Thursday, May 26, 2011

Kaye's awesome and we should all bow to her

Good morning!

Look at the lovely collars, courtesy of Kaye and her wonderful handiwork!

The lines are so nice and crisp!
The costumes are coming together and then Kaye can finally tackle her and Nave's costumes!
Only a couple of months now until Otakon 2011!
How exciting!

sharpies + ribbon...

... equals Kaye sitting and watching Numb3rs. I have about 101 inches to color for Kitaku's collar.

All of the bow bases are done. I just need to add snaps and tack the tails in place/add stiffener to the chest bows, and snaps to the butt bows. All that's left for my part after adding the ribbon borders on to the collars (Kitaku and Lira's left aside from mine. Akira took hers back to the east) are skirts and.. the weird sleeve things. Then resin bits.

THEN I CAN CONCENTRATE ON THE TSUBASA COSTUMES. And Nave's tetris block costume o_O;;;

Friday, May 20, 2011

Progress!

So after my April trip to Kaye and Nave's place, I have been very unproductive. I think it's just being back at home and getting through work.

Yesterday, I dusted off my beautiful machine and got to work finishing my collar for Athena Glory. Over my visit in April, I finished making the shirt base for the summer uniform and hemming the dress, which a ton of help from Goose. He's my pin-man. I don't have any progress shots, as Kaye has beautifully posted in her last entry, but I can tell you it's coming together.

Here's a list of what's left for me.
-Casting Athena's tie gem and making the tie.
-Painting Athena's shirt and dress (Paint scares me, just a little. All that hard work can be undone by a poor brush stroke.)
-Altering the rain boots I got for Athena. (More cutting and painting, then sealing)
-Making Athena's hat (cutting, sewing, fitting, figuring out how to form the foam in the hat, so it sits right.)
-Maybe making Maa-sachou, so I don't have to carry around an oar every time I put on this costume.
-The sleeves, gloves and tiaras for the Sailor Senshi (requires me to go to the craft and hardware store for properly matching thread and brass sheets)
-All of Chihiro Ogino's Bathhouse Attendant uniform from Spirited Away. This is my June/July task.
-All of Kaonashi from Spirited Away. This is another June/July task. The mask, body and props are my task.

Goose's tasks are:
-Athena's Oar
-Sailor Pluto's Garnet Rod
-Kaonashi's Frame

His list is shorter, but it doesn't mean he has less work.

A little over two months left, but I think we can do it!

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Tomoyo's inner kimono in steps.


So I despise using patterns. It's mostly the pinning and cutting part. I ended up making up my own pattern for the inner kimono.. hence the odd placement of the darts to make it lie flat against my body. So here's the progress in pictoral format once I got the pieces cut out:

The two front pieces and the back pieces with the sides and shoulders sewn, and darting.

Flipped inside out

Sleeves pinned on
... beginnings of the collar. I know, it looks funny

And what it looks like now, after strategic darting of the collar. I need to hem, add snaps and sew up the sleeves still, but that took about five hours of work :)







Another update

Pictures are coming soon, I promise. Managed to cut and sew together most of the base of the overrobe. Tomorrow night should be the following, if I'm lucky and motivated enough:

1. alter the bust of the front piece of the dress and sew the front to the rest of the dress.
2. add extended back panels
3. buy a new zipper.
4. add the base for the huge .. sleeve things around the shoulders.
5. hem hem hem hem hem (and see if I can get away with wearing low heels or do I actually have to go with 4" heels for the hem clearance?!)
6. sew the sleeves up on the shirt, and start thinking of adding in the two decorative collars
7. .. make sure that everything fits with the layers?

Good thing reducing the seam allowance from 5/8" to the width of my sewing machine foot gave me the wriggle room to work with, but now I have to make sure that it still will fit, maybe taken in parts of the torso where it may be too long for me. I'm estimating about 2 more days of fairly solid sewing before I'm done with all of the basics. After that, it's the hardware, decorations on the robe and tabards, and the weird knotted rope things that DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE WHAT SO EVER.

Clamp, I love you and all, but man do your costume designs not translate well to real life ;; t-minus 2 months and 23 days until Nave and I are on a plane.

60% of Tomoyo to finish (including wig)
100% of Syaoran
50% left of my portion of the senshi costumes.
100% of Kitaku's Sailor Moon wig

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Tomoyo Update

1. brought home a dust mask so I can start cutting the MDF board that I have for the masters of the head dress.

2. five hours of cutting, pinning, sewing, fitting, re-pinning, and bs-ing a pattern, the inner kimono is about 80% done; I need to hem it, sew up the sleeves and hem them, and add in the two inner collars before adding in the snaps/some way to keep the shirt closed :D