Cosplay, Sewing, Costuming

But because I knew nothing about weaving, everything had to be explained to me, down to the most basic tacit knowledge: things that an eight-year-old girl in 1828 would have known, because when she was not winding yarn around a quill to help her mother, she was working on the family’s loom herself...

For my textile, weaving, historic textile, history enthusiasts

SR: Their expertise as makers has clued me into historical experiences most scholars have glossed right over. A 1930s Federal Writers Project interview with a formerly enslaved octogenarian might reference a grandmother’s sewing prowess, but then a student will say, No, you can’t just skim over by that! Do you know how many hand stitches it takes to do the seam of a dress? If you’ve never handsewn a skirt (and I haven’t), you might need to be reminded of the labor involved. One student reproduced a 19th-century skirt as her final project, and it was all about the stitches. Their reading of primary sources picked up on things that I missed.

Very excited to finally share some pictures of my Dread Pirate Frogerts build! I've been thinking about making this outfit for my Kermit for a while now, but the proper motivation to actually get this done was hearing that Cary Elwes was announced as a guest for my local comic convention! So with any luck Dread Pirate Frogerts will be getting to meet the real Westley very soon.

What did it get used for? 👀

It's not done yet, but it's the facing, collar, and cuffs for the patchwork dressing gown I'm working on! It was less than half a metre of silk/rayon velvet that I dyed in college because the sample we did of that colour was so nice I wanted a bigger piece. (It was PRO MX fibre reactive dye in the colour Marine, and I don't have my dye sample book with me right now but I think it was at 4%. It shows up more green on some fibres and more blue on others, but is always gorgeous.)

I had no specific plans for it at the time, but eventually the perfect project came along, and there was just enough!

I've been working on this thing (intermittently, in short busts) for a few years now, and am finally done the patchwork and on to the construction. I've posted occasional updates on @vincentbriggs and will post photos there when I'm done.

I've also been filming the whole process, so I'll have a video about it up on my youtube channel eventually, but that'll be a while after it's finished because I have so so so many clips and it's going to take a horrifyingly large amount of editing.

It's based on this c. 1835 original, which is a good 50-100 years later than what I usually sew, but I like it and I wanted one.

If anyone's wondering how many triangles mine has, it's 6,957.

Since I've got the time consuming part out of the way I'm hoping I can get the construction done before winter officially ends.

Edit: Why does everyone think I had a bad time working on the triangles?? I loved working on them, it was so satisfying to put lots of little bits of colour together. The reason I worked on it intermittently is because I could not put it down once I got working on it, and would work on it all day for several days straight until I was very tired and sore, and then I had to put it away to stop myself, and then I'd forget about it for a few months.

And besides the velvet, it of course used up a lot of other little bits of fabric!

Stripey painted leather gloves.

Velvet mite brooch.

Leaf for head.

Leaf for torso, a leaf sequel, now with added slime mould beading.

Very very long and detailed shirt tutorial, which I also did a written version of. You should make one, it's all rectangles.

and Normal Fabric Waistcoat.

I am very slow at making youtube videos but I post monthly updates on the video stuff I've been working on over on patreon, along with 4 extra dinosaurs a month. (and aaghh I know I've been really really sparse with the dinosaurs here lately, I'm sorry!! It's not intentional, there are just a lot of other things to do and also it's been over 9 years and every year I get a little more tired of drawing dinosaurs!)

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

OP also invented armsocks.

First proper look at my original ‘celestial’ Gale design, created specifically for the Cosplay Met Gala at Katsucon!

I have always been a ‘magic and stars’ lad, so when I saw that this year’s gala theme was ‘Starlight and Sorcery’, I found myself staring at my current cosplay muse (Gale) and went ‘…oh no, what if I did this?’ And honestly, when he fits the theme so perfectly, how could I say no?

I did keep this quieter during the creation stage, mainly because a) I wasn’t sure I would manage to get it done to my satisfaction (or at all tbh) and b) I thought it would be fun to go ‘surprise! Another new Gale besides the camp outfit!’ 😁

I really stepped out of my comfort zone with this, both in terms of designing from scratch rather than replicating AND plucking up the courage to go on stage, and I’m very proud of doing both. So many people came up to me after the stage portion to tell me how much they liked my design and I truly couldn’t thank them enough.

I’ll be sharing more detail photos, as well as a behind the scenes of my thought process behind the design, so stay tuned!

(And as you can see I had a lot of fun photo editing 😄)

Gale’s camp tunic is DONE!! Just under 200 (196) hours of hand embroidery on this piece and I’m so proud of how it turned out.

LETS GO MALCOLM!

You can watch his series on reconstructing Iroquoian armor here

Magic Knight Rayearth Kimonos

Hikaru Shidou | Umi Ryuuzaki | Fuu Hououji

The other major detail about this costume that I love is all that crushed velvet. Which, is actually not crushed velvet! It all carefully stenciled and painted using a semi-translucent pearl fabric paint to create the illusion of damask and brocaded velvet. I think it worked well, don't you?

Photography by ADoylible - Creative Photography

Howdy, my charm is literally just made from odds and ends from the recycling bin and random bits in my junk drawer.

The main body is a cardboard tube support from a lint roller refill with a paper cut guide glued over top. When it was dry I just carefully cut out the square windows with an exacto knife. Then created some card stock disks to support that green apple sauce cap to the rear end so it looked like a functional bit, and a front lip that were glued on with school glue.

From there I added a length of waxed cord to the middle section and secured it to the tube with super glue. When it was fully cured the entire tube body got 3-4 layers of paper maché using tissue paper and a ratio of 1:1 wood glue and water. This combination makes for a really strong and smooth cover, and the little irregular ridges can read like worn down metal sheeting. When the paper maché was full cured I glued on some wooden beads to the cord and also some little plastic cabochon half pearls with super glue. The beads help weigh the charm if you intend to spin it, but also help stop the cord from wanting to rip off the paper.

The paint was a single layer of high gloss black, then brass and left to dry for a day and a half. The fake patina was made with acrylic washes of paint (viridian green & white) then sealed with a gloss top coat. If this color combo reads flat to you, you may find a brown primer layer more appealing for brass or alternatively a red base for gold.

It turned out pretty structurally sound and does somehow make an odd sound when spun fast enough, though nothing close to the movie. I've got my other wips here if you need them :^)

Because I’m just getting this shit recently and it’s all amazing.

Hot Knife - Holy fucking shit it heats up and you can slice and dice anything you fucking want pretty much. And you can get a multitool version of it with interchangeable heads so you can fry different patterns on to your work how fuckin neato is that? (Cut away from you. Cut away from you. Cut away from you. Don’t be me. Don’t slice yourself with a sharp and also vERY HOT blade. Don’t do it. CUT AWAY FROM YOU).

Dremel - Hand sanding is for people with strong arms (not me) and the patience of saints (also not me). Sand shit down at the speed of FAST. Multiple tools can be attached to the spinning doo-hickey and you can cut and grind and buffer to your hearts content.

Paperclay - Forget wall spackle for filling cracks in props, just use fucking paperclay. Plaster can suck on an egg, put paperclay over your props and sand that shit down for a smooth as fuck and sturdy finish. Build little embellishments with it. Build pretty much fucking anything with it holy wow its great.

Dentists Tools - Listen you’re gonna need poking tools. You can either look through the junk drawer for a pencil or pen to poke things, or you can spend 5$ and get a set of sharp metal sticks that bend every which way and are amazeballs for getting in to the nooks and crannies of your costume. They’re so useful please get them.

I’ve found that as a surface treatment, to smooth out and seal and a surface, spackle isn’t the strongest thing in the world (it won’t add strength to a project), but it is easy to use, lightweight, and can be sanded very smooth. If covering a large area of surface for the sake of making it smooth, spackle is the way to go. (I’ve used this as the surface coat on XPS foam for my Ultimecia headpiece and Condesce horns, and as the edge of my Juri Arisugawa sword, and have had no problems with it there. I’m sure I’ve used it elsewhere too, but those are the major applications I can think of.) 

For a crack filler, it can go either way. Paperclay is prone to cracking in and of itself during the drying process. It is also much heavier than spackle. For smaller cracks, it works well. For larger cracks, it may be too heavy, and may have problems with drying. I wouldn’t use it to fill an entire area, but would use it for smaller repairs, or, in rare cases, as a thin surface coat on a small area.

Spackle is good for filling in larger areas (get the lightweight stuff that’s the texture of a stiff buttercream) with a lightweight material, though the areas would have to either be very contained (a narrow and deep hole, like a crack) or wide and shallow, since it can’t be built up super easily. You have to wait for it to fully dry, add another layer, etc. But it’s good for filling in space when weight is a concern and certain shapes are involved. If you are trying to take a surface that is bowed inward and make it flat again? Lightweight spackle will be much lighter than paperclay. If you then want that space to have a harder surface, a thin layer of paperclay can go on top of the spackle.

I’ve found that spackle and paperclay have two different types of weakness: spackle is soft, in that it can indent or crumble (it doesn’t work well on sharp angles for that reason, unless you are very careful), and paperclay can crack (not the cracks that form during the drying process, but the dried material itself cracking), and doesn’t bear weight well, especially when in thin pieces (say, the arms of a trident…that was a mistake). Either way, you have to be careful with the material.

So, really, both have pros and cons. Paperclay is great for a hard surface, making small accessories and details (or things like horns that aren’t overly large), and for things that need to be sculpted, but is very heavy and cracks easily, so it isn’t as suitable for use over large areas, especially where things light take a hit. Spackle is good as a lightweight filler (especially if you use the “lightweight” kind) or surface coat (I’ve done this both with the lightweight and regular kind, though regular is easier to sand….but both can get very smooth, as evidenced by my Condesce horns) when covering large areas, but can’t be built up easily or sculpted into shapes, and has a harder time with sharp angles.

Okay, here’s the deal. I found this tutorial going around the other day on sewing zippers. And yeah, it’s good, but a lot of what it’s telling to you to do is unnecessary and, imo, more work than you need. (ntm it completely defeats the purpose of the specific type of zipper they’re using but that’s besides the point.) 

So! I’ve decided to make my own tutorial on how to sew an invisible zipper. 

Now, real quick, you’ll notice I just said “invisible” zipper. That’s because with sewing, you usually have one of two choices when it comes to zippers:

The Original

and

The Invisible

See why they call it invisible?

Now, usually sewing patterns will call for you to use an invisible zipper. This is great because one, it looks better, and two, it’s a lot easier to sew than a regular zipper. Which means the tutorial you’re about to see is going to be showing you how to sew an invisible zipper, since you’re more likely to use that rather than any other zipper anyways. If, however, you’d like to learn how to sew a regular zipper, just let me know and I can make a separate tutorial for that.