Not dead yet!
Lots has happened since the last post, and lots of posts have been have written and discarded as well. But lets have a little benchmarking post and get up to speed!
I never actually did get around to making a tunic for my Death Eater because I found a jacket I liked with lots of delightful texture and just used that! I ended up wearing my Death Eater to DragonCon 2018 and had a blast.
Hard to menace this adorable of a Harry Potter.
After that, I decided it was time to start playing with EVA foam. So I made some horns. I had so much fun making them, but working with EVA requires some extra safety equipment, especially when you get to painting. I currently live in an apartment that doesn’t have much in the way of outdoor space, so that got to be challenging, but I overcame.
Cutting out pattern pieces.
Starting to take shape. Gluing EVA together is where the magic and shaping happens.
Once glued together, you gotta sand those edges down, it’s quite the process. I still need some practice.
Ridges drawn on but pre-dremeling.
I used my Dremel to cut the ridges into the foam.
Safety first! Sanding foam gets tiny particles of plastic in the air and bigger chunks will fly in your eyes.
Spray booth? Spray booth.
Horns!
Horns!
They were great fun, but when I started to work on a bigger project, the limitations of my workshop (largely the lack of ventilation) became much more apparent and I had to shift away from working with foam.
Then it was time for Halloween. A group of friends and I decided that we should all be Death Eaters with a lone Harry Potter. I ended up making black cloaks for all of us and it was a glorious race to finish them and I ended up breaking my serger. Great fun.
After that, I took on a project for my sister. When she was pregnant with her first daughter, she made her a ruffled quilt. When she got pregnant the second time, she started one for the second child, but since she had a kid, was busy enough she wasn’t able to finish it. So I picked it up to finish it.
It begins. The top layer was a wee bit uneven.
It starts to come together.
Ruffle the first!
Laying out ruffles.
At this point, I think I started to hate ruffles.
Finishing the edge by hand.
Done!
A very different project from my usual, it was still fun. When I passed it off to my niece, she hugged it like a long lost friend. Absolutely adorable.
Next up: duct tape dress form!
I still have to make a stand for it…but I did use it to take a picture of my finished Link apron.
About this time I tried to put pincurls in my hair, failed utterly, and had the frizziest hair of all time. Naturally, I decided I needed to do a Ms Frizzle cosplay for DragonCon 2019.
Cutting out applique layers the hard way.
Apprehensively putting together the first applique.
IT WORKED!
Decided to try using my Cricut to cut out some of the appliques to great success (even though the backing was a little jacked up).
A lovely looking earth that went SO much faster thanks to my Cricut!
Laying out the appliques. I did miss that I wound up having Saturns on the same side of the front of the dress, but oh well!
I used pictures like this to make sure I remembered the layout of the appliques after I picked everything up to transfer them to the ironing board.
After ironing all appliques on, I reinforced with a round of sticking around the edges of everything.
Obligatory full body selfie.
I had so much fun making Ms. Frizzle and learned a ton! For the first time I actually made a mock up and did all the test fitting you’re supposed to do and so everything fit pretty darn well. I will say that the sleeves were a bit tighter on the final version than on the mock up, but that could be due to fabric or the fact that there were several stiff appliques on them. But thanks to doing the mock up, the final construction of the dress took WAY less time than it normally would and I was much more confident in it. It left me lots of time to play with appliques.
The actual applique making process let me learn a lot too. Cutting all the individual layers out by hand was a pain in the ass, so I tried using my Cricut and holy crap that was amazing. I was able to get much better lines and more consistent cutting in a fraction of the time (no, I don’t get a cut for saying that). I don’t even have a Cricut Maker.
All in all, Ms. Frizzle was a success. But I’m not done with her yet.
Up next, I plan to make her planet mobile that she wears on her head in the episode and maybe put some lights in the dress to make the stars light up. I have lots of other cosplay plans, but I’m going to start there and see where things take me.
If you’ve read through this post, I’d love to hear from you. What brought you here? Are you a beginner cosplayer too?
DragonCons and Beyond Not dead yet! Lots has happened since the last post, and lots of posts have been have written and discarded as well.
