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Progress work on my jacket for Jade! I drafted the pattern Saturday afternoon, spent Saturday night and most of Sunday dyeing white twill the appropriate shade of dark teal, and then started assembling it yesterday. The front closure on this design is so weird….

Very proud of the dye - it took three rounds and four different colors to finally hit what I wanted, so I think I’m justified in that :T Next up: a million yards of twill bias tape.

help me I am in fabric hellllll

More feathers - I don’t have the energy for a full write-up but basically, for whatever reason, the batch of feathers we got do not want to take up dye. All the tutorials are like ‘just swish them around for a few minutes’, and the two left hand groups in that photos were in the dye baths for a good two hours. The ones on the right I left soaking overnight and then heated up, which finally actually made them more or less the right color and shade.

In sewing, trying to stitch cording in an even geometric pattern across a surface that curves in more than one direction is… basically impossible, really, but you can fudge the sizing some. After a few attempts at laying it out with pins or straight edges, I made a little square of card (actually a business card I had in my wallet, I was in class and going stir-crazy), and started marking out the corners with loops of thread. Tedious, but it works. I have about half the cord down - hopefully I can get the rest done tomorrow. I also turned and ironed the hems of the scalloped underskirts. They still need to be painted, but they’re looking pretty good.

Finally, some fabric porn from my better camera - like I said before, my point and shoot doesn’t really capture the colors (for ex, look at the corset photos), and even the DSLR doesn’t get the full depth of the dupioni in a single shot. But man, is it gorgeous.

Cosplay Progress - fancytier Aradia and West Witch

Yaaaay Aradia’s almost done - just need to make wings and the little gear buttons for the cuffs and garter ends. The beading on the shirt turned out… decently (the flash shine makes it kind of hard to see). Boots were some grey Ugg-knockoffs that were $20 on Amazon - I took out the back seam, poked holes with an exacto knife, and then used one of my tapestry needles to thread the charmeuse ‘ribbon’ through. The soles are painted with red Angelus leather paint, which held up well on the sandals I did for D*C

Meanwhile, in Sakizou land: giant bling, giant hat, giant skirt. Making molds of the rhinestones right now so I can make copies in the colors I need, and then I sketched out the underskirt border on one of my muslin panels to get an idea of the size.

God I have so much to do still fffffff

Cosplay WIP - fancytier Aradia

I really wanted to get all the machine-sewing done today, but I spent like half an hour fighting with my serger and then felt too demoralized to stay up late sewing. But I only really have the hood left to sew, as I got through the rest of the shirt. I ended up tweaking some stuff from the original design, mostly because I put on one cap sleeve and remembered why I don’t wear cap sleeves - wide shoulders and big biceps means they’re a pain to fit. So I used the original shirt pattern sleeves, which are more fluttery, but it work for Aradia, I think.

Also, my beading supplies from Fire Mountain Gems showed up today! I got the jacket ALMOST done, except - I forgot the jacket cuffs needed beads, so instead of having a comfortable oversupply, I am about ten beads short, and will have to order more.

Finally, as proof that I haven’t forgotten about it entirely, the skirt muslin for my Sakizou outfit. It’s like seven yards of fabric, it’s kind of ridiculous.

Black Queen - WIP

The velvet nightmare I’ve mentioned occasionally, but haven’t posted any photos of because GOD is it a pain in the butt to wrestle onto my dressform. At some point (probably once I have photos of the finished product) I’ll write up a post about the inspirations behind this and some of the patterning process. Suffice to say the top portion of the dress took like three tries to draft properly before I got to dealing with the velvet, and the sleeves still aren’t right but I don’t have the energy to make them again from scratch.

I got some lovely red-black silk in the mail from Silk Baron today, but unfortunately failed to get enough to do a full cascade overskirt out of, so I’m playing around with other fabric I have to see what I can come up with.

Cosplay WIP - assorted

A bunch of stuff is now actually looking ‘done’-ish which means… more photos!

All the sewing on the kimono and obi for Duskull is FINISHED. Incidentally, it is really hard to put a dressform in a kimono, particularly one intended for someone slightly smaller than the dressform goes.

The frosting on my space halo (which is a Rustoleum spray-on thing) came out really nicely, which leaves figuring out how exactly I’m attaching it to myself. Probably either a headband or nice sturdy hairpin run through a hole in the middle. I also spent some time cleaning up yesterday’s pile of random plastic bits to… slightly nicer plastic bits? I’ll glue it all together tomorrow, probably. And I sanded and painted the claw decorations for Snorlax - I left them fairly rough on-purpose, because I thought it gave them a more ‘organic’ feel. Not sure my split-rings are big enough, but I can buy some bigger ones.

Last but not least, the whiteboard I’ve been writing down costume notes on - it finally got full enough crossing things off that I went and erased everything that was done, which makes my lists look very tiny.

Cosplay WIP - assorted

Posting so that maybe it will give me a sense of accomplishment instead of a sense of terror? I think the arrival of my Dharma supplies brought with it a wave of ‘oh shit what am I doing’.

Anyway. Kimono top and haori for Snorlax are nearly done - they both need some handstitching and I need to thread the cording and ‘claws’ through the jump rings on the sleeves. The messy pile of plastic bits is me crying inside over these stupid X-Factor belts - I’m really really trying to get Shatterstar’s done to wear to CAPE on Saturday. And first coat of red on my sandals for Matron of Space, which looks… really good, actually.

Cosplay WIP - Garfit (with bonus fabric porn)

I got this komon bolt from Ichiroya for like $50, and there had been a note about about the pattern being divided into different parts, but I didn’t realize until I’d unrolled the whole thing that the pattern had been laid out in distinct pieces, so that the wave pattern would be right-side-up on both the front and the back, with a really smooth transition at the shoulder. So once I noticed that I couldn’t bear to cut it into smaller pieces, so the sleeveless robe for Garfit is the two body pieces with the excess folded up to double as a self-lining. That way I still have the option of making it into an actual kimono in the future.

It’s going to have a dark purple collar, but I’m still waiting on my order from Dharma to ship.

Cosplay WIP - Matron of Space

I started this earlier this month but it hasn’t been photo-worthy. Tunic is mostly done - I still need to hem everything and decide what I want to do with the collar, but I’m pretty pleased. It’s actually the cloak from a ‘grim reaper’ costume my mom made my brother probably ten years ago. Nobody was going to ever wear it again, so I ripped out the seams and restyled it.

And then shoes, which are going to be painted red! The design has some Greek/Roman elements already, so I wanted something like that in the shoes, and found these on sale at Kohl’s.

Paako and Zurako WIP - Block-printing with Dye

I am forever playing around with new dye methods, and the current projects are no exception. This time I decided to fiddle with stamping, which I have only ever done with pre-made stamps, on paper. And I knew the linings weren’t going to show much on these kimono, so it seemed like a good place to fiddle with something that wasn’t going to have 100% precision.

The blocks (which I forgot to take photos of, I’ll add some later) were cut out of Speedball’s Speedy-Cut Easy with an exacto. For the cat, I traced a printed out piece of clip-art, and then the strawberry I just sketched out freehand. The ‘ink’ was thickened dye. For the cat, I painted it on to get a nice thin, even layer, and then the strawberry used some scrap upholstry foam as a makeshift ink pad. Overall, I think the foam worked out better (and it was faster), but I discovered the reason stamps have block handles - trying to ink the strawberry result in dye on my fingers and on the edges of the print block, which led to it slipping out of my hand and misprinting a bunch of times.

My steaming technique still needs some work - the strawberries faded some in the innermost area - but I’m getting better at it!