My cosplay is actually a fan art that was floating around on the Internet around 2012. My roommate loves Iron Man and so I asked her if she wanted to do it with me. She agreed. I tried to make this version of Loki that year but I failed miserably. I did not plan it out properly and came out with another Loki instead. So like a lot of cosplays, I shelved it.
Years passed, I got married to someone in the armed forces. I suffer from extreme PTSD, ADHD and bipolar type two. So I have learned to deal with these things by sewing and cosplaying.
I got told a lot growing up that I could never do anything right. I have a younger brother, who was treated like a prince. I was always told, “why can’t you be more like your little brother?” So I always saw him as Thor in my mind and I was Loki. Trying to get into the spotlight but never being good enough to be the golden child.
Every time a new Thor movie came out, Loki was at a different part of his life and so was i. I self-analyzed who and what I was. Why did I feel this way? How do I move past this? I analyzed what he went through and who he was at that time.
So last year, I sat in my sewing room going through a depression episode, just sobbing. I just could not see where my life was heading. I felt aimless, so lost. What was I doing with my life? All I wanted was to run back home, but I couldn’t because I had chosen the life that I have now. I have never regretted it. The transition has been extremely difficult. Anyone who has married into the armed forces will understand how isolating it can be.
So during this episode, I started to watch the Thor movies. That is when it came to me that I needed to make this Loki finally. I had kept putting it off. Something in my mind just clicked that I needed to make this costume now. That this was the right time to revisit the costume I had failed on so many years before.
I sat down and started to draw out how the costume looked to me and I started to break it down and writing out what I might need to do for it. I wanted that beautiful collar that was in the artwork. I found a butterrick pattern. The pattern was a shirt with a high collar with no seam. After I was comfortable with the start of it, I proceed to take in the pattern. I am extremely tiny, so I always have to take everything in to the extreme. I forget my size at times because I don’t see myself as this petite 5'3 thing in my mind. I am seven feet tall in my mind and a builder who can crush boulders in my hands.
I used muslin to pattern out the whole costume, I highly recommend that everyone always mock-up things they have never made before. It will save a lot of headaches later on. I just drew on the petals for the lower half on to the shirt pattern, measuring out the bottom half of the shirt and using that as the guideline for the bottom of the petal.
I have always loved Loki sleeves. They are literally my favorite part of the whole costume. I could look at them forever. This is basically the only part of the costume I am ashamed of. I skipped patterning out the sleeves with muslin and went straight into using the actual fabric. I took a bunch of scrap material, folded them, sewed them down and started to position them on the sleeves. There are about 300 studs on the sleeves, I planned the layered fabric around the studs. I hand stitched all the gold chain-mail onto the sleeves.
I put zippers into the sleeves since they were going to be skin tight, I knew there had to be a way for me to get it on and off. I eventually just hand-stitched the zippers in because the sleeves were so tiny and thick that I could not get my machine to work with me.
For the details, I found all of them on Amazon. I found a gold chain mail dance club shirt for 20 dollars. The zipper stoppers were a bit harder. Those are what are on Loki’s coat. I spent a long time searching for zipper stoppers, eventually, I found a pretty decent size on Amazon. There are almost 900 zipper stoppers on my Loki that i hand crimped on.
I was having so much fun creating something so personal to me. I was putting all my grief, anger, sadness, loneliness into that one costume.
For the midsection, I started off with a pattern I thought that would work, it didn’t. so I just flipped the design around and re-cut out the pattern and extended the ends to take in when I needed to like the strap at the top of the shoulder. I organized the straps around finding the best way to sew them together. after they were sewn together, I stitched snap buttons on to all the points so it would sit where I wanted it to on my torso. I put more snap buttons on the back by the zipper to finish it off. I hand sewed more chain mail on to it. I used a curved needle for most of the sewing for it. because curved needles are easier to sew with.
The whole costume is interfaced. I will warn people against trying to interfaced 36 pattern pieces in one day. Don’t do it. I literally hurt. It sucked. I had so many chances to turn the ship back around and stop but I did not. Lesson learned. everything but the skirt is interfaced. It is also topped stitched as well. I wear two petticoats under it to give it that extra poof. I wanted a super poofed out figure.
The costume has impacted my life in so many ways. I did not think I could sew something like this. I still battle self-doubt and self-worth quite a bit. It helped me evolve how I create costumes and pattern things out. Anytime I am feeling down and like I can’t do anything right, I have this amazing piece of art that I can go back and look at. I went above and beyond what I had ever done before that point and showed myself what I could achieve. I feel such love for it when I look at it. I can not stress how much this character and costume has boosted my confidence. Now I look at costumes I thought that was too hard for me, and go I can do that. Peoples reaction to it help alot because I don’t realize what I can do at times and again I will downplay myself. their reactions snap me out of that mentality and I m like Oh yeah I made that. I can do that.
Photo : https://www.instagram.com/gnerdcorner/
