FMA progress, an Inara vest and a Malcolm coat!

So ever since I got this new phone, I've been taking a lot of my progress shots on instagram and posting them on twitter.

Warning: IMAGE HEAVY!

Here's what's been happening:

Let the Countdown Begin

We're in the middle of May and that leaves us a little over two months to get everything completed. *flail*
Now that Goose and I are done with our wedding stuff (yay, we got married in April *little fanfare*) we can finally get started on our costumes. Not a lot of time for five costumes to make, but we'll make do.

I just ordered parts for Zoe (contacts, wig, boots and Mare's Leg pieces) and a Hawaiian shirt for Wash. There are a lot of pieces that we need to build IloMilo and I'm still lacking all the fabric I need for the three Firefly characters.

I don't assume the clothing for Firefly will take very long at all. I've made jumpsuits for my Portal cosplay and both Goose and Madhouse are wearing jumpsuits. Zoe's vest, shrug and pants will probably take me one weekend of good solid work. Probably a week for all of Firefly's base construction, not including the props and details. Both Goose and Madhouse have a lot of patches, or little details hanging around. Then we'll have to construct my gun, holster, bullets, and Goose's harness. That will probably take another week or two.

The things that I'm more worried about are Ilo and Milo since they both are experiments and Goose and I will have to figure out support, framing, and the skin of the mascots. We have designs of what we think will work, but as of now, we only have theories. Ilo & Milo construction will take the better part of a month to complete if we work consistently and efficiently. This is all assuming that our theories and designs work out the way we're projecting them.

With a lot diligence and luck, we'll be able to get everything done by July 26th, but it'll be close. Again, we'll probably be working up until the day. But hopefully not working while at Otakon. Next year, we'll hopefully get started much sooner.

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;;;

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

End of January - Little Progress...

The end of January is quickly approaching and so far, I have made little headway with any of the things I said I would.

My Athena Glory costume has the dress made, but I have not hemmed it at the bottom and I have not painted the pattern on it. The shirt had a second iteration, but this version was also not quite right. I'm giving it another go, but also being extremely slow about it.

For the Sailor tiaras, I'm trying to figure out how to make the edging on the sides of the tiaras. I'm using brass and I have mapped out the shape of the tiaras. The edging is just holding me back. At first I was thinking of making some kind of stamp out of wood since the brass sheets were pretty soft, but it hasn't developed into anything.

As for Super Sailor Pluto's boots, I just need to get around to buying the fabric. I just recently paid off my Christmas present bills. That's just a matter of my cash flow starting to build up again.

So that's that. I have 5 more days in January and I highly doubt I will get a shirt made, a dress hemmed, patterns painted, tiaras stamped/folded/magicked into shape and polished, and boots made. If any progress does go well, I will post an update with photos soon.

My goal right now is to finish my shirt base, get around to hemming the dress, work out the stencils for the painting and getting to the store for some black stretchy fabric. (No, Goose, not for a slinky black dress, ya goof!) As for my previous plan, it all is getting pushed into February. This includes the completion of Athena's uniform, the Pluto boots and figuring out the edging of the tiaras.

I realize that these are more excuses, but I will do better next month.