I wanted to draw a diagram and talk about them since I finally understand how these suckers work!!
soo.. most of the time my wings are either "half out" or just not out at all!
them being half out is sorta like if you were to do a mediocre stretch. There is only two of them and its mostly comfy not the COMFIEST. they still feel contained, like in a box but they are still manageable!! there is also only two of them, they are a light yellow (like a baby duck!) and they are way way smaller compared to my actual wings
when they are not out at all there is just a phantom feeling of them being there. kinda like the limb is supposed to be there but just isnt. they are also VERY contained feeling. like if you were to try and squish yourself into a box thats just barely big enough. like that but with wings!! theres also tattoos of wings that appear on my back? for some reason? I dunno my brain saw it in some fanart I think and snagged it?
and then when they are fully out!! there is 6 wings (3 pairs) and they are very shiny and gold colored! they are really big and the biggest wing spans twice the size of my arms! this feels REALLY REALLY freeing but also its kinda annoying to other headmates because being wacked with really big wings hurts apparently :( also! they are bit of alot to manage and take care of so I don't really take them out!!
I hope you enjoyed this little yap :D!! I will reply to asks tomorrow I just wanted to talk about my wings :D!!
As predicted, this is a day late, but I was off having a lovely cottage on the lake weekend with my friends followed by a Hobo Johnson concert. We're just going to pretend this is on time.
So thank you to @roomwithanopenfire @thewholelemon @blackberrysummerblog @tender-ministrations @artsyunderstudy
@emeryhall and @ic3-que3n for tagging me in your S-allerated Sunday posts!
As promised, today is the final outfit reveal for my Simon-inspired Ren Faire wings!
Wings closed, front and back:
Wings open, front and back:
I didn't get to make any of my other adjustments (like stronger magnets), but I did discover that the magnets are adjustable, meaning I can loosen or tighten the screws they're on to make the wings sit a little higher/lower and ensure the wings aren't tilted. I made them as tight as possible (so they sat as high as possible) and tbh I had no issues with them?? Was this the fix I needed all along?
When we arrived at the fairgrounds, I put the wings on, and as I tightened the straps the rivet popped off the left strap. I thought "Did I just do all this work to break them at the last minute and not be able to wear them?" Yet I was oddly calm, resigned to my fate. I asked Kat to see if she could jerry-rig it just in case. She slipped the disconnected top strap through the adjuster-thingy and... it worked??? We are unsure why this was so successful, but I had NO problems with it all day.
I got lots of comments, complements, and a few picture/video demonstration requests, validating my own belief that the wings are cool as shit. The LARPers were especially impressed. And becuase the fair was expanded this year, including more open space and less crowded walkways, I was even able to walk around with them open for a bit! And I didn't knock anything over inside the booths, either!
I also got my first trinkets from trinket-traders because they liked my wings!
I did not come prepared with my own trinkets as I have never been cool before, so I'm workshopping some ideas for next year, including: polished rocks (dragon horde shinies), painted bottle caps (perhaps with a dragony logo on each one?), sea glass (does require effort of going out and finding the sea glass...), scales (not sure what they'd be made of, though. 3D printed and painted? acrylic? gotta be a simpler solution...). Suggestions welcome.
Bonus: As we watached the joust, I of course started to build a Snowbaz Ren Faire AU based around the semi-scripted joust performances we have each year. I doubt I'll ever write it, but it's fun to think about!
I would like to thank Kat for being my Ladie's Maid every year and helping me get into my corset and, now, wings. Also for driving. I would also like to thank Dropout's D20: A Starstruck Odyssey and Netflix's Dead Boy Detectives for being my companions throughout this project. And of course, thank you to all of my Simon Snow friends for the enthusiasm and encouragement along the way!
Thank you to @mooncello @monbons @thewholelemon @roomwithanopenfire and @theimpossibledemon for tagging me today! This is more like a "WIP is complete" celebratory post because nothing is actually in progress anymore now that SSCoNE 2024 is over! I debuted my wings at our tea party at The Bookworm!
Overall, it went well and I still love them, but boy do I have a new appreciation for poor Simon. Even with them closed, I spent so much time walking sideways to not run into the bookshelves or people, and they open and close themselves if I lean too far one way or if the wind blows strong enough (which, as it turns out, is not particularly strong). People could only sit so close to me without the wings getting in the way. If I could operate them like an appendage, maybe it would take away a little bit of the struggle that manual operation causes, but there's really no way to get around the fact that I'm just wider than I'm used to, and in the back where I can't even see it!
I seem to have only taken one picture with them closed, and I’m behind a car picture frame (done by the amazing @technetiumai), so oops on that. But it’s a cute picture!
Future Improvements Wishlist:
Holding open position: The wings are held open by a magnet that attaches to a screw. I want to see if I can find a stronger magnet to keep them from closing on their own.
Holding closed position: I'm not sure what to do about them opening when I lean, though. There's nothing really holding them closed the way the magnet holds them open.
Easy-open mechanism: I would love to be able to open them a little more smoothly. As it is, I struggle a bit to push on the bottom joints at the same time with enough strength to open them both. If I stretch my arms first, it goes a little better, but it's just kind of an awkward angle. I've seen other wings that have strings you pull to open them, but because of how these are structured, that won't work, and I'm not sure what kind of mechanism would work.
A better way to keep the spikes on top and bottom fleshed out and not looking flat/empty. I used little pieces of the same garden wire that I put inside the finger channels, but nothing is really keeping them in position, so they fall out after a little while. Maybe I can just sew a little patch of fabric underneath them so that they're sitting in a little closed pocket?
Before that, I will be making a completely new cover to go with my ren faire outfit! I have about one month to get this done, and I refuse to dye fabric this time around.
Tags below the cut!
@shrekgogurt @onepintobean @bookish-bogwitch @martsonmars @artsyunderstudy @facewithoutheart @cutestkilla @emeryhall @fatalfangirl @ic3-que3n @ileadacharmedlife @moodandmist @palimpsessed @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @skeedelvee and... Rainbow???? @rainbowrowell I just want to show off my wings 🙈
Thank you to @blackberrysummerblog @ileadacharmedlife and @monbons for the tags today, and to pretty much everyone else I know for tagging me over the last few weeks!
I finally have something to share this week! Actually two somethings, but I guess I'll save the final reveal for Sunday because I can only add 10 pictures (rude).
In my last update, I had purchased and washed the fabric for my Simon-inspired Ren Faire wings. Now, they are COMPLETE!
But to get to that point, I first had to do my absolute least favorite step: cut the fabric.
On the fist set of wings, I cut each of the 4 pieces separately. This time, I folded the fabric so I was cutting 2 at a time. As usual, I still somehow ended up with the wings not quite lining up, even though I cut them together. But whatever, they were close enough.
Next, I added buttonholes where the straps for the backplate come through. I tried very hard to make sure that I put them on the correct sides of each set of wings. Spoiler alert: I did not.
Pictured above: Finished buttonholes on each wing, on of which is on the wrong side of the wing. It's supposed to be on the inside of each wing, but I managed to do it on the outside of one of them. It wasn't really noticable in the end, so it's fiiiiiiine.
The buttonhole seams were also really tight pulled on the fabric too much. They were pretty fragile, and by the time I finished fitting these wing covers over the frames, one of the buttonhole seams had entirely ripped out. There's still a hole there, so it's ultimately fine, just an unfinished buttonhole.
Next, I had to pin and sew each side of the wings together for both wings. Remember how I said they didn't exactly line up, but they were close enough?
Yeah, there was some seam ripping and re-sewing involved. It's hard to see in the bottom right pic, but there are two seams that are... not very close together. Evidence of my misaligned pieces (and honeslty shoddy sewing. Look at that wobbly seam!)
By the time I finished sewing and ripping and resewing, I noticed the edges were unravelling quite a bit, so I took my pinking shears to them to keep it from unravelling too much.
Finally, the wings were together and I could move onto the last step: boning channels. Last time, I traced them directly onto the right side of the fabric with my frixion pens because I could just erase the lines with the iron afterward, buuuuuut they don't work well on this silky material. Then I thought, wait, why don't I just sew around the paper pattern?
Y'all. GAME CHANGER. Why didn't I try this before??? It wasn't perfect. I ended up again needing to seam rip and re-sew, but only a couple of small chunks. Overall, it took far less time to do that than it took to trace it all and then go back and sew it all on the last pair. I will be doing this again (if I ever make yet another pair of wings). (I do not have plans for more wings.) (Yet.)
I fed the same heckin thicc gardening wire through the boning channels and TA-DA! COMPLETE!
They are just as gorgeous as my first pair, and better in a lot of ways, too. I'll post the final full ren faire outfit reveal on Sunday this week! Maybe... I guess I'll be out of town, then at a concert so... it might actually technically be Monday. But it's coming.
Thank you to @shrekgogurt @cccloudsss @thewholelemon @artsyunderstudy @mooncello @roomwithanopenfire and @monbons (from whom I have stolen this Stitch Sunday concept) for tagging me today!
And this Sitch Sunday is a Wing update! Yes, MORE WINGS! (First pair, if you missed them.)
Okay, I know this set won't look fandom related, but I wouldn't be making this second pair of wings if it weren't for the renaissance faire scene in Wayward Son, so technically it is fandom related. Loopholes.
So yes, I am making a second pair of wings, this time to match the renaissance faire outfit I wear every year. The idea to make wings for ren faire actually came before the idea to make Simon's proper red wings for SSCoNE, but SSCoNE came first. And now I've left myself approximately one month to do it. Yay?
The good news is that this time, I WILL NOT NEED TO DYE FABRIC. This will save me infinite (estimated) time. I am also far less picky about the particular texture required for these, which meant that I found sooooo many good options in wonderful colors at my local Joann this time around.
Pictured above - Left: Casa Collections Two Tone Shimmer Satin Blue fabric. Right: Chosen fabric alongside my ren faire top and bodice. Not pictured: My chihuahua in a tote bag inside the shopping cart, hidden by the bodice.
I probably could have gotten away without washing my fabric since it's not a regular clothing item and not likely to be washed. However, our ren faire is so incredibly dusty. I mean you leave with dust coming out of every nook, cranny, and orifice of your body. So it might need a good wash.
These wings take a good 5 yards of fabric, so I had to clean the tub (half-assed) and used my 16 gallon dye pot from the last wings as a washing pot (inside the tub). It was really all more difficult than it needed to be, I think, but it wouldn't be my project otherwise.
Then I hung the fabric from my shower to dry. It has been several hours now and it feels mostly dry. This is good because now I need to shower and the fabric must be moved to a less dripping-wet-friendly location. So far, wings v2 are a success! Let us hope this trend continues.
I know it's late, buuuuuuut tags and hellos to: @bookish-bogwitch @onepintobean @technetiumai @ic3-que3n @martsonmars @facewithoutheart @cutestkilla @emeryhall @fatalfangirl @ileadacharmedlife @moodandmist @palimpsessed @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @skeedelvee @theimpossibledemon
My picture taking game has really taken a dive in this last stretch, so you'll have to bear with me through some bad lighting and angles. In my last post, I talked about how the edges of my pattern pieces frayed significantly, taking most of the seam allowance with it, but I thought it was still savable. I did not get pictures of how bad the pieces looked, unfortuantely, but trust me, it was rough.
I lined them up and sewed them with the smallest seam I thought I could get away with, then used my pinking shears on the edges of the seam to try to prevent further fraying. I was able to attach the front and back of each wing into approximately the right shape, but I was sure that they wouldn't look symmatrical enough either in size or spikes. I was pleasently surprised, then, when I put them on the frame to check and found they still matched pretty well! I did take some pictures at this point, but there's a 10 picture limit on posts, apparently, so I'm leaving them out for more interesting things.
The next step was to trace the pattern for the boning/fingers (like bat wings, ya know?) onto each wing. This made it very clear how much the wings had shrunk because the pattern hung a couple of inches off the edge of the wing on the two lower fingers... But that's ok! I really just needed a guide for the size and angle of the channels. I used my Frixion pens liberally, hoping that I wouldn't ever wear the wings in a cold enough climate to make the marks show up again after I ironed them away (more on this later).
Pictured above: One wing on the wing frame with the traced finger channel lines in dark blue (or maybe it was purple?).
I sewed along those lines. The first wing went swimmingly. While working on the second wing, I realized the fabric on the bottom, a scrunchy gauz (which is the outside of the wing) was getting bunched up in some places on the vertical channel. I checked the first wing, the one that had gone "swimmingly," and sure enough, the bunches existed there, as well. The second wing had to have its stitches picked and resewn a few times while I played around with different techniques. I ultimately decided there was no way to avoid it (and I was getting tired of dealing with it), so I said fuck it and let the bunches exist. Honestly, I don't hate them.
Pictured above: The left and right wing and their bunches. You can see the bunches on the left one are more evenly spaced and almost look intentional. I couldn't replicate that with the right wing, which looks more... organic.
The next step was to sew the two outsides of the wings together to cover the back of the back plate. I was again concerned that I had lost too much fabric to the fray to be able to sew them together, but I again decided to just try it and see how it turned out. I really didn't want to have to dye another strip of fabric to stick inbetween there. And boy am I glad I tested it out because there was totally enough fabric!
Pictured above: Wings on wing frame with back pieces sewed together to hide the back plate! You can see the seam right down the middle.
The final step was to insert some wire into the channels to give them dimension and be able to shape them, but before I did that, I needed to iron-erase the marks I drew on. I find this process very magical, so I took a video for you.
And finally, the last step! I got some thick soft wire meant for gardening and fed it into the finger channels. It has a rubbery texture which of course prevented it from sliding in easily, so it was a long, slow process, but so, so worth it! I also added small pieces of wire to the two top spikes and the two bottom spikes to help fill them out, though I'm not sure they're really going to stay there long term becuase there's nothing but friction from the rubber casing holding them in place.
Pictured above: A length of the green soft gardening wire to be inserted into the finger channels.
Every time I tried to shape the wire before putting the wings on, it would look wrong once the wings were hanging naturally, so I had my husband help me shape them once they were on. And with that, we have the final result!!!
Pictured above: Front and back with wings closed.
Pictured above: Front and back with wings open.
I am SO happy with how they turned out. They have a lot of mistakes, but even so, they look so cool. And Simon's wings are a little fucked up anyway. This is the largest project, both sewing and prop-wise, that I have finished with time to spare before the event AND that has actually fully come together. I don't have to be pinned in. Nothing has to be glued on. I don't have to worry about what angle I'm photographed from to hide unfinished elements. It's just... done. I'm proud of myself for seeing it through, especially when I contemplated giving up so many times (and in the past, I probably would have).
I will of course make one more post with pictures of me with the intended outfit(s)!
Future Enhancements:
The harness is black and the shirt I'm planning to wear is yellow, so it's going to show. If I can manage it, I may try to make some covers for the harness straps as well so they blend in a little better, but we'll see. SSCoNE is less than a week away at this point!
Aside from the harness, my next planned upgrade is Spadey, of course! I'll plan that for SSCoNE 2025.
And now it's time to start designing a second pair for my renaissance faire outfit!
I would like to thank Dimension20's Fantasy High: Sophomore Year, Crown of Candy, and Unsleeping City campaigns as well as Bridgerton seasons 1&2 and good ADHD meds for being my constant companions during this process. This is really the perfect project for binging D20!
Last time, I was in a tizzy because the pattern for the fingers didn't seem to fit the mockup, but it did fit the wing pattern, and the mockup fit the wing pattern, so...????
I still don't know what that's about, but I persisted! The next thing I did was pin down the pattern and trace it with a yellow Frixion pen so that the line would hopefully be visible, but not obvious if it didn't fully go away. Apparently, I didn't take pics of this step. Oops.
Then I pinned along the traced lines to hold the fabric together but also because the lines were a little too hard to see (should've used the pink marker!). See below my pinned nonsense.
Next, I just had to sew along the lines! These are probably some of the best seams I've ever sewn, tbh. I t was hard to see the traced line sometimes, but I took it slow and checked that I was still on track pretty often and it paid off!
I did have a brief period where I couldn't stop thinking about the apple danish sitting behind me. I had fallen into the trap of promising myself I could have it as a reward when I finished sewing all the finger channels, but that just made me obsess over it and start to rush. I could actually feel the anxiety building up as it went on and I realized how much sewing I still had to do.
I've been attributing this kind of behavior to ADHD, but maybe that's just because I only noticed the pattern after I was diagnosed with ADHD. Maybe someone here can tell me if it's an ADHD thing. Anyway, my brain does NOT work that way. Reward must come before or during activity, not after, if I want the work to be done well. So I took a bite of the danish after I finished each line, and that worked out a lot better.
And with that, I have a wing!!!
I had to hold the un-sleeved wing because adding this fabric added enough weight to make them very crooked. The wings are held in closed position via magnets, and this fabric is so heavy that the wing doesn't stay closed! It opens when I lean over!
This means I'm probably going to have to scrap my original idea for the fabric, which was going to be something suede-like for the "lambs ear" touch on the inside and something a little more leather-like for the outside. I'll need something heckin light for these magnets to hold, and that's probably the only downside to this setup so far.
I didn't put wire in the finger channels because I don't have any yet, and I want to figure out what to do about the spike on top because I want it to be black in the final product, like Simon's. But for all intents and purposes, the mockup is done and I am ready to buy fabric and start on the real deal!
