I use to have a friend that was a Kingdom Hearts fanatic. She was obsessed with Sora and his friends and it was always her dream to make all of his outfits and to someday get a big group together to play his friends and have outfits that matched his.
I was the designated Kairi for the Western states; the other was in Florida. I was inspired to make a Halloween Town Kairi. I admit, I had ulterior motives in hoping that this would inspire her and others from our group to make costumes and we'd have something for next year.
I didn't really have a lot of time last October to really make a costume. I was busy with Anime Banzai. But I did have in my possession a skirt and top that were given to me for a gift that were perfect for what I wanted to accomplish. I searched through my accessories box and found a lot of gloves and tights and various other decorations to pull this outfit together.
Halloween was over by the time I got it done and the local corn maze was close, but not yet harvested. My photographer and I went out and shot some pictures in the field before it got plowed under.
The hat was the only thing I made. I bought black craft foam and had to make a couple of attempts at drawing the perfect heart shape. I cut out two and trimmed one to be a little smaller and painted it purple with blue and black. I used the mask of Sora's Halloween Town costume as a reference for the face. I used purple ribbon for a trim and glued everything onto a witch hat I found at a crafts store.
All for one and one for all! For Halloween 2011, I had three nephews and my family wanted to do the Musketeers; nephews and their dads. Now, my family and I live where it can get really cold in October if it wanted to. When I first was talking to my sisters about making tunics for their boys, their main concern was how to keep the boys warm. I came up with a solution to sew pieces into the sides and make it more of a big shirt; that way, the boys could wear sweaters and not get cold. They loved the idea, but I then had to figure out a way to make it work.
I made the tunics first and sent them to a friend to get them embroidered. When they got back, I found a shirt and sleeve pattern and altered them to just be strips with sleeves and then I sewed them to the tunics. Voila!
And the boys were so cute as the Musketeers and their dads were looking awesome as "evil" Musketeers.
I love Legend of Zelda; it is my all time favorite video game series. Twilight Princess isn't my all time favorite, but it was a new way to approach the story of what people are already use too. I fell in love with the art of the game. I wanted to Princess Zelda, but I lacked the time and skill. I saw a lot of pictures of people doing Hero Link and I thought about doing that, but I didn't want to be like everybody else. I went back to the game and I saw what Link was wearing while he was in the village and knew that was going to be the costume I was going to do.
The costume itself was fairly simple: a tunic, pants, sashes, an apron and a sleeve. The apron was my first attempt at quilting and I didn't do too badly. I was pleased with how well it turned out and everybody who saw me in it was really amazed. This costume makes me very optimistic about future Zelda projects that I want to do.
Alright. Christmas time! Christmas for 2010 was fun. I decided to take on a huge endeavor and wanted to make a Toothless stuffed animal from Dreamworks "How to Train Your Dragon". I didn't want to go buy a toy from a store, because they were either (1) out of stock or (2) just poor quality and not very cute.
I made my own pattern, but I have moved several times and have seemed to have lost everything. I was so busy in trying to get this gift done in time, I wasn't smart enough to take pictures or scan anything into a computer. Back then, I also didn't have much access to a computer. I remembered to get pictures of the finished product.
The pictures are a bit dark, so I'll give the schematics: in the end, Toothless final measurements were 2 1/2 feet from nose to tail and the wing span was 3 1/2 feet all the way across. There isn't any cross bones on the Toothless' tail, but I wanted to make it specialized for my nephew and he likes pirates. For my first prototype, it didn't turn out too bad and my nephew was two at the time and he loved it anyway.
My older brother is really good with his hands and has built his own wood shop in his garage. He builds side projects whenever he has the time and the products turn out really great. He has an apron that he wears while working that he has had for years and it was starting to look a little worn, so I thought I would make my brother a new one. One day while he was out, I nabbed his apron and made a pattern so I knew what I was working with. I used a canvas like material because its durable and can take a beating. I asked a friend who has a embroidery machine and asked her to embroider his name and shop name onto the apron and pockets. He was excited and pleased with the end result.
My dad was a truck driver and was always on the road. We, his children, decided that we should make a gift that he could take with him and remind him of home. As spur of the moment, we decided to make a quilt using his favorite colors and print our pictures on it. I was in charge of assembling the quilt. I spent hours cutting out squares and debating the best pattern. This was the one I ended up liking the most.
Now, we were told that my dad wasn't going to be home for Christmas, so this project wasn't the top of my list of things to get done. Then out of the blue, and by some Christmas miracle, Dad was coming home. I went from a time of having three extra days after Christmas to a meer 48 hours before Christmas. Luckily for me, I had the patches sewn together and passed it on to my sister-in-law to get the pictures printed onto the white squares. It was then brought back to me to finish and I stayed up all night, the day before Christmas, finishing the quilt. I was tired and groggy and a bit cranky, but it was done and it looked amazing.
So these entries are no longer done in any particular order. I wanted to go by year that I started to actually GET INTO costumes and such, but I just don't have all pictures that I need. So I'm just writing the entries as I go.
This one is on a costume that I did for my nephew. My sister-in-law is really into Harry Potter and Ethan went through a phase where he was too. My first Halloween costume I ever did for him was Harry Potter.
I've never made clothing for children before and I was super apprehensive about this. Excited, because I love my nephews and this was the first time (I think) that my brother and wife requested something from me, but had absolutely NO idea how I was suppose to accomplish this.
Now, my oldest nephew is a little big for his age; meaning he can sometimes be mistaken to be a couple years older than he really is due to his size. I took a wild stab and went out and bought a children's robe pattern and cotton. (My nephew can also be a little rough on his clothes and cotton is easy to wash). I cut out the smallest size and left it a little long, but when I went out to measure it too him, width wise, it was fine (its a robe, they're suppose to be big and loose). But length wise, its was too LONG! By two feet. And here I thought I cut it out precisely to his height.
I didn't get a picture of the robe before I fixed it, but here are a few at the final sizing. Ethan loved it, if you can't tell.
Ethan on Halloween.
Alohomora!
The both of us.
Considering that this was my first child's costume, I didn't do too bad. It was a simple enough pattern. And, it's big enough, so if Ethan or his brother, or his cousins wish to wear it, they can; although, I'm sure I'm going to end up making robes for all of them to wear TOGETHER.
I was going to try to post these works by year they were presented, but I still don't have everything I need, so there will be a lot of year skipping.
Anyway, this entry is about where my sewing and cosplaying skills reach a new level in skill and professionalism.
A little back story about this costume. My group of friends at the time were planning a skit for an up and coming convention. They wanted to perform a modified waltz to "As Long As You're Mine" from Wicked. They had three groups of couples at the time and Colt, the one who was planning the whole thing, wanted to insert the waltz seen in Square Soft's "Final Fantasy VIII". The only problem was that they didn't have a couple to be Squall and Rinoa, the main pair from FF8 and doing the dance without them present would be out of place. The couples they already had were assigned to be characters from other games and had their costumes in the works or almost completed. I happened to be present at the time for this conundrum, and volunteered to be Rinoa if they found someone to play Squall. Luck and fortune was on our side that evening, because after a friend showed up, we asked her and we had our pairing.
Compared to other games made by Square Soft (now Square Enix), past and present, FF8 had to by, by far, the most simple designs and costumes I have seen. Looking back on it, the character costumes were loosely based off the outfits you see in wild west movies; long dusters, leather, cowboy hats. Throw in a sci-fi military academy and you get FF8 with gunblades.
First thing I always do when I'm making a costume, is I look up reference pictures for whatever character I'm doing. I try to find pictures of every angle, pose, and profile. I'm sure my family finds this process quit annoying as I create five different folders and download fifty to one hundred different pictures of one person.
Here are a few reference pictures that were used:
For this costume, I needed:
-light blue fabric
-dark denim
-black tank top and shorts
-white paint
This was my first LARGE costume; as in meaning "lots of fabric for one piece". For her duster, I just went and bought light blue cotton fabric. I did try to find ribbed material, but there was just no luck. I live in a small valley, whose fabric and craft stores appear limited compared to other stores outside our surrounding mountains and the internet just had NO IDEA what I looking for. Plus, I wanted to be able to wash this outfit without fear of shrinking or disfigurement to the costume. The color was the most important thing to me and I got what I was looking for.
Making the duster wasn't difficult. I had patterns that was similar to the costume, but they were TWO different patterns. I want to be a very skilled seamstress, so I "Frankenstein" them. I took the pieces I needed from the patterns and put them together. It took some altering to get them to fit, but I succeeded.
Next came the wings. Every fiber of my being is an anal perfectionist and I didn't want to mess up the wings. I think the main reason I wanted to play this character so bad was because she had wings on her duster and I have a thing for wings. I managed to find a stencil online and copied them onto a stiff piece of poster board.
I had to pin the poster board to the fabric to keep the wings straight and centered. Now, I tried experimenting with a spray paint that has a glossy finish, but the instructions on how to use these things are none too clear and nearly ruined my costume. PANIC ATTACK!! I managed to wash a majority of the paint off, but the ruined wing stain was there. I simply turned the thing inside out and used the other side. I decided to paint by hand after that and the results were much more satisfying.
Sporting my wings:
I used left over scraps of my blue fabric to make her arm sleeves and ran an elastic band to keep them on my arms.
The skirt was probably the most difficult thing I had to make. I don't know why. Its not even a yard of fabric that wraps around my hips. I think the snaps had something to do with it. Mean little buggers if you don't hit them right upon installment. I ended up making three different skirts due to one difficulty or another. I wasn't too happy with the last skirt I ended up keeping for the costume, but I was too angry and too broke to attempt once more. In the end, it looked alright and completed the costume, so I just made a mental note to make a new one after the convention.
Everything else for this costume had to be purchased; shorts, tank top, boots, jewelry and wig. Yes, I had to buy a wig. As you can see in from my blog picture, I am blond and Rinoa has long black hair. Around the time I was making this costume, I had very short hair and there was no miracle on God's green earth that was going to make it long in two weeks. With the aid of my friends who have purchased wigs before, they helped me find one, style it and got it ready in time for our skit!!
Huzzah!!
Here are a few pictures of the finished product:
And here is a video of the performance we all worked so hard for:
Yes, dear follows (few that you are), the blog has changed....again. It has been brought to my attention that nobody really gives a damn about my interests in the world, so I was going to shut this blog down and go on with my life. But my roommates suggested that I change this blog into an online portfolio, because everybody who is anybody that is going into an art major should have a portfolio that shows off their skills. Anybody who is wise, anyway.
So here it is. The new blog, redesigned to help ME get ahead in life. This blog will be about things that I make or have made. Costumes and clothing design, toys and other what-nots that I can't think of right at the moment.
I will also try to post helpful hints on sewing and other projects that I happen to be caught in.
So here we go!
MarDee's Request, Number 1
As I am still in the process in gathering what pictures I do have, just spread out, this first post will be about my very, very, very first design.
Okay, technically, I didn't design this costume, but it was a from a picture of an original character, given to my baby sister as a gift. She approached me and asked me if I could and would make the outfit for her. After studying it for awhile, I pretty much said, "Sure, I'll see what I can do."
So, the things I needed to make this costume were:
-White cotton fabric
-Blue Satin fabric
-Dark Brown fabric dye
I didn't have a pattern in my collection at the time to make this properly for her. I just "shot from the hip" as the saying goes. I went out and purchased full sized white sheet from a department store, took it home, laid it on my living room floor and took a pencil, said a prayer to whatever deity was listening and went to work.
I was smart enough to take my sister's measurements, but seeing how this was my very first costume I made for someone else and not for myself, I ran into a lot of trouble, most of them I can no longer remember. First, I drew the garment to my sister's size, but after I had cut it out, I sized the costume to me. Whoops.
After realizing my mistake, I started over. Made the measurements bigger and longer, seeing where my baby sister is a full head taller than me. But where I messed up so badly the first time, I didn't have enough fabric to make a lining. Back in that time, I didn't believe in lining, so it didn't really matter to me.
For the hood, I free handed it. No pattern, nothing. Just my pencil and the fabric. I used blue satin I had in my scrap collection for the lining in the hood, but that was something she requested specifically and attached it to the shirt.
So, the garment was finished. I went out and bought a large tan vest from the D.I., dyed it, but the color didn't really stay, but seeing how I was making it and paying for it out of my own pocket, she really didn't have room to complain. (I'd be surprised if she noticed.) I also purchased blue leggings and kept my eyes open for brown boots. The moment they went on sale, I told my sister and SHE purchased them.
For a first time for EVERYTHING, the costume didn't turn out so bad. First time designing, first time commission, a lot of firsts that I can't remember.
I don't think my sister ever got a picture of the whole complete outfit, with the belt, book and staff. Live and learn, I guess, so I'm just glad I got a picture of it when I did.
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