Month: August 2016

Leaps and bounds

#design, Comic books, Convention, Cosplay, Crafting, Education, Learning, Sewing

The cosplay is coming along swimmingly, at least as far as props and accessories go. I have the grey boots I bought painted with a layer of black (I’ll probably add at least one more layer), then I got the headband for the Magik cosplay made.

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I did it myself, with a little instruction from a friend. The sword is also well underway, with just a little more to go. It’s going to take some geometry and stuff…you know, the stuff you learned in school that you thought you’d never need? Yeah, all that. Maybe if they taught kids these days that it can be used for cosplay, they’d be more interested in math. Forget Common Core–teach Cosplay Core.

My husband’s Shatterstar sword prop is done (finished that last week)… 13654169_1089736687785176_64311181774611607_n

…so now I can finish the sleeves on his costume. After I make my pleather shrug, that is. And the Spandex stuff. Have to do those pieces first, because that’s not stuff I can do by hand as we travel to Dragon Con.

Well, back to it. Can’t take too long of a break or I’ll break my momentum.

Breathing room

Convention, Corsetry, Cosplay, Crafting, Sewing, Stress, Time

Okay, so I finished the corset as much as I can before the boning arrives in the mail. There’s still a lot to do on it, but just getting that much done makes me feel so much better. I’m still working on a mockup of the shrug because I have sausage arms & broad shoulders, so the last thing I want to do is go straight by the pattern only to discover that oops! it doesn’t fit and I’ve wasted a shitton of pleather. So yeah, mockup. Cheap fabric that I accidentally bought a crapton of a while back because my husband & I kindamaybesortareally jacked up the math on how much we would need. Which actually worked out in our favor, because I’ve used that fabric for tons of mockups and it ended up being the perfect color for my Jedi TARDIS cosplay. Still haven’t gotten the size of the back/front of the jacket right (mostly need to make the back/shoulders wider & the sleeve holes too), but I think I have the sleeves worked out. I think.

After the shrug, which really shouldn’t be too bad once I get the sizing worked out, I just have the Spandex stuff to sew. That’s going to be the real challenge, but I’m trying to psych myself up and tell myself I can do it.

My husband keeps “reminding” me of how much work is left to do, which he really doesn’t need to do because OMFG IT’S LESS THAN A MONTH UNTIL DRAGON CON!!! I need to just tell him that the added pressure isn’t helping me at all. I need to be able to breathe and not panic. Panic will not help me.

Just a few more things to sew. Just a few. I have to keep telling myself that. It’s a lot of cutting and pinning and whatnot still, but if I think about all of the steps it’s going to make my con anxiety worse.

There are a couple of things that my husband wants “fixed” on his cosplays from Phoenix Comicon, but those are going to kind of be “if I have time for it before Dragon Con” kinda things. It’s little adjustments/alterations that, in my opinion, can wait. Yeah, it won’t be 100% perfectly the way he wants them, but at least one of them worked well enough for Phoenix Comicon so he can just deal for Dragon Con as far as I’m concerned. Sorry, babe, but I have to focus on the new stuff and try not to add to the pressure. I’ll fix the one part that made him super uncomfortable, though. I’m not going to make him suffer for a whole day of Dragon Con just because I’m trying to stave off the con panic.

He has been a great help, though. He painted my gloves for me last night (they were a dark grey instead of the black that they need to be) and he’s been helping where he can with props and what little fabric-type stuff he can do. I need to have him sew on the buttons for his Shatterstar pants. I haven’t figured out the button foot on my sewing machine, & he figured it out for the Gaara pants, which is the same pattern.

I also need to organize the fuck outta my sewing room. My fabric/scrap stash has grown exponentially since purchasing the fabric we needed for these new cosplays, so I have piles of fabric everywhere. I also kinda have pattern pieces scattered about because I keep forgetting to fold up the pieces I’ve finished with and put them away. My craft room is a total mess. Fabric everywhere. Everywhere. I barely have room on my cutting table to cut out the pieces for the mockup, & they’re fairly small pieces.

In addition, I have my new boots that I need to do some modifying to, mostly stripping the coating off the synthetic leather and then painting them black (the only ones I could get in my size were dark grey instead of black, so yeah, more changes to make).  Maybe I could get my husband to do that part, too? He did pretty well painting the gloves, so the boots theoretically shouldn’t be much different. It would really help me out and take one thing off my long, long list.

Less than one month. The Crunch is squeezing ever tighter, and I am doing my best to remain calm about it.

Crunchy crunchy

Corsetry, Cosplay, Time

Yep, Con Crunch is still on. Less than a month left to go before we leave for Dragon Con. On the plus side? I’m almost done sewing the boning channels for the corset. The negative? I have a shrug, a pair of Spandex pants, & a bodysuit to sew still. And I’ve never sewn with Spandex. Oh yeah, and when my boots come in the mail (I ordered the wrong size at first), I have to paint them black because they were out of my size in the black. So there’s that. Oh! And next Saturday is another propmaking session at our friends’ house (I feel like there aren’t enough thanks in the UNIVERSE to properly express our gratitude for their help and teaching).

I think I can do it, though, if I just buckle down. I’m trying to force myself to get to work and do more than I have been. It’s tedious sewing the channels because I have to pin thin paper to the fabric to allow the pleather to feed through the machine properly, which makes it hard to get even lines (and I end up with wider channels than I intended, meaning I’ll need thicker boning than the pattern calls for).

I think it’ll be easier for the pleather shrug, though, because I’ll be sewing the inside seams of the pleather and I don’t think there will be any outside seams to sew. That should eliminate the need for the paper pinning (I hope).

Enough of the whining for now. Off to the day job for a busy day, then back home for more sewing 🙂

A matter of time…

#design, Celebrity, Comic books, Convention, Corsetry, Cosplay, Interview, Sewing, Time, Work

So I think I got my motivation for cosplay back…the problem is, today I just don’t have much time to work on it.

Today’s a long, early day at work, which means I don’t have the time to sew that I’d like to have. On the plus side, though, I’m back to wanting to sew.

I have an interview with an actress after work today, so I probably won’t get any sewing done then, but hopefully tomorrow morning I can get a little bit done. Now that I figured out the secret to getting the pleather to move through the sewing machine easier, it shouldn’t be too bad to get the rest of it done. Next after the corset is the shrug, which should be easy enough once I get the proportions figured out. Stupid fat arms lol I have to modify the pattern a bit to get my upper arms to fit it. Gonna be a mock-up for sure.

Then on to the really scary part: Spandex! I saved that for last because I knew A- I have never worked with it before (& it’s a bit terrifying to even think about) & B- I know that the two things I have to make with the Spandex can be purchased online easily enough, if it comes down to that. We’ll see. I don’t want to be relying on Amazon Prime to get our last costume pieces here on time, but if that’s what it comes down to then that’s what we’ll do. I can always use the Spandex later, either to improve on what we bought or to make something new.

Life is going to get interesting in the coming months & even the next couple of years, but I think I can handle it. Just have to get to/through Dragon Con and then I’ll have some breathing room. Maybe even time for writing? Who knows.

Almost time to get ready for work!

Missing motivation

Celebrity, Convention, Corsetry, Cosplay, Interview, Work

I should be in the craft room. I should be sewing. There’s less than a month until we leave for Dragon Con and I still have a ton of work to do. So why can’t I make myself go into the sewing room & get cracking?

I guess part of it is that my husband is pressing me to finish. I have this tendency to “rebel” when pushed, and since he is adamant that I keep working on it I’m stubbornly not working on it. Self-destruction at its finest.

This past Saturday, my husband and I went to a friend’s house to work on prop making. It’s going really well, but we had to stop for the day and will be back to it next Saturday. Yesterday, I did a minimal amount of sewing on the corset. I need to finish the boning channels and order the boning, but my procrastinating self just won’t get off her ass and go into the craft room to get to work.

Adding to this is the fact that I have to write interview questions for a phone call I’ll be getting tomorrow evening. I suppose that should take priority, seeing as how the deadline for that is much closer than Dragon Con. I’m glad that the actress (and her “people”–I guess I should thank them, too) was willing to work around my schedule and do an evening interview. I get so frustrated when I can’t take any of the good interviews that Talk Nerdy With Us offers because I’m working all the time. Don’t get me wrong–I need and want the money–but I just miss doing interviews. The email ones are fewer and farther between, and they’re just not the same.

Yeah, I’d better draft up some questions. That’s a good reason to procrastinate on the sewing, and it also will help me get back in the swing of things, interviewingly speaking.