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NOTE for 2015: Try to include a hand fan somehow, whether in a purse or leg sheath, with as many of the costumes as possible -- Marriott is warm with lots of people wandering around the Pulse area in the evening. There's a limit to how much I'm willing to suffer for my art -- I've been in heavy armor in August, so been there, done that...
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Five outfits for this convention. Going to do more than one post, as each item will get a bit of a breakdown and it's going to be a bit of writing...
1) Shiny (Thursday Night Group) -- I'm the first one on the left. Photo by Ryan Scott Sarver.
i) Mostly new materials for the hat, dress, body suit, sleeves, and adhesive bra. This includes netted, sequined, and specialty netted fabrics, rhinestones (for bra, shoes, and body), faceted beads, green seed beads, glue dots, Aleene's fabric glue, earrings, metal corner fittings, fiber optic fountain and fiber optic barrettes, wig, and makeup
ii) Used/Extant Materials:
an old shirt as the foundation for the dress, elastic from an old friend's supplies for the sleeves, pearls were either from her or my extant supplies, most of the thread, shoes (both the pair I was trying to rhinestone and the pair I ended up wearing at the con), painters tape and posterboard paper scraps (kung fu adventure week supply leftovers), foam board scraps, hot glue (rescued some glue from the neighbor's old greenhouse), and silver sparkly socks (thermal socks my mother gave me), buttons at sleeve cuffs, interfacing scrap
Review:
Mostly comfortable and wearable. Longest part to do was makeup, and I should have used the bindi glue instead of relying on the adhesive the body rhinestones had on them -- sweated half the forehead ones off. Also, one would have thought the fully adhesive-backed bra would stay on securely, but I'm thinking maybe the weight of the rhinestones and beads might have been too much for it, even though I only did the upper half of the cups. Fortunately I'd made big long fluffy sleeves, so I just pulled the side of one of them over the bra, hooked it onto some of the beads and tacked it to the bodice. Not great, but at least I wasn't exposed... *sigh* And because I was running late I didn't have time to try to put setting powder on, so my makeup didn't last as well as I would have liked, and no time to apply nails. We'd gotten stuck in hideous traffic -- from arriving in Atlanta to finally getting into our hotel room was 3 hrs. Oy. So I had about 20 minutes to get dressed...
That aside, all the fiber optics worked, the hat actually worked (fit, design, balance). I'm glad I had a backup plan of my plain white wedges when I figured out I wouldn't have time to finish the other shoes (among other things!). And people really liked the costume. Quite a few pics before I even met up with the rest of the group, and many comments of "Awesome!", plus startling someone out of a conversation -- definitely worth it.
Plans:
The hat will stay pretty much the same. Might be able to use the barrettes for other things as well -- seem like a fun addition for partying... I'm back at kung fu classes and working on getting in even better shape, so I'm re-designing the body and legs of the costume to a more streamlined look, while hopefully still maintaining some of the flowiness. The bra will get worked into a bustier/top -- no more worries there! I have some blue silk I think may be a good addition (dress from a Salvation Army, I think -- been a while), and kids' used shin guards that I want to make into vambraces. I'll be tackling the shoes again, but I might be removing the rhinestones and starting over, because I think I want to try to make them look kind of like boots and/or boots with shin guards. This costume was a beautiful impression of light on water, very floaty, but next iteration will have a little more of a warrior aspect.
I wanted to have more used and/or durable materials in this costume, but didn't work out for this year. The remake will incorporate more used things, plus of course the outfit will be getting a second wear, so I'm happy about that. Very little fabric left over, too. Some I might use in the remake, and some will get used to make fabric flowers (new thing I'm doing for sale, to use up scraps and stuff).
2) Kabuki Batgirl (Friday Night Group). Photo by L.H. Gray.
- 3 wigs (the one I made and forgot at home, and the two I bought at the con to replace it), red and white makeup, setting powder, face barrier stuff (which I think burned my skin), batgirl nail decals and press-on nails, PVC join piece, spray paint, bat netsuke, heavy interfacing, black seambinding
ii) Used/Extant Materials
- Black linen (I buy it whenever I can get a sale price, as I need it for backing tapestries), grey silk (a project that didn't happen), grey linen (scrap), yellow linen (from when I used to make things for SCA), black silk hakama (made years ago for SCA reign of Kai and Genevieve), various belts and cords, girdle (made for an Anglo-Norman theoretical design), short cotton "jubon" (made years ago), Chinese flats, wool socks, black knee-high stockings, sleeping pad, Gorilla tape (used for misc. things around the house), underwear, elastic for gauntlets and shin guards, seam binding (ran out, needed a little more), shaft from snow scraper, old boffer weapon, duco cement, embroidery thread and yarn
Review:
The naginata was made mostly with used/existing materials, except for the black spray paint I used on the PVC shaft and join piece. I chose an exterior rust-proofing enamel because we have some iron outdoor things that need some touch-ups, so I figured this would be the best option. Wouldn't work as a real weapon -- not just because the blade was foam but also because the join between the PVC shaft and the snow scraper shaft wouldn't have held up if used for a real strike -- but it survived the group shoot, which is what it needed to do. And now the scraper shaft can go back to its original purpose :D
Left my wig that I'd made at home, didn't have enough time to put on the nails, decided against the jubon and the girdle because I didn't want to deal with them -- used an extra cord to hold things in place until I could get the obi on. Didn't have time to make the inro.
This was a great costume! Comfortable, looked good, didn't have any real wardrobe issues until late in the evening on the way back to the hotel (obi had started to come undone), and the shin and arm guards were my own design and worked really well.
The first wig I bought at the con I essentially chose because it was red and because I wanted to make sure I had something (crazy amount of people shopping) -- found a better one for Batgirl just as we were ready to be done shopping. This first wig will go with Dark Phoenix costume for 2015, so yay.
I'm happy I had most of the materials I needed already in the house. Also, I used some of the interfacing scrap for other things like part of Shiny's hat, and will likely use it for many other things down the line. Also, it packs pretty small. I'd still like to make the inro, as it would be a shame for that bat netsuke to sit in storage. One of the embroidery yarns that I used for the mons was from my mom's old weaving stuff, and the other was either from Barbara Geoffroy's stash or my Bergental stash. The grey kimono I made shorter so I could have the option of wearing it outside of a costume setting. Think I may need to make a belt to go with it...
Overall, I'm very happy with this one.
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