Geralt of Rivia - Butcher of Blaviken shirt

This project has been on my list ever since the Netflix show aired and fell for Geralt and his wardrobe and character. I absolutely wanted to make the outfit and slightly destroyed armour he wears when he enters Blavikan. I like the weathered look he had going on, like an important persona but with outdated clothes. Ever since I saw the last episode of the show I really wanted to cosplay Geralt, so much that I decided to make his entire outfit. In this blog post, I will show you how I made the shirt that he wears when he gets stoned in Blavican and is dubbed "The butcher of Blaviken"

The materials I used for this project was a 100% linen fabric, cotton thread and a 100% cotton fibre fill. The first thing what I did during this project was looking at footage of the show, screenshots and trying to figure out how this shirt was put together. When I started this project I thought I would be easy and done in a couple of days. How wrong I was! It took me a couple of days to figure it all out, and draw many shirts on paper to figure out the front and all the tiny details!

Eventually, I was happy with the shirt I drew up here, the green one, and decided it was time to tackle the thing that I like and hate the most, drafting the pattern. I used an already existing pattern from Burda 7332, a pirate shirt to be exact. It was a little too big for me, but with some alterations, I had a clean slate to turn this pirate shirt into Geralt his shirt.

This is the pattern draft I made which worked extremely well even though I didn't test it if it would do the trick. It took me a full-on eight hours to draft it and what gave me the most grief was the split he has with all seventeen buttons on the side of his shirt, its not even in the middle. It took me a couple of tries, a lot of erasing parts and retrying again. I stared at the reference photo's for quite some time during this process but I'm happy with how it turned out. After this step, I retraced the pattern on a clean slate of parchment paper so I could cut out the mistakes I had made during the mockup section.

After this, I cut out all of the pattern pieces of the linen fabric. Sadly I didn't have enough for one sleeve so I decided to patch stitch it. For me, that also gave Geralt his shirt some extra character, as I would like to imagine he has it for years and needed to mend it. (which I will show later in this post)

After I had cut out all of the fabric pieces I decided wanted to work on some of the more detailed bits that are shown on Geralt his shirt. There subtle but they are there. He has his front flap and how shoulder pieces that are covered in infinity signs. This process was almost like patchworking, very enjoyable and relaxing. I had a layer of 100% cotton fibre fill sandwiched in between the fabric pieces so it would give it more of a textured look when I would sew over it. The lines that are horizontal and diagonal were created with the sewing machine and the afterwords I embroidered all the infinity lines by hand.

The way I created the pattern on the fabric was with wax paper and a rotary wheel so it would be embossed on the fabric. The wax eventually would disappear over time from the fabric. I then embroidered the infinity signs on the fabric with a backstitch. I used linen tread but for next time if I would ever to repeat this again I definitely would have chosen a DMC embroidery thread or just a thicker treat in general.

This is how it looks when it was finished with those details before I sewed in the lines or did any of the embroideries I first sewed in the buttonhole band.

After the details where done, I sewed the bottom of the shirt to the top. For the flap, I needed to make a cut down the front where the flap would be attached to.

Then I pinned and sewed the flap onto the cut edge on the inside of the shirt and ironed the other side flat. The flat side that ironed down will also be used as a modesty piece so skin isn't unnecessarily exposed. The bottom of the flap was still loose at this point so what I did was with an invisible stitch closing down the bottom

Then afterwards it was time for more embroidery on this shirt. Geralt has two very distinct kinds of pattern or imprint on his shirt beside the flap. So I decided to embroider that down. There were two rows of stitches going up and down on the entirety of the shirt.

After that, I sewed the shoulders and the side seam together, and now the shirt that was in pieces for such a long time finally started to look like an actual shirt you could wear. So far I was pretty pleased with what I did so far, but now for the sleeves which I dreaded the most as I didn't have enough fabric to make two sleeves. I fabricated one with rest cabbage that I still had from this shirt and made an entire sleeve by sewing tiny pieces of the fabric against each other.

I then made the cuffs, sewing first one side and then flip in inside and slip stitch it into place so all the raw edges where concealed.

Then it was time to finish off the neckline with some satin bias tape, I decided to use it on the outside first and then flip into the inside so the raw edge will be hidden on the inside. I sewed the entire neckline down with a whip stitch trying to not puncture to the outside of the fabric.

After that was all done, I sewed the bottom, I double folded the edge and then stitched it along on my sewing machine. Then for the last step, I sewed on all seventeen buttons, on to the shirt.

And with that, the shirt was complete done! It was such an adventure and enjoyable project and I myself learned a lot from the process

Thank you for reading!