had either been black or brown in colour or dyed dark red, dark green. Neither of those options would give Amelia the vivid colours she needed to represent the Kinell Kingfisher. But to make it out of an alternate material might mean her mask would be flimsy, or not sit rightly on her nose. Even the thought of wearing a crooked mask ran the risk of ruining Amelia’s night, and so it was something she desperately wanted to avoid.

Groaning, the young woman turned her attention back to the parchment before her. Save for a selection of very tentatively sketched circles and lines, the page was blank. Her mother had donated the parchments and charcoal – she had barely touched anything artistic in the two seasons since he had left them both. Now her easel and canvases did little more than collect dust, and Joanne Trisswell herself spent her days pottering around the city collecting pity from strangers.

Touching the charcoal piece to the parchment, Amelia swept a curve along the middle of her page. Though it was far from neat or even straight, it would serve as the top half of her mask just fine. Next came the bottom part; a line mirroring the one on top. Now at least her sketch resembled a mask, though perfect certainly was not. After adding two circles for eyeholes, Amelia turned her attention to the more important aspect of designing: the colour!

oocLedger to be updated at conclusion of thread

[Amelia]

If she were to mimic the Kinell Kingfisher, Amelia needed to ensure that her mask was as vividly coloured as the tiny bird itself. Purple, orange, green: all could be found in the plumage of the Kingfisher. Fortunately one of her oldest friends had once owned one as a pet. At the time, Amelia had regarded the bird as a smelly, chirpy little pest, but now she clung to the memory of those beady black eyes fondly.

Her mask would also need a beak – an orange beak specifically. Amelia considered how to create this: no material would be strong enough to be as long and pointed as the beak needed to be. Parchment, perhaps? Her mother certainly had an abundance of paper and paints that no doubt Amelia would be free to utilise. It’s not like she’s using them, anyway. But would that risk looking cheap? Amelia frowned. Cheap was not the look she was going for certain.

Then the idea struck her. She could sew together an orange swath of material into a cone to then fix onto the paper-made beak. That would at least create the illusion that the whole thing was made of material, and it would certainly remove the chances of it looking cheap.

Pleased with her progress, Amelia moved on to designing the main body of the mask. Ideally she would need to use something that resembled feathers, but beyond finding a real Kinell Kingfisher, killing it and plunking, she was at a loss as to what to do.

Inspiration will come, she decided whemeently. Whenever Amelia had wanted something in the past, she needed only to request it from her father, perhaps plead or refuse to eat for a night, and he would purchase it for her. Now, however, she needed to make do and create things herself. Though she did feel a sense of satisfaction from designing and sewing together the garments she would have otherwise had purchased for her, it was tiring. And when you spent all day making a dress, it left very little time to actually wear it.

The dress!

Impossibly, Amelia had utterly forgotten about what else she would wear with her mask. Perhaps a white dress, to really draw attention to the brightness of her mask? Maybe, though if her mask turned out poorly attracted attention to it would be the last thing she wanted to do.

And how should I style my hair…?

There were just too many unknowns in her life. Touching her forehead tentatively, Amelia frowned and willed for these innumerable problems to just evaporate away. There was only so much a young woman could take without losing her marbles or, worse, causing her skin to wrinkle.

[Amelia]

Amelia pushed herself onwards, focusing yet again on her sketch of the mask. She scratched her head and added more detail, narrowing the point that would sit on her nose and instead making the tips of the mask around her eyes more pointed. The beak, though not in her sketch, was at the moment the only real indication that her mask was inspired by a bird. More needed to be done so Amelia would not have to engage in that most awkward conversation of: so, what are you meant to be?

And suddenly –

“Feathers!”

The word escaped her lips in a childlike little yelp and, now thrilled by this wave of motivation, Amelia scribbled down two feathers that she would plan to sew into the back of her mask. They were erect up beside her eyes, tall and beautiful and most importantly vivid.

Pleased that she now had enough of a plan to work on, Amelia set about actually making her mask. First, she rolled up a piece of parchment into a cone and used her mother’s glue – how that stuff stunk! – to ensure it would hold in place. Being a seamstress, she had previously purchased a collection of scrap material from the Silk Palace to practice her stitching on, and thankfully one such piece was a small swatch of orange chiffon. After cutting it to shape, Amelia fixed the material around the cone and carefully threaded a needle.

A backstitch would ensure the material would remained in a cone shape for the entirety of the festival. So, need in her right hand and material in her left, Aemlia inserted the needle on the underside of the material and pulled her cotton through. She then made a single stitch in front. When it came to her second underside stitch, Amelia ensured it was twice as long as her earlier stitch to make sure she could double back to create a continuous line of thread. Though it was far from perfectly straight and there was some variety in the length of her stitches, the job was done in ten or so chimes: she had made a beak!

[Amelia]

So. Amelia had a beak but as yet no mask. But progress had been made, and thankfully this meant that the young woman’s creative juices were flowing. With this new enthusiasm in mind, Amelia began to rifle through her materials in search of something that might be suitable for the main body of her mask. It needed to be strong enough to hold shape yet not so stiff that it wouldn’t mould to the shape of her face….

Finally, she found a vivid piece of violet satin. The finish was sheer, so brilliant shiny and eye-catching. It was simply perfect for a mask, and Amelia had enough of the material to cut two layers out – double the strength!

Carefully she traced out the shape of her mask onto the reverse of the satin. The eyeholes were trickier, and it took careful snipping away until they were finally equally sized and even.

Amelia laid the two cut-out mask shapes on top of each other, the reverse of both swatches of material facing outwards. As before, Amelia used a backstitch to join the two mask copies together: needle in below, pushed through to the top and then dived back onto itself through the bottom of the two pieces. She worked slowly and methodically, doing her best to keep an even quarter inch away from the edges of the material. After sewing almost all the way around the mask, Amelia turned it inside out so it was the proper, external face of the satin that was revealed.

[Amelia]

In order to attach the beak to the face of her mask, Amelia would need to use an alternate stitch. Firstly, she cut out a circle on the nose of the mask to then slow the widest end of her beak through. This, she figured, would ensure the beak would lie flush against the main boyd of the mask and also look the most biologically accurate. Plus, the hollow of the beak would allow for Amelia’s real nose to poke through without resulting in an unpleasant bump in the middle of her mask.

Oh, it was all coming together…

After making three stitches in the surplus material of the beak that poked through to the rear of her mask, Amelia began to stitch it into place. She inserted the needle into the mask of her mask and, ensuring that it did not poke through to the top layer of her mask, she pulled the needle back through the orange material of the beak. After tugging the thread taut, she continued in this manner. The end result was a stitch that always began in the violet satin but came through the orange material of her beak. The applique stitch, as she knew it was called, would meant that the circular beak would lie flat along the back of her mask.

Finally, she held the mask to her face and with delight Amelia found that her nose did indeed lie under the beak. She could breathe fine (Though the smell of glue burnt her nostrils slightly), and thought the beak was still a little drooped, it looked fine.

She began to sift through the rest of her material collection. She had various swaths of silk, in all manner of colours but in total she estimated she had approximately half a yard’s worth. After picking out a green, Amelia cut the silk into a variety of tall, narrow slits. There was no way she could feasibly collect or purchase enough feathers to cover her entire mask, so she had to do what she could. Amelia figured that if she could cut enough pieces of silk and then sew them on top of each other, a little like slate rooftops, they might just resembled feathers.

Hopefully.

[Amelia]

Now Amelia found herself surrounded by strips of silk in a variety of colours and lengths. She was at risk of drowning in this sea of silk if she didn’t come up with an idea of how to organise and sew them onto her mask. If she hadn’t already sewn the two cut-out masks together, she could have used an invisible stitch to ensure that no thread would be seen on the almost-transparent swaths of silk. But, hindsight was a beautiful thing and Amelia tried not to linger over the possibilities too much. Better to just get on with it and create a mask.

First she started with the green silk. After carefully lying several pieces of the silk around the circles of her eyeholes, Amelia stitched them into place with a simple running stitch. By using orange thread and tiny stitches, she hoped that the thread would not be too obvious, and would instead blend in with the main orange body of the mask.

She continued in this way until almost all of her mask was covered in the feather-llike pieces of silk. Some she had stitched so they hung off the bottom of the mask, and others she had stitched into the base of her beak. All in all, she was pleased with her progress and three bells after starting, Amelia’s mask was nearly complete.

All she needed to do now was to create the strap that would go around her head to secure the mask in place. For this she would more of the silk she had cut out earlier, but a long golden piece that would be long enough to serve such an important purpose. Plus, Amelia hoped that the golden swath of silk would blend in with her hair. In order to ensure the strap would be secure, Amelia first made two small holes either side of the mask, at its widest point. She did this only on the reverse of the mask, so the strap would not be seen from the front. After threading her piece of silk partially into the hole, she sewed it into place either end. The silk strap was just long enough to fit snuggle on her head and lie flat behind her ears.

Her mask was complete and though it was not quite as perfectly sewn or designed as a piece she might have bought, there was something satisfying in knowing she had made it herself.

ledger1/4 of a sq yard of chiffon = -7Ki 5Tk

1/3 of a sq. yard of Satin = -10Ki

1/2 sq. yard of silk = -7Ki 5Tk

TOTAL: -25Ki

[Bee]

Don't forget to edit/delete your grade request. If there's anything I may have missed, please PM me and I'll BEE happy to look into it.

 

Amelia

Skills

• +2 Drawing
• +3 Sewing

Lores

• Lore: Mask of Kinell Kingfisher
• Lore: Sturdy fabric
• Lore: Unseen stiches
• Lore: Feathers from silk
• Lore: Satisfaction of making something yourself

Miscellaneous

• 1/2 sq. yd of chiffon -7Ki 5 Tk| 7Ki 5Tk
• 1/3 sq. yd of satin -10 Ki | 17Ki 5Tk
• 1/2 sq. yd of silk -7Ki 5Tk | 25 Ki
  25Ki
  
  

Comments: I really liked the resolution, if I have my ideas about Amelia right this was a big step to make something for herself. Great job!