6 posts tagged “shirt”

Remaining Tasks
 

• top (90%)
• skirt (80%)??
  
• boots (50%)
• studded accessories (50%)
• prosthetics (20%)
• leg/arm warmers
• wig
• prop

As a result of messing around with my muslin during the pattern making process I ended up designing a pattern for a new skirt entirely. Haha. So after Halloween that's be finished up. :)  This costume is something that I have been giddy about for a long long while. But I really couldn't do it until I had the right person to play the accompanying character because mine is a blip of a side character that really only works in conjunction with the aforementioned. But I found him and convinced him and am now making BOTH costumes (before Saturday no less). GuhguhguhYEAAAA!

I first went about tackling resizing my studded accessories. I bought two overly large studded rubber collars at a Halloween shop, both of which were to large to suit their purpose. I needed one choker and two wrist bands. This was accomplished by a quick snip of my scissors and some sticky back Velcro. All that is left to do with these is to paint them purple. Rock.

Next I went to tackle the skirt, which *seemed* easy enough. But I was soon distracted with visions of an original design so I drafted a pattern for that while it was in my head. Simple, but cute. :) I also, was a complete nub and forgot to include seam allowances so it is TOO SMALL and will have to be redone. I though I could fudge the design a bit and wasted much time trying to accommodate this, but in the end... it will just have to be re-done. Gah! At least I have a surplus of fabric and it is a very simple skirt to make. It would be faster if I had my serger, but alas...... /cry

The top I wanted a little more coverage on so I tweaked the design a little and in the process ended up using my extra spikes from the collar to attach at the bust point where the material gathers for an extra little touch. Still need to do this, but it's all cut out and good to go. My machine, I don't think can handle it. Maybe I will use snaps. Hmmm... Also, since I messed up the seam allowance on the skirt I overcompensated for that on the top making it just a little to big. But not by much.

The last part I worked on was the fur coverings for the boots. Lime green faux fur! I love it! Simple enough process for these. I laid the boot down on the fabric and measured the length and width in the necessary places and got to cutting. It turned out great. :) My only gripe is that the boots I have are white and they, too should be lime green. I have seen them around Hollywood Blvd and will probably just break down and buy a pair for it.

Remaining Tasks
 

• jeans (80%)
  
• suspenders (75%)
  

Finished off the shirt, which leave me to tidy up the jeans and make the back of the suspenders more accurate. Then sometime near the end of this week it's off to the arcade for a DDR shoot. :D Playing Dance Dance *as* a character? XD

The last thing I had to do to the shirt was to paint it. So, much like the creation of my Rei Ayanyaami boots, the water soluble marker and taping off of edges really came in handy. After I had my design drawn on all that was left to do was to tape the edges for a cleaner finish (although this didn't work flawlessly this time it still came out looking great) and fill in my stenciled area.

There was a lot of waiting in between layers because I painted over it twice to ensure the proper opacity and had to wait for it to dry before I removed the tape and moved on to another cluster of taped sections. In the end it proved worth it. Here is a picture of how it is looking right now. I need to take a second to finish off the lower hem, but that will take literally one minute to do. Yay!
Tonight I will be restitching loose edges that I have found as well as adding on a few belt loops and re-attaching my button. If I have time (which I most likely will) I will be finishing off the suspenders, too. I need to nest attend to the finer details of finishing my Bonne Jenet as well as the accessories for the Shadowloo Dolls and Cammy White. Anime Expo is in less than two weeks now! Time to kick this into overdrive!

Oh! And one last thing! Here is a sneak peek at my newly completed Mireille Bouquette.  I didn't bother to blog the process at is was retardly easy and I am already covering shirts/skirts in more substantial blogs. The most difficult part of this was punching holes in the leather; I didn't have a leather punch so it took a bit of time. Other than that no snags or anything out of the ordinary. :)

Remaining Tasks
 

• shirt (75%)
  
• jeans (80%)
  
• suspenders (75%)
  
• wig (?)

So technically I have a wig cut and ready to go at this point already, but it's wavy instead of uber straight, which not only is slightly inaccurate, but is sort of making the bangs a little wonky. Bullocks. This costume was made *in*a*rush* last year right before some drama set in days before Anime Expo. I was never satisfied with it and never able to sport it at the contest last year as I had a press badge thusly making me ineligible. So now I'm fixing what sucks about it and hitting up that contest with full gusto!

The first (and main) thing wrong with the costume is the construction of the shirt. T-shirts are one of the easiest things to make, so I couldn't help but tilt my head a bit at the sagging shoulder line and longish sleeves. A small error on my behalf and a very simple one to correct. I adorned my dress form with the shirt in it's current state and assessed the situation. Looks to me as though the shoulder line needs to be raised about a solid three inches or so. Which, as you can see by the loose fabric around the arm, will create the need for more fabric for the "bell curve" of the sleeve. I decided to do the lower hemming of the shirt itself so I marked it off, cut off the excess fabric, and remade a hem. Easy enough. ;)

Next came the seam ripping to the sleeve itself, which proved a little tricky as I busted my seam ripper while finishing the utility belt for Wendy Watson. Oh well, they're uber cheap and you can usually get them at grocery stores. Anyways, I ended up using my scissors. The thing is, when I made this, I still had my serger (which has since been broken by slobby slobby a ex-room mate piling their shit everywhere and then not taking responsibility for it.  hjksdayeduigh) so the scissors were a little big to tear apart the stitches, but I managed.

I measured out the placement of the new armhole using my dress form's shoulder line as a point of reference. This was far easier than eyeballing it as I had before when I had yet to get my forms. After the lines were marked (as represented by the color burn) I set off to attempt to reattach the sleeves, but sadly they were too small now. I figured they would be. Oh well. I stopped by the Fashion District a few days later and am now ready to finish off the shirt. Yay!

Now all that was left to do was adding on the logo on the front of the shirt. And omfg it is near impossible to find accurate and official images for Alice. It's understandable though, cosplaying A Dance Dance Revolution character is sort of obscure unto itself. /shrug. Since the internet wasn't too useful, I turned to my copy of DDR Max 2. Shhhh... it was for studying! I swear! Anyways after my nice little distraction errr... study session, I sketched out the image that is shown on the front of her shirt and set out to painting it. Once it dries, the shirt will be done and good to go! Next step, cleaning up some faulty pant hems (cause I made her big ass pants from scratch) and adding a button. idk what happened to the last one. :(

Remaining Tasks
 

• Belt Accessories
  
• Weapon (?)

Well would you look at that! Officially there is no more sewing to be done! It's time I trade in my sewing machine in favor of leather dying. I want the leathers to match flawlessly so I will be basing the color for all of the pieces off of my boots. Tonight I pick up the leather dye and get to work! I also need to paint the tips of the weapons so they're not endowed with ultra-cheesy neon tips.

The first thing I wanted to do was to restyle the wig because as I had mentioned in a previous post, after seeing it in pictures, I realized it was a bit messy looking and needed to be re-done. It took hardly any time at all. Most of the time spent on it was in separating the necessary chunks of hair. Wigs don't exactly function the same way that real hair does so when you try to put it in a ponytail the same way it tends to shows the netting underneath. Ewww. This is how I went about making my ponytail (and I must have done something right because my cousin thought it was my real hair. woo hoo!)

1. First I sectioned off the bangs so that they were out of the way. I knew that I wanted the ponytail to be about even with my eyes so I made my section split while keeping that in mind. If the hair was in two sections, it would be easier to conceal both the top and the bottom netting underneath.
   
2. After I had my sections all worked out I clipped the top half out of the way. I would suggest using the clips I have pictured (sorry, I don't know what they are called) instead of using rubber bands. Rubber banding your sections is a sure way to tangle you wig and get frustrated. To have the hair raised as high as I needed it to be without having my real hair poking out underneath, I gathered the hair and left a little excess to leave a natural looking drape without any strain on the netting.
3. Once you have your lower section gathered in place, add in the top section and *carefully* rubber band it. If you pull too tightly it will screw it all up and you will have to start all over again, but if you are too loose with it it will just tumble out so be careful. It make take you a time or two to get it right, but it's really not all that difficult at all. ;)

The only thing left to do at that point was to finish off my hemming and add buttons to both the shirt and the jacket. Both of which were successfully completed. I followed the same rolled hem method as before because I am without both my serger and a hem-rolling pressure foot. Ugh! Do I smell a trip to JoAnn's Fabrics? Why yes I do!

Tonight I am heading off to Tandy Leather Factory to grab some leather and dye, an army  surplus store to stock up of radical-bo-badical utility belt gear, and JoAnn's fabrics (told you so) for various accessories and general supplies that would, quite frankly, make my life just that much easier. Final progress post should be tomorrow!!!

Remaining Tasks
 

• Paint Telescope
• Paint Eye Patch
  
• Hat
• Gloves
• Leg Harness (10%)
  
• Dress (60%)
  
• Shoes (modify)

A few frustrating (but not impossibly so) setbacks with this one.... Let's address last night's dying process, shall we?....

I generally ALWAYS hand dye anything that needs to be dyed. I feel that I have more control over the saturation that way. This time, however, since I was dying the fabric for an entire garment as opposed to a single piece, I opted to "Machine Dye" the fabric to encourage a flawlessly even spread of dye. Sadly, I only had a 1/2 bottle of the purple that I had found so I anticipated having to re-dye it to darken the color. I, foolishly, did *not* consider the possibility of fraying fabric. >_<

Pre-treating your fabric is ALWAYS something that I *said* I should practice, but (for whatever reason) just never really did. I always ended up becoming overly impatient to work on the costume and have it completed to I said bollucks to the pre-treatment phase and on to the construction. SO far it has never been a problem. Although, in my own defense, I don't know to what extent the pre-treatment would have helped in this case seeing as they were cut pattern pieces with no selvage.

Anyways, the end result of last nights dying for Bonne Jenet was a heaping pile of frayed edges tangled together into one smirking failure. Tragic. BUT... I am not yet willing to start afresh and re-cut new fabric for her. I still believe it's workable! We'll see after this second dye job. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." -Benjamin Franklin

ps - This is the completed belt. I never got to post pics in my previous post because I was sans-camera at the time.

Remaining Tasks
 

• Belt Accessories
  
• Shirt (80%)
  
• Jacket
• Piercings
  
• Contacts
  
• Weapon

My poor fingers... :( I have been pinning *so*much* over the past few days that my finger tips are *actually* shiny smooth and extremely sore. I kinda feel like Happy Gilmore's grandma at Arts N Crafts time in the retirement home. "But.... My fingers hurt". Haha! While licking my wounds over B.Jenet's failed dye job I charged straight into making the final product of Wendy's shirt. I seriously under-estimated how long the shirt would take me to make, but no worries. I hope to finish it up tonight. :) On an aside, I think I will get her piercings this weekend. I have been meaning to punch some new holes in my body soon anyways. :) And they are cartilage piercings and small lobe gauges to boot!! Cool!

After a highly productive week of pressing ahead, I think I finally slammed into a recess in my energy. Either that or we are witnessing senility in action. /snicker. I think I must've sewed pieces backwards at least three times. >_< BUT! In the end they all fit how they were supposed to. Phew. I may have to go back and lengthen the darts, but that'll take only a second and will be the last thing that I do to it, so I'm not too concerned about it.

After the pieces were all correctly assembled, I went back and finished off the lower hem of the shirt for a clean finish along with the armholes, but there was a wrinkle in the fabric at one point so I took out the seam on the arm holes and am re-doing that tonight. The only thing left with the shirt after that is too mark the guidelines for the buttons and attach them among a few other minor adjustments. I think I'll be focusing on the jacket after that. :)