SEVEN: Pride's collar.

As promised, an entry about the collar for Pride. When I think of Pride the first thing that comes to mind is having your nose up in the air and looking down on (other) people. So from the start, I had the idea that I wanted some sort of high fancy collar.

Had I gone the route of the tailor suit, I would have made it a very grand collar that sticks up, but I scrapped that and went with a corset and skirt.  So now the question is/was how to do the collar? Well  as I posted last time, Yzma from Disney's Emperors New Groove answered that.

I mean, that is a pretty badass collar it you ask me, and she wears it so well!!  Plus, someday down the road I am thinking of making a Yzma cosplay for myself, so making her collar for Pride doubles as practice right?

First off I needed feathers.  I knew you could but feather trim, I'd seen it on Ebay and the like, but not in my home town.  I found what I wanted on a shopping trip to Bangor, ME with my Mom back in September.

The short feather trim would work for the general shape and filler, but I wanted more drama, so on that same trip I found longer skinny feathers at Joanne's fabrics.

They look like this once they are out of the bag...

First off, testing patterns. I made a basic Mandarin style collar for my first try, and according to my friends it was pretty effective, but I found it was too close to my face, so my ears and hair interfered with the feather trim.

Lookin' good.... but needs more DRAMA!

Looks soooo good with my t-shirt and hooded shirt combo.

 That brown part is the paper pattern, not my neck.  But you can see what I mean about my hair getting tangled up in the feathers.

Measure twice, cut once.  Seeing how much trim I would need to go around the first collar.

So I ended up taking the first collar and slicing into the paper pattern and adding to it to get a wider top. It's a similar technique I used to make Maleficent's collar in 2012.  The result, more drama, but farther away from my actual head so my hair doesn't get tangled in it anymore.

I pinned the feather trim into place on a piece of horsehair canvas (couldn't find my light weight buckram.) And then staggered the longer loose feathers in. I got them pretty evenly spaced by slipping them in behind the pins holding the trim on, and then in the back added a couple extra between them, because why not?

The result looked like this, you can see the ends of the longer feathers poking out there.  Once the trim was on and I was ready to sew on the outer fabric, I clipped those off, I thought they might be pokey/itchy and then trimmed down my seam allowances.

After the feather ends were clipped and my seam allowances were trimmed, I pinned my purple fabric into place, and then the black taffeta which will be the inside.  I then top stitched them down/together and once that was done did the same for the bottom curve.

 I ended up not liking the top stitched look so I hand tacked some decorative trim over them to finish my edges. Then put in a button hole and button to close it up.

The finished collar looks like this.

Hooray! 

I've got the corset all cut out, but realized too late I do not have enough boning to bone all of it, so while I wait for that to arrive from Toronto sometime next week, I figured I work on the collar and bustle.

On to the bustle!!

I got featured in The Art Projects Feature Friday this week!  Go take a look!

Progress shots of the collar for my pride costume coming soon!!

SEVEN: Pride

I got  asked to take part in a group show this summer, but things have been hectic so I've only gotten a chance to start my piece now!  The show is called SEVEN and opens December 10th.

Each designer was given a choice of one of the Seven Deadly Signs, and I chose Pride. I originally wanted Sloth, but it was taken already.  But I am pretty happy with Pride now. A surface designer by the name of Dee Wilkie would make us each hand dyed silk in the colour corresponding to the sin.  Pride is Purple. I love purple.


One of those awesome oops moments happened when she was working on my silk, her dye pot was not big enough for the 5 meters she needed to make me, which ended up making my silk not solid, but having this awesome shattered look to it.

I like it even better this way.  I will be using black accents to break it up a bit, because that is a lot of pattern and texture.
When if first thought of what I might do I was thinking of a 1940's womens suit and skirt, but I wasn't sure how well silk would tailor and how much of a nightmare that might end up being, so I simplified my design and found inspiration in an unlikely place (though actually pretty likely for me):


Anastasia and Drusilla for Disney's Cinderella!

I'm going for a more 1880-1890's version of their dresses, but the idea is there.

Since I am running short on time, I am making this to fit myself and not a model, which means I was able to modify some of my previous patterns. Which is the entire reason I keep all my patterns lying around.
The skirt is actually the pattern I used to make my grad piece (MidKnight) back in 2012, only I made it the same length all the way around instead.

 

The petticoat is also from the same pattern but instead of just a bustle and the ruffle at the bottom, I've added a full crinoline bustle to it.  I know no one will see it, but I just had to use tulle in the same colours of the fabric Dee made. Why? Because I love hidden surprises.

The skirt and petticoat before I sewed them together.

Same skirt, now with a proper hem, bustle pinned in and crinoline properly poofed out.

 Next on the agenda:  Cutting out the corset fabric, feathered collar and  over skirt bustle.  What will the collar look like?  Well time for another Disney character to inspire me:

It wont be this extreme, and the colours will be reversed... but again, the idea is there.

And now I must go cut out a corset!

Here are some of the official photos from our photo shoot with  the awesome and amazing HM Cosplay Photography!

Red like roses.

Photo by: Dominique Piercy

Here is my client in his Ruby Rose costume!

I guess I should post pictures of the belt...

Add caption

Wow, I really, really neglected this!  I posted a ton of my progress work over on my Facebook group, between commissions when I had time, but not here.  Sorry about that.

So one of the costumes I worked on for Animaritme this year was updating the Steampunk outfit I made last year for fun to go with some goggles I bought at Anime North (Pictured below).

 This year I was part of a group of Historical/ Steampunk themed Avengers, and I was Captain America (because Cap is the best Avenger).
 

Last year it was vaguely Captain America themed, this year I took it up a notch and based the look from Captain America: The first Avenger.  Which meant the star, the boots, the gloves, the gun and the belts.

I based my belt off random screen caps of Cap, one of which I later realized was actually his Winter Soldier costume, but it was the back, and it looked neat.

This was my first attempt at making a functional belt.  I used my brain and screen caps to figure it out. It is made from two colours of brown vinyl, rivets and some paint.

My bustle holds it up nicely.

I made the buckle less bulky and more feminine to go with my costume (and my size).  The pouches were what  Ned Flanders would call "a honeydew of a melon scratcher" because I had never done anything like that before.  Luckily, I made these around the time I was making the under vest for the member of the 501st (Star Wars cosplayers), which inspired me to go looking for tutorials on how to make their pouches which were really similar looking.

Mine appear big, because I made them to carry my wallet, camera and DS, so I wouldn't have to carry around my purse while in costume

I made the holster after googling images of  "leather gun holsters" and pieced my pattern together from those.  What I did before Google image search, I do not know. It is my greatest resource.

  And here is my gun (which I had posted pictures of before) all painted up and ready to go.

We had the luck of accidentally getting pulled into a Marvel Photoshoot by  Dylan of SpoilersPhotography while we waited for our official group photoshoot to start (I'l post those as soon as I get them), so for once I actually have some decent pictures to show of my costume!

 

Shield paint job thanks to Billy Peterson

And here is the four of us!  Two costume contest winners in our group this year!  I won second place and Laura (our Rogue) won third!

Ruby Rose (male version) belt RWBY

In return for painting my Sheild to look battle damaged as it appears on the Captain America: The First Avenger DVD, my client/friend Billy asked me to make the rose for his Ruby cosplay.  

He would supply the Rose detail and the bullets, the rest was up to me.

Thankfully, with a bit of adjusting for the length the belt I had already made for my Cap costume worked for him too! It is made of black Vinyl and held together with Rivets.

The spare ammo-clip pouch is made from silver vinyl and can hold a 3DS or a guys wallet.

My client/friend used Nerf darts painted silver for  Crescent Roses (Ruby's scythe/high impact sniper rife) bullets.  I had none on hand but did have a small screw driver who's handle was the same circumference of a Nerf dart, so I used that for the spacing/sizing of the bullet loop-things, and then sewed them down.

Things kinda got away on me there.

Whoops!

Things kinda got away on me there.  I had a couple of commissions to do, (and my own costume) before the local Anime convention happened at the end of June and then I was on Vacation.

So I guess I should get my butt back in gear and update this!

I'll post pictures of the stuff I made for my Star Butterfly from Star vs the Forces of Evil first I guess!
I saw the adds for this series on Disney XD and can say I was pretty excited for its premiere and I was not disappointed. This show is awesome.  If you haven't watched it: GO WATCH IT. RIGHT NOW.

Star, like Mabel on Gravity falls, changes her outfit on a regular basis, so you could probably do a group cosplay with several people dressed as Star, and not one outfit would be the same. I chose this one, because I liked the design and could actually wear it outside a convention as normal clothes if I wanted and not get stared at too much.

Star Butterfly, a magical princess from another dimension.

Anyway, while not many people knew who I was, I didn't care. I love the show and the character of Star, so I was happy.  Plus the costume was fun to make.

I used a Burda pattern for the dress and just changed the front from a solid green panel to the striped one.  Sadly I seem to have lost the photo I took of the full dress, so all I have are the teasers I took for updating my facebook page.

I made the bear patch out of white Minkey (or chenille) and embroidered the face myself.

I  seem to have this thing where I choose costumes with accessories I cannot find except around Halloween. I ran into this problem with Stars Devil head band, so I bought a red headband at Claires and made some Devil horns out of red Liquid Metal fabric.  I'll probably either re-make these later or will buy an actual Devil headband around Halloween this year.
The wig was a test, for a future cosplay set (more about that later)  it was 16$ on ebay and it is  good quality/heat resistant but it tangles like mad!  Which may have been due to the star shaped buttons on the back of my dress... I'm gonna comb it out and treat it with de-tangler serum and see if that fixes its tangle problem.

I bought the boots on eBay, and figured that paint would probably just rub off, so the bunnies on her shoes I did with white Duct tape, this way I can (hopefully) reuse them for another costume down the road.

The big part of her costume is her wand.  This is a digital rendering I found somewhere via Google Image.

I ended up making mine from a noise maker, a ball ( which was hollow like a Christmas tree ball) from a kids light up toy, some gemstone hearts, worbla and wonderflex.  I got the shapes of the wings, butterfluy and star by printing off pictures of the wand in the right size, and cutting them out to use as templates ( Like I did that with the hand on my Dipper Journal #3).

My boyfriend generously offered to cut the noise maker (the yellow shaft)  down to the size and then cut off part of the ball to give one side the flattened shape that I wanted for the face of it with a scalpel and a butane torch.

After sanding and painting with gesso, and sanding and painting gesso many times, I finally got rid of the rough texture of the worbla and after blocking off the parts that were not purple with tape, I spray painted it with Krylon "gumdrop" spray paint which I got at Walmart.

Once the tape was off I was able to start going in and painting the details. I used Acrylic craft paints for the white and yellow parts, but used paint pens (which I lad been grumbling should be a thing and then I went to Michael's and low and behold there were a thing!) for the blue parts.  Paint pens are made of the same stuff spray paint is and can be cleaned up with nail polish remover.

And here is the finished wand!

Next up the belt I made for the RWBY costume, hopefully a picture of the finished Star dress and what is next on my plate!