For all my Costume Refs and Tutorials

Just a place where I'm keeping all my Costume/Cosplay related stuffs.

[missfangirll]

I normally don't repost stuff but OMFG

if anyone finds the op on douyin I'm grateful 🙏

[tenya]

fucked up how colors look different depending on what screen you’re looking at them on. that should be illegal I think

[broskepol-deactivated20221009]

this fucking shit, you know

[bogleech]

I spend so much time carefully picking and adjusting the colors in every single drawing I make that I’d probably lose my mind if I didn’t just repeatedly push this out of my memory and pretend it’s not a thing. Why am I reblogging a blank empty post that doesn’t say anything??? Weird

[gaysheep]

good news! you can’t make sure that everyone will see the correct colors on their own device, but you can make sure your monitor is as accurate as possible for printing and sharing by calibrating it! 

there are a bunch of free monitor tests, but here’s an easy one you can use. the passmark and eizo tests are also pretty good, though passmark doesn’t work in your browser. be warned that some tests may cause eye strain.

you can either use the settings built into your monitor itself or use the display color calibration settings in your operating system to adjust the settings until everything looks correct, and then enjoy your accurate colors.

[zeldadiarist]

REBLOG TO SAVE A LIFE

[camerapits]

Photographers, too. Color calibrate your monitors if you intend to print or sell your work. There’s a ton of info out there for this.

[queermaddscientist]

Get yourself a fabric store that will light your fabric on fire for you

No but legit I asked what the fiber content of something was and the guy didn’t know so he cut a chunk off and lit it on fire and felt the ashes and was like. Yeah this is mostly cotton with a lil bit of silk. And that was the moment I knew. This is it. This is the fabric store for me. Also that guy is marriage material. Not for me but damn some person is gonna be so happy with him.

[rawringthroughthetwenties]

Ok but this is actually one of the easiest ways to tell what something is made of! I did a textiles degree and one day as part of a class we all went outside with a pile of scrap fabric and set fire to the little pieces and recorded how they burned. We were given a chart that looked something like this to tell what each fabric was (it gets a little tricky is it’s a mix of fabrics though). Why did we do this? There is very little regulation in the textiles industry so a lot of materials are mislabelled as something they aren’t and sold for more than they should be, also sometimes people buy fabric second hand or discounted which doesn’t have any label at all. If you have a fabric you are having doubts about, cut a tiny piece off and do the burn test and you should know pretty fast what you are dealing with. Anyways your fabric store should be lighting things on fire because this means that they are actually checking what the fabrics are and aren’t trying to pass cheap stuff off as more expensive than it is.

[queermaddscientist]

Ooh! I knew it was a standard test but I hadn’t seen a chart as detailed as this thank you!

[skylanth]

How to Make Quick and Easy Tattoo Sleeves

Got a cosplay idea but the character has lots of arm (or leg) tattoos? Don’t feel like painting on yourself with body paints or hunting down that horrendously expensive temporary tattoo paper? Here’s a quick tutorial for making tattoo sleeves using nylons and sharpie markers! 

Upsides: 

- Supplies are cheap! You may even have many or all the supplies you need right at home.

- Quick and not very messy! No paint is involved, and sharpie marker dries instantly. 

- Easy! Great artistic skill not required.

- They move with your skin! People have legit thought these were real tattoos. From a distance, yes, but I had guys at cons with actual ink on their arms come over to compliment on my full (fake) sleeves. 

- You get to eat pringles! More on that later. 

Downsides:

- They are delicate. Nylons get holes in them super easy and forearms run into stuff, lean against things, and generally make it hard for the sleeves to survive. But if you only need them for a weekend, that’s ok.

- I haven’t experimented too much, but unfortunately this technique probably doesn’t work for wearers with darker skin tones. Sharpie ink is transparent, so any color it rests on just multiplies and the tattoo won’t show up very well. You’ll want to go the fabric paint or body paint route to get the best bold, bright tats. 

- Can’t do white sections, because sharpie ink is transparent and doesn’t come in white. I leave them blank and they read OK, but the white areas will always be pink, tan, brown, etc. unless you dab in a little fabric paint, which will not be covered in this tutorial.

- Sharpie is supposed to be permanent marker, but on skin…it’s not. The ink will most likely wear off onto adjacent clothes. Not that big of a deal for me, as I tend to wear my tats with white shirts that can be bleached, but other shirts may not survive as well.

OK, let’s go! Here are your supplies: 

You’ll need a pair of nylons, scissors, tape, a set of sharpies, your designs printed out on 8.5 x 11 paper, some bracelets, and a can of Pringles. You can use any design you want, of course, but Here is the link to these fine Newt Kaiju tattoo designs. 

If your nylons have an undies part, cut the legs off and wear the undies on your head for the rest of the tutorial, if desired. Put the legs on your arm like so, and cut the toes off so you can slip your hand through. You can cut some of the top of the sleeve off as well, but don’t cut too much because you can’t put it back on if your sleeves are too short. 

Here are my creepy sleeves. Now for the pringles.

Tape your design template to the Pringles can. It doesn’t reach all the way around but eh. The Pringles can gives you a nice stable surface to draw on that is roughly the shape and size of an arm. It’s a little short, so just roll up the rest of the nylon above the workspace and adjust both template and nylon down when you get to working on that part of the sleeve.

Color with the markers! I recommend doing the colored areas first and then doing the black outlines on top of it, to avoid the black ink contaminating the ink pads of the lighter markers. Remember how that always happens to the yellow ones? Eww. Nylons are thin and slide around a bit, so it’s best to use short strokes and dotting to get the ink on.

Take the template off the Pringles tube, flip the paper to the blank side and put it back on again. The paper collects the extra ink, so it’s hard to see any missed spots. Now you can see any bits you may have missed. Fill them in for completion. Also, the paper doesn’t manage to wrap all the way around the Pringles can, so now is the time to free-hand a bit of the design where the template doesn’t reach. For Newt tattoos, that’s the back of the arm. 

When you’re all done coloring, put them on!

There’s a rough end to the tattoo right at the wrist, of course. Disguise where the sleeve ends and your skin begins with some pretty bracelets:

There we are, much better!

Now…you’re done! Have some Pringles! 

[shinierchrystal]

SLAMS THE REBLOG BUTTON

[hollowedskin]

from a tattooist perspective: use the navy sharpie not the black or blue for your lines, they will look like healed black ink.

[hroethvitnir]

This is amazing. Particularly “if your nylons have an undies part, cut the legs off and wear the undies on your head for the rest of the tutorial, if desired.”

[tenkodaddy]

[sew-n-tell]

Repairing holes in knitting

[wastelesscrafts]

Thank you for tagging me! This video’s a good illustration of several techniques I summed up in my post on how to mend holes in knit fabric.

[hanfu-mermay]

絨花 ronghua

👩🏻慕容意的手工

[ziseviolet]

Making DIY Chinese ronghua/絨花 (velvet flower) hairpins for hanfu. More information on ronghua here and here.

[roach-works]

do you ever behold a kind of craft you didn’t even know existed before now and experience a moment of pure unbridled lust

[forevernoon-deactivated20181218]

This is really nice work……..                                                                                via Art LOVER

[thathealeygirl]

THAT’S how you make lace??

[aerylon]

And THIS is why lace was a worn primarily by royalty and aristocracy for so many centuries..  It was expensive and time-consuming to produce.  Wearing it, and wearing LOTS of it was a blatant show of wealth and excessive consumption.  

Mechanically-produced lace wasn’t really a thing until well into the 20th century, but there remains a wide gap between the quality of  mass-produced and hand crafted

[beachgirlnikita]

In general textile arts are highly underated considering the amount of skill and time needed to execute pretty much anything.

[johnthestitcher]

I am always amazed by the  people that do this and somehow keep all those threads from tangling!

[goeswiththeflo]

Just a short video of my card weaving in progress

[silly-jellyghoty]

What kind of sorcery is this?! I can never turn more than 10 cards in sequence because they just refuse to cooperate and you have like, what, 35? 40?! HOW?!?!

[goeswiththeflo]

40 in the tree strap above! The most I ever tried was 44 for this ramshorn strap below - that was tough, but also ok because the groups turned separately? I think my hands would murder me if I tried to go any higher on my backstrap setup though ;) I think the trick is maintaining appropriate tension!

[silly-jellyghoty]

Yeah, that one looks real nice. What did you use it for?

[silly-jellyghoty]

@diamondot speaking for myself, i just decided to learn it one day a few years ago (i had a viking phase ok) and simply started with it. It's surprisingly easy since all the info is available on the net. Honestly, i don't remember where i started since it has been so long ago and now i just browse pinterest for patterns alone. Google tablet weaving or card weaving (same thing, different names) patterns and some basic explanations and yt vids for how to turn and weave the stuff. Things like

S and Z threading are there for a reason, so mind your card orientation. Start with some easy pattern like simple wave or diamonds above, 6 - 10 cards are good for your first project. Don't lose hope in initial stage. Streching and threading all that yarn can take anything between 20 minutes and 3 hours depending on how big is the pattern and how skilled you are. Since you need some lenghts to secure ends and to turn cards, use about 40 cm more than wished lenght of your final product. Secure lose ends after threading through cards so you won't end with a bundled mess. Streching/knotting them to something is one way. Taping each card threads together or using weights (check pictures below) is another way (good only for shorter stuff though). Cards could be made out of anything as long as they have smooth edges and rounded corners. Cardboard, thicker plastic sheet, literal cards cut into squares with holes punched through them, whatever. These are mine 2 decks, minus cards i am using atm.

When you start weaving and pattern looks like a total mess, try turning cards in opposite directions. It usualy solves the problem (all that forward/backward can be a bit tricky and mirroring motions/patterns/card orientation can be confusing at first seemingly messing all your work even though you are doing everything right technicaly, just in opposite order/direction). Don't lose your hope. I still manage to mess up like first 5cm of every other work i start. It's not an issue as that start usualy gets cut off anyway (the tension is not right for at least first 4 rows, aka 1 full card rotation, until all threads go up and down at least once no matter what you do. Don't sweat it). You don't need any fancy startup either. Historicaly, people used to weave like this and this and this:

I just strech the thing between 2 chairs myself. Door knobs work as well and so does staircase railing. Wherever you have some space. Long hair clips are your friend, especialy when you are done with weaving for the day and you don't want stuff to tangle

And that's about it. Have fun 😊

[hlahlahlahlahly]

Some of my favorite tablet weaving resources are :

This website is where I learned, twenty years ago while u was intending on Sturtevant Wi.

These books are both great, Collingwood is more comprehensive, but harder to just pick up and weave from.

Buy Card Weaving 2Rev Ed by Candace Crockett (ISBN: 9780934026611) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligib

Buy The Techniques of Tablet Weaving by Collingwood, Peter (ISBN: 9781626542143) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free deli

[blondejaneblonde]

I love when people post things like this, then say, “ah ha ha, it’s not that complicated! 🤗”

It is complicated. You’re just really good at it!

[silly-jellyghoty]

Hi. I may be late to reply but i'm in a weaving mood so here we are.

The thing is that the technique looks complicated due to the fact that there is 100 something and that number alone is scary. But. Actually several buts.

But number 1 - the technique is OLD. Meaning - while being somewhat tedious just like any other textile craft, it has been used and learned for a long long time and there's plenty of resources (check out links above or any youtube video explaining the process) of varying difficulty from complicated af to easy peasy lemon squeezy with closed eyes

But number 2 - there is only one core principle/step you need to understand and that is when some threads go from up to down or from down to up (aka when they cross), you need another thread going in between so they won't simply snap back again. That's it. That's the basic principle behind every weaving ever. What card weaving does compared to standard weave is that instead of a single thread going up and down in the single row, you get 2 or 3 or 4 or 6 or whatever number of threads your pattern calls for in the same row

But number 3 - the number of rows = number of cards. Simple as that. Cards turn around to make a cord like when you are twisting 2 or 4 or whatever numbers of threads to make a rope. If some of those threads have different colours, you get a repeating pattern.

But number 4 - card orientation or S/Z orientation or whatever other fancy name for the twisting direction simply means that if you turn all your card in the same way at the same time, which one of them will make the twisted rope in this / angle and which one will do that in this \ angle. That's it. That's the whole mystery between S/Z threading.

But number 5 - you can start with as little as 4 cards to make a custom set of shoe laces or a key strap or whatever and call yourself a weaver. Because you did that. And it was nice. And it was easy. You just turn and thread and turn and thread and then you keep repeating this while watching a movie or something. There's no need for the math finals level of concentration here.

But number 5 - no one, literally NO ONE starts with a pattern like this

No. Everybody starts with something like this

Keep it simple, keep it easy, make 10cm and be done if you want to. It's perfectly fine.

But number 6 - you don't need any fancy items for starting. No hooks, no needles, no loom, no anything. If you have 2 balls of yarn in different color or some remains of your old cross stitch project or whatever and some card-like stuff you won't be sad for making holes in it, you are all set. Back side of the sketch pad is good. Poker cards cut to squares are good. A sturdy enough sheet of plastic is also good. You remember that old pexeso pairs stack you didn't touch since you were 9? Guess what!

My point is that if this looks like something you may be interested in, then you can absolutely try doing it for literally zero cost other than your time.

[rugessnome]

when i tried it recently (...I need to look into backstrap setups maybe because the box and dowel inkle loom I muddled together from something online did not, ultimately, allow me to go past about 8-10" of length) I had been watching some of Elewys of Finchingefeld on YouTube, so there's one more resource.

[boigameista]

i dont think i posted these but here i made a little frog pattern to make tiny frog toys with my grandma

this is the first lil guy I made while still learning how i should sew it

[boigameista]

AAA ok so a lot of people have been asking for the pattern to this, tho I’ve been using just these two little papers to do the cut outs lol

i tried my best to translate it into digital so that people get a bit more accurate look at them. Tho bear with me I’ve never done an actual pattern design sheet before!

so basically my hope is that anyone could print these out to any size of their choosing and get the same result, but ive never tried anything larger than approx. 3 inches with these sooo idk if you try it tag me!

the goal is to sew the backs together to the lines at the tip of the head to the middle of the butt. then leaving a space along the belly piece near the butt end and sewing from one side of the butt including all the legs and the “mouth” to the other side with its legs to get back to the butt. if that makes sense

i usually pause sewing up the body once the head is fully sewn together,, usually after ive sewn both arms and ill yank it inside out where ill start sewing on the little poofball eyes so i know theyre in a good place, then resuming the body, and then pulling the whole thing inside out and pushing out the tips of the limbs with a skinny blunt object like a dull pencil until i can see the stitches. if you attempt this piece definitely make sure you stitch up the arm and leg crevices very well!!!!

then just stuff the lad and sew up his back end and its done :)

one suggestion for fabric is always try to use a stretchy soft fleecy fabric with these because its much easier if mistakes are made during sewing and to hold the ROUND shape better

Overall its a very good use of scraps if you’ve accumulated a lot and don’t know what to do with them 👍👍

[eldritchscholar]

So the other night during D&D, I had the sudden thoughts that:

1) Binary files are 1s and 0s

2) Knitting has knit stitches and purl stitches

You could represent binary data in knitting, as a pattern of knits and purls…

You can knit Doom.

However, after crunching some more numbers:

The compressed Doom installer binary is 2.93 MB. Assuming you are using sock weight yarn, with 7 stitches per inch, results in knitted doom being…

3322 square feet

Factoring it out…302 people, each knitting a relatively reasonable 11 square feet, could knit Doom.

[benegesserwitch]

Hi fun fact!!

The idea of a “binary code” was originally developed in the textile industry in pretty much this exact form. Remember punch cards? Probably not! They were a precursor to the floppy disc, and were used to store information in the same sort of binary code that we still use:

Here’s Mary Jackson (c.late 1950s) at a computer. If you look closely in the yellow box, you’ll see a stack of blank punch cards that she will use to store her calculations.

This is what a card might look like once punched. Note that the written numbers on the card are for human reference, and not understood by the computer. 

But what does it have to do with textiles? Almost exactly what OP suggested. Now even though machine knitting is old as balls, I feel that there are few people outside of the industry or craft communities who have ever seen a knitting machine. 

Here’s a flatbed knitting machine (as opposed to a round or tube machine), which honestly looks pretty damn similar to the ones that were first invented in the sixteenth century, and here’s a nice little diagram explaining how it works:

But what if you don’t just want a plain stocking stitch sweater? What if you want a multi-color design, or lace, or the like? You can quite easily add in another color and integrate it into your design, but for, say, a consistent intarsia (two-color repeating pattern), human error is too likely. Plus, it takes too long for a knitter in an industrial setting. This is where the binary comes in!

Here’s an intarsia swatch I made in my knitwear class last year. As you can see, the front of the swatch is the inverse of the back. When knitting this, I put a punch card in the reader,

and as you can see, the holes (or 0′s) told the machine not to knit the ground color (1′s) and the machine was set up in such a way that the second color would come through when the first color was told not to knit.

tl;dr the textiles industry is more important than people give it credit for, and I would suggest using a machine if you were going to try to knit almost 3 megabytes of information.

[darkersolstice]

@we-are-threadmage

[systlin]

Someone port Doom to a blanket

[rolypolywardrobe]

I really love tumblr for this 🙌

[isnerdy-deactivated20190101]

It goes beyond this.  Every computer out there has memory.  The kind of memory you might call RAM.  The earliest kind of memory was magnetic core memory.  It looked like this:

Wires going through magnets.  This is how all of the important early digital computers stored information temporarily.  Each magnetic core could store a single bit - a 0 or a 1.  Here’s a picture of a variation of this, called rope core memory, from one NASA’s Apollo guidance computers:

You may think this looks incredibly handmade, and that’s because it is.  But these are also extreme close-ups.  Here’s the scale of the individual cores:

The only people who had the skills necessary to thread all of these cores precisely enough were textile and garment workers.  Little old ladies would literally thread the wires by hand.

And thanks to them, we were able to land on the moon.  This is also why memory in early computers was so expensive.  It had to be hand-crafted, and took a lot of time.

[dollsahoy]

(little old ladies sewed the space suits, too)

[butts-for-days]

Fun fact: one nickname for it was LOL Memory, for “little old lady memory.”

[costumersupportdept]

I mean let’s also touch on the Jacquard Loom, if you want to get all Textiles In Sciencey. It was officially created in 1801 or 1804 depending on who you ask (although you can see it in proto-form as early as 1725) and used a literal chain of punch cards to tell the loom which warps to raise on hooks before passing the weft through. It replaced the “weaver yelling at Draw Boy” technique, in which the weaver would call to the kid manning the heddles “raise these and these, lower these!” and hope that he got it right. 

With a Jacquard loom instead of painstakingly picking up every little thread by hand to weave in a pattern, which is what folks used to do for brocades in Ye Olde Times, this basically automated that. Essentially all you have to do to weave here is advance the punch cards and throw the shuttle. SO EASY. 

ALSO, it’s not just “little old ladies sewed the first spacesuits,” it’s “the women from the Playtex Corp were the only ones who could sew within the tolerances needed.” Yes, THAT Playtex Corp, the one who makes bras. Bra-makers sent us to the moon. 

And the cool thing with them was that they did it all WITHOUT PINS, WITHOUT SEAM RIPPING and in ONE TRY. You couldn’t use pins or re-sew seams because the spacesuits had to be airtight, so any additional holes in them were NO GOOD. They were also sewing to some STUPID tight tolerances-in our costume shop if you’re within an eighth of an inch of being on the line, you’re usually good. The Playtex ladies were working on tolerances of 1/32nd of an inch. 1/32nd. AND IN 21 LAYERS OF FABRIC. 

The women who made the spacesuits were BADASSES. (and yes, I’ve tried to get Space-X to hire me more than once. They don’t seem interested these days)

[synebluetoo]

This is fascinating. I knew there was a correlation between binary and weaving but this just takes it to a whole nother level. 

[moiraecrochet]

I’m in Venice, Italy several times a year (lucky me!) and last year I went on a private tour of the Luigi Bevilacqua factory. Founded in 1875, they still use their original jacquard looms to hand make velvet. Here are the looms:

Here are the punch cards:

Some of these looms take up to 1600 spools. That is necessary to make their many different patterns.  Here are some patterns:

How many punchcards per pattern?

 This many:

Modern computing owes its very life to textiles - And to women. From antiquity weaving has been the domain of women. Sure, we remember Ada Lovelace and Hedy Lamarr, but while Joseph Marie Jacquard gets all the credit for his loom, the operators and designers were for the most part women.

[the-fibre-stuff]

I’ve seen this cross my dash a few times, but I’ve never watched the video before. Maybe I just didn’t pay attention when I was a kid, but I don’t remember ever seeing just how the Jacquard loom works. I just knew that the punch cards controlled which threads were raised. It’s cool to see the how, not just the what.

[swords-n-spindles]

Don’t hide this in the tags, @drylime :D

[iplaywithstring]

I am never not amused by the overlap of textiles and technology. Also the fact that a huge number of fiber arts people I know are either in tech or math themselves or their partner is (myself included - husband is a programmer).

[theory-ov-everything]

[ivan-fyodorovich-deactivated202]

wow

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I lost it at the fucking chess pieces

[starsandskiees]

This is the only tiktok you'll ever need, I've made about 13 of these and I'm not stopping anytime soon

[starsandskiees]

These are how mine are looking so far😌😌

[sammyscosplay-blog]

Cosplay (and general sewing) life hack- easy pleats with a fork! For all those school girl uniform cosplays and more :) 

[jj-dreamworldz]

Cassandra Pentaghast Breastplate & Backplate  Armour ‘Tutorial’

Hi all, I have had several people ask me about my Cassandra Pentaghast breastplate & backplate armour on both construction and my weathering/painting, so I got some photos together to help explain what I did! (please forgive my terrible writing skills and have lots of pictures instead! XD)

First, I patterned my armour from basic craft foam. You can see (top left pic) I have sewn pieces together down the front (and back) and also added darts to give the armour more shape! I sew foam together on my sewing machine using a wide zig zag stitch – sometimes I will reenforce the seam with hot glue. I fitted the armour over top of my under layers to ensure the armour wouldn’t be too tight (top middle)! Using painters tape, I taped the sides and shoulders openings closed while fitting (these will later be closed with velcro so I can get in and out of the armour). I drew the design on the foam to see where it looked best before I cut out separate pieces (bottom left) to add on top and give the armour depth. These were glued down with hot glue and the ‘rivets’ were added on top (bottom right), I also added some other foam details around the edges of the armour here to. At this point, I sewed in velcro straps on the inside on the sides of the panels and shoulders.

Once I was happy with the shape, fitting and design, I cut a large sheet of worbla big enough to cover the front panel. Then using my heat gun, I slowly worked the worbla over my foam, smoothing it as I went, using my dress form to help with the shape (top pics). The challenge with this was getting it started (take your time) and not to let the worbla stretch too thin (which is why i started with an oversized sheet of worbla)! I left enough worbla over the sides to tuck over (I clipped the worbla on parts with curves before folding it to the inside). I did the same for the back panel as well. Then I added a couple details after using worbla (bottom middle) like the raised neck part (does this have a name?!).

Next it was ready to paint! I primed the armour with white gesso (top left) and then spray painted it with silver for a base coat (top middle). I began to weather the armour in black (lowlights/contrast) using a drybrush technique (bottom pics) which I practiced on several scrap pieces of worbla before I started! 

After the lowlights, I added highlights using the same technique (top left). Then I roughly painted the patterns on the front (top middle) and back, then weathered those as well, giving it a really nice ‘worn out’ look (top right & bottom left). When I was happy with how it all looked I varnished the armour with several -layers! (bottom right)

—

I hope this “mini tutorial” was useful! If you have anything more specific that I didn’t quite cover, please don’t hesitate to send me an ask! Thank you for reading and thanks to everyone who has left lovely comments on my Cassandra cosplay~!  -jj-dreamworldz

[wearewakanda]

Featured cosplayer: theultimatechaser

WΛW | Like : Tweet : Pin : Blog

#WeAreWakanda  

[afro-elf]

you ARE black panther like this isn’t cosplaying this is next level straight up vibranium, my guy

[16syd-deactivated20160717]

Dude. 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾

[blackanimefan]

Glorious.

[notimpossiblejustabitunlikely]

Mraow!

[liliavacyncosplay]

More Sakura shots taken on the way to Fanboy Expo. Thanks to @sigurdvolsung for taking the pics.