Today at Dragon*Con, capnseamus and I were optimistic heroic red/white/blue themed heroes!
todays bird
Sade Olutola
Acquired Stardust
cherry valley forever
wallacepolsom

Product Placement

titsay

izzy's playlists!
Three Goblin Art
Misplaced Lens Cap

#extradirty
Cosmic Funnies

Janaina Medeiros
Stranger Things
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸

⁂
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
One Nice Bug Per Day
Not today Justin

seen from Germany

seen from United States

seen from Switzerland
seen from United Kingdom
seen from France

seen from Greece
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from Iraq
seen from T1
seen from Italy
seen from Netherlands

seen from United States
seen from Chile
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
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@transformationsequence
Today at Dragon*Con, capnseamus and I were optimistic heroic red/white/blue themed heroes!

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I finally got to wear Captain Marvel at a convention! And get legitimate, beautiful pictures! (Of which more are coming, so many more!) The reception Carol got - the excitement, the glee, the little kids and especially the little girls who were excited to see me and take pictures, the number of times I agreed with convention attendees that it is just TOO LONG to wait for her MCU debut - it made this outing just perfect.
I also got to high five a Kamala cosplayer who was about seven years old, so I have officially achieved pinnacle of personal success.
Much credit to peggy-carter for the best photograph ever taken of me.
Behind the camera preview from shooting with @peggy-carter today. I'm so hyped. I'm dying of the hype.
Tutorial: Sew a Keyhole Neckline with a Facing
Since I keep trying to explain facings to friends (and keep feeling like I’m failing miserably), I decided to do a longer tutorial, after all, about how to I use a facing to sew keyhole necklines. This is an attractive and sturdy neckline for LARP/Dagorhir/SCA garb. I’ve used it on literally hundreds of tunics.
This tutorial ended up getting pretty long and scary, but don’t worry: this is not a complicated process. It’s just hard to explain over the internet. So– let’s go!
What is a facing, anyway?
A facing is just an extra bit of fabric that you sew to the edge of your garment and fold down to conceal a raw edge. I use them on necklines, instead of folding the edge down in a traditional hem. If you don’t get the concept, @vintage-aerith has a great tutorial here. Facings produce very sturdy, flat, and non-bulky edges.
For example, this tunic has a keyhole neckline finished with a self-colored green facing. The edge of the neckline is NOT folded over and hemmed: the facing is an extra piece of fabric that was stitched on to the edge and then folded to the inside. You can see the ‘lower’ edge of the facing– it’s the darker green line about 1.5″ in from the edge. I then tacked the facing down with embroidery. It’s a very clean, unobtrusive finish.
This tunic has a very fancy external orange facing, combined with a collar! The process is very similar to above, but the facing is flipped to the outside. This is an easy way to add color to a garment. (Forgive my dork-face and overlarge tunic– this was for a customer who’s about a foot taller than me!)
You should use facings because:
Hemming necklines is a pain. The curve will not want to fold down flat. Facings, on the other hand, are exactly the same size and shape as the neckline, so they automatically lay flat.
The point at the bottom of a keyhole is a nightmare to hem, and if you hem it badly, it will fray and rip, fast.
When you fold down a neckline to hem it, your neck-hole gets bigger. When we’re talking LARP/SCA/Dagorhir garb, a bigger neck-hole always means more sunburn. If you use a facing, you’ll get a neckhole exactly the size you planned.
Hemming stretches your neckline out. The more you handle a cut piece of fabric, the more it will stretch. A stretched out neckline = more sunburn, again. This facing method minimizes handling of cut edges, so the neckline stays nice and tight.
Facings are fast and easy once you understand what you’re doing and why. I can knock one out, start to finish, in about ten minutes. No lie.
Now that I’ve convinced you that facings rock, onward!
1. Make Your Facing Pattern
You’ll first need a pattern for your facing, and to make that, you need to know what size you’d like your finished neckline to be. I recommend a neckline that’s made of a circle that’s about 5.5″ in diameter and a 3″ slit, like this. This is juuust big enough that it will pull over most heads.
Draw your 5.5″ circle on a bit of scrap fabric. (I traced a saucer onto a sheet from a charity shop. Pure class, me.) This will be the hole your head goes through.
But, you protest, a 5.5″ circle only has a 17.25″ circumference! That’s way too small for anyone’s head! Well spotted: we’ll add a 3″ long slash down the center line so you can fit your head through.
Now we’ll mark the center and shoulder line. Since your tunic has a front half and a back half, you’ll be sorely tempted to put half your neck-circle on the front and half on the back.
But if you do this, your tunic will be really uncomfortable! Your neckline will constantly creep forward around your shoulders. This is because most of your neck is actually in front of the shoulder seam, so 2/3rds of your circle– about 3.66″ on a 5.5″ circle– should go in front of your shoulder.
Add 1.5″ around the edge of the hole and and around the slash.
Cut the fabric out along the outer line.
Cut out the center hole, and cut down the slash. Note that you’re just cutting the slash open with one pass of your scissors– you’re not trimming anything away.
Now you have a mock-up for your facing. It should look something like this. (Mine is super ugly because I’m traveling and only have terrible blunt scissors with me.)
Pull it on. Can you fit this over your head? Does it lie comfortably? If you can’t get this over your head, cut the slash a tiny bit longer and try again. If that doesn’t work, make the hole a tiiiiny bit larger. Remember that a smaller neckhole is better (sunburn!).
Don’t be fooled by my weird face– I am happy, because mine fits okay! I’ll now trace my mock-up onto a bit of sturdy poster board, making sure to mark the center front, back, length of the slit, and shoulder seams with notches.
The front white piece is my facing pattern, which I use to trace out the facing piece on fabric, ie, the background piece in olive green. Note that the fabric facing does NOT have the hole cut out. This is important!
Next, we’ll…
2. Cut Out Your Facing
Lay your new pattern on a bit of your fabric. Using chalk or a fabric-marking pencil, trace it all the edges and mark all the notches. Cut along the outer line until your facing piece looks like the dark shape in the photo above.
Here’s where it gets tricky, though: you won’t cut the interior circle, yet. This is because that inner edge isn’t really an edge at all: it’s your stitching line. When you’re stitching your facing onto your tunic, your needle will follow that inner line that you’ve chalked onto your fabric. See how in the photo above there’s a line marked in yellow chalk on the dark olive green facing? That’s the stitching line, so DO NOT CUT THE CENTER HOLE OUT IN YOUR FACING.
Similarly, DO NOT CUT A HOLE IN YOUR TUNIC YET. We won’t cut either hole until the facing is stitched to the tunic. That’s right– it will look and feel really weird, but trust me, there’s a good reason for it.
3. Finish the Edge of Your Facing
The outer edge of your facing will fray if you don’t do something to prevent that, so take a moment to serge or zigzag around the edge of your facing piece. It’s way easier to do this before you stitch the facing onto your tunic.
4. Stitch Your Facing Onto Your Tunic
Okay, so. I like to start by sew the neckline on my tunic before I do anything else. That way, if I screw it up, I haven’t wasted time (or fabric) by adding sleeves and gores and stuff.
Note how, in the picture above, no holes have been cut in the facing or the torso panel. This is not a mistake. Why aren’t you cutting the holes, you might ask? Well, fabric cut along curves stretches. Badly. This is bad news if you’re trying to match the hole you cut in your tunic to the hole you cut in your facing. Getting them to match requires a ton of pinning and fussying and delicate handling. I hate pinning and fussing, so I sew my facing to my tunic before I cut any holes. This way, everything is stabilized nothing can stretch out. Cool? Cool. Now, my torso panel is one long rectangle, which makes up the main front and back of my tunic– there’s no shoulder seam. Fold your tunic in half both ways and use your iron to crease these folds. These creases now mark your shoulder line and center lines. You’ll use them to line up your facing.
Lay your facing onto your tunic, right sides (ie, outsides) together. Make sure to match facing to the tunic’s center front, back, and shoulder seams. Remember how 2/3rds of your neckline will be on the front of your tunic? Check that, now. When your facing lays straight and flat and properly positioned on your tunic, pin it in place. You’ll now slowly stitch through both layers along the line you marked. The slash is a little different, though, so see the picture below for an explanation of how to stitch around it.
The stitching travels around the slash, with about 1/4″ to 1/8″ between the lines. The bottom of the slash should be crossed by just 1 stitch. If you use more stitches, this point will pucker when you try to flip it to the inside.
Once you’ve stitched along the entire stitching line, you’ll finally cut the neckline open.
Be extra careful cutting the slash open. You’ll cut through the gap between the two rows of stitching, stopping just shy of the stitch at the very bottom of the slash.
Okay. So, you’ve got your facing sewn to your tunic, but all the raw/cut edges are still exposed. To fix that, you’ll now fold the facing to the wrong side (ie, the inside), so the raw edge will be hidden inside the fold. This can be a little tricky, so be patient and use plenty of steam with your iron. To turn the points out, use something pointy but blunt, like a big bamboo knitting needle, to poke them right-side-out.
Once you’ve got your facing turned to the inside of your tunic, iron it well so the edge of the neckline is flat and crisp.
Hooray! All that’s left, now, is topstitching through the tunic and the facing in matching thread so your facing won’t creep back out to the right side. I like to use two lines of topstitching– one 1/8″ from the edge of the neckline, and another 1″ from the edge of the neckline. Make sure you’re catching the edge of your facing!
Hooray, you did it! That wasn’t so bad, was it? And look how sturdy and clean your tunic’s neckline now looks. That keyhole is never going to rip, I tell you that.
Huge thanks to Stellaria for writing the original tutorial that taught me how to do facings, and for putting up with my hare-brained innovations on her methods. Stell is the best.
After a few weeks (months??) of silence, mostly due to other hobbies taking over my life, I'm back on the cosplay train, and working on Captain Marvel! This is my progress over the weekend. Colorblocking spandex is hell.

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I want to take a minute to talk about group cosplay, specifically the phenomenon of claiming a character as a part of a group cosplay, holding onto that character, and then dropping out of the group when it’s far too late for someone else to step in.
Please do not do this.
This is not like regular cosplay where no one owns the rights to cosplay a character exclusively and everyone can just do what they want. When you claim a character as part of a planned group, you lock other people out of doing that character and the group is now counting on you to get that character done. It is therefore your responsibility to either follow through, or to drop out early enough that someone else can reasonably make that costume instead.
Even if you had every intention of actually doing the cosplay when you signed on, there comes a certain point at which you have to be honest with yourself about how likely it is that you’ll actually make the costume. If you can’t honestly tell yourself that you will get it done, you need to drop sooner rather than later.
Sometimes things just go wrong and you can’t help it. But dropping a week before the con because of a real-life problem is different than dropping a week before because you’re just not feeling the costume any more.
This is not a callout post for anyone in particular, but something does need to be said because the SoCal cosplay scene is so group cosplay focused. My last convention involved three different groups – including one that I ran – and the number of people who waited until the last minute to drop things in all three made me think that most people probably don’t realize that dropping a group is not like dropping a solo project. Other people’s time, money, and convention plans are on the line as well.
The tradeoff for enjoying the benefits of a coordinated group is that you have to think about your other group members as well. Please think carefully when signing up for group cosplays.
Message me (1) thing you want to know about me.
Hi! I was wondering where you got your Rachel Duncan wig :)
It’s an Arda Imladris in Pale Blonde, which I cut short (since the Imladris is a heckuva lot longer than actually needed). I picked up some wefts to add to the back for her little weird undercut thing, but I didn’t end up using them. (I definitely think the back needs more work, and it kind of needs some wig love in general, but I’ll get around to it eventually.)
After the huge success of last year’s Marvel cosplay photo event, our own resident cosplay expert, Judy Stephens, attended Katsucon this past weekend for a 10th Anniversary Marvel Comics Civil War Themed Event! The photo shoot gathered over 50 cosplayers and costumers in a wide-range of Marvel characters, including Captain America, Ultron, Spider-Gwen and more.
Head over to Marvel.com for all the photos from Katsucon!
Iron Bull: facebook.com/wardencosplay Dorian: facebook.com/thaumaturgecosplay Inquisitor: facebook.com/DoctorShenanigans Sera: www.facebook.com/LallyCosplay Leliana: facebook.com/ladykillercosplay Krem: http://tobie1kenobi.tumblr.com/ Cole: http://myrddin-emrys.tumblr.com/

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Photographer Leliana Morrigan
One more from this set, ‘cause why not.
Photo: @redushab / Morrigan: @transformationsequence
I finally feel really, solidly awesome about makeup for Morrigan, after almost a year of messing around with different shades, lip options, contacts, ways to do the eyes, etc etc etc.
The best part, do you know what lipstick I ended up with? Dominatrix by Lorac.
Yep. Seems about right.
You look like how Morrigan would if she were real. You rocked that cosplay and the costume was done perfectly.
I don’t even know what to say, this was so touching. And it was something that really brightened a week that started out pretty gloomy. So, in as emphatic a way as I can via text, thank you! Thank you! A zillion thank yous!
<3 <3 <3
When your squad rolls up to the Winter Palace like…
Featuring @transformationsequence as Morrigan @pantydragon as Dorian @runlikedavid as Iron Bull and myself as the Inquisitor
“Whatever we were before, we are now the Inquisition.”
Our Inquisition rolled into Katsucon, notably in addition to a balanced party, all of the non-party characters we had are still characters that go out into the field and fight with you depending on choices. And of course we had to hit up the ball in the Halamshiral fancy nutcracker jackets.
The Inquisitior: @capnseamus Morrigan: @transformationsequence Dorian: @pantydragon The Iron Bull: @runlikedavid Cole: @myrddin-emrys Sera: @lallyinthesky Leliana: @ladykillercosplay Krem: @tobie1kenobi Photos: @redushab and @theshatteredsilhouette

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Katsucon appears to have an elf problem. They just get everywhere.
photo / sera / morrigan
Maybe we could get you in a nice dress one day. Silk. No, maybe velvet. Velvet is heavier, better to guard against the cold in Ferelden. Dark red velvet, yes. With gold embroidery. It should be cut low in the front of course, we don't want to hide your features.
photo / leliana / morrigan
You are insane. I would sooner let Alistair dress me.