Anime Expo in a Month!!!

As usual, real life reared its ugly head these past few months. Since I started grad school, I was extremely busy with papers, readings, and presentations. Only these past two weeks have I been able to make everything in lightning speed.

Picture heavy post below the cut.

Progress for PAX East 2013

Goose and I are attending PAX East this year and one of our friends had asked if I would put together some Jedi Robes for him, specifically Obi-wan Kenobi from Episode 2. I said that I would make them for him as a belated Christmas gift.

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c5/Obiwan1.jpg

Picture Heavy Post after the break

Last Minute Progress

Here's a quick list. I'll post pictures when I get a moment to breathe.

Kaylee's jumpsuit, pouch and belt are all complete and distressed.
Wash's jumpsuit just needs to have the patches, pocket and shoulder details hand-stitched on.
Wash's harness needs to have one more area stitched, then all of his details glued on.
Zoe's vest and pants are all done. All the pleather pieces are darkened and weathered, but I need more snaps for the shrug and to attach it to the vest. The holster is mostly complete, it just needs the parts where the gun holds on.
Zoe's gun needs one or two more coats of paint and all of the bullets are painted and drying.

18 hours until Goose, Madhouse and I are on the road. Still need to shop for supplies, do the laundry, make the apartment ready for the weekend for our fur-babies, and pack!
Running on less than 5 hours of sleep today, but it's all worth it in the end.
Can't wait for Otakon!

Massive Productive Weekend!

This past weekend was the only full weekend that Goose and I had for cosplay, so we made the most of it by working from 8 am to 10:30 pm on Saturday and 7 am to 10:45 pm on Sunday. Here's what we did!

(Warning! Image heavy post after the jump!)

Never Enough Time!

Once again, Goose and I are hurrying to the finish, despite goals of starting and ending sooner. I love reading the Otakon and cosplay.com boards, but since everyone is counting down to Otakon, it makes it hard to read. Just reminds me of my crunchy deadline.

This past weekend, I have finished the base for my Zoe capris. They still need to be fitted, hemmed and the details of the boot cuffs added. Goose has finished the frames for Ilo/Milo and the foam has been cut to size. They just need to be shaped and the pockets for the fabric made to fit in the foam. After that it's stamping the Ilo/Milo fabric, making the face, arms and legs, and Goose finishing the support system. I started working on Goose's Wash jumpsuit and have finished most of the torso base. I need to sew on one more sleeve, sew the pants, attach the pants and put in all the zippers. Goose is working on the patches for Wash (which is proving difficult without a proper drawing software).

What's left to be done: (Because I love lists...)
Firefly
Zoe
-Capri Details and fitting - Akira
-Vest (pleather for the vest, shrug and holster should arrive this week) - Akira
-Shrug - Akira
-Holster - Akira
-Mare's Leg - Goose
-Knife - Goose
-Darkening and distressing leather - Akira

Wash
-Jumpsuit - Akira
-Harness - Akira
-Patches - Goose

Kaylee
-Dye the fabric for the jumpsuit - Akira
-Jumpsuit - Akira
-Teddy bear patch (furry fabric should arrive this week) - Akira
-Details - Akira

IloMilo
Ilo and Milo
-Finishing securing the frame and supports - Goose
-Shape the foam - Akira
-Make the pockets for foam - Akira
-Sew together the skin - Akira
-Attach the skin to the frame - Akira
-Hands and Feet - Akira
-Face - Akira

If I'm really diligent, I'm sure I can get most of the sewing for Firefly done this week, depending on when my shipment of pleather arrives. And Goose has really been stepping it up for the mascots. I think we can get it done if we work really hard every day until the day we leave for Otakon. (*knock on wood*)
I'll post construction pictures if I remember to take them in the blur of the next few weeks.
Wish us luck!

More Progress

Since this weekend was a long weekend, Goose and I were extremely productive. After I finished cutting out the squares from the last post, I stitched together the panels for the four sides of Ilo and Milo.

(Picture heavy post after the jump. But all the stuff I've posted to Instagram.)

FABRIC (aka how my kitchen table looks right now)

Going to be a huge loser and buy/return a sewing machine. all of the red fabric is already cut & prepped as desired...cut freehand without pins. aslkdhdgshdfj. Need to do something about the Fire Nation emblem on Azula's top, too. Probably just going to do a winging-it-all run at Michael's & Joann's tomorrow.

Trimmed down the green t-shirt to mod, sliced open the shoulders along the seams, and am probably going to be hemming eyelets FOREVER to thread ribbon, like I did for these shorts for a music festival last month:



...except about 5x the number of eyelets... sigh. (whipstitching the slits I cut into that denim was also annoying, but I didn't trust a sewing machine to be as meticulous as I wanted to be. I'm also just getting my feet wet again...let's face it, I'm still a giant sewing noob and don't trust sewing machines for anything but hems & straight seams for now x_x)

speaking of which, here's the first t-shirt mod I did, last month:



9 days!!

update

Lots of progress today, even after waking up to go to work early :)

I finalized the pattern, cut and sewed the last of the overrobe piece out. I'll post the picture of the insane number of pins I used to keep everything together. I had to sew in psuedo guidelines so I can keep my beading straight, mostly so I know where the real edge of the seam is; so the guide is less than an 1/8" in from the seam, and then the line for the beading is about another half an inch in.

Currently beading the first line of the bottom accent (two lines of beading for both the top and the bottom accents). I need to figure out how this is going to stay attached to the rest of the robe, pattern the embroidery for that and .. keep beading. I'm using size 1 bugle beads in gold that I got in bulk from the NY trip. Just putting it out there right now, it took me the better part of an episode of Numb3rs to get maybe a foot of beading done.

Also, the tabards have lining pinned on and the actual size I want traced on to the lining with fabric markers. I still need to do two more embroidery pieces, interface and iron on the designs before I start beading THAT mess. I have figured out the sizing I need for the "knotted cord" decorations that are going to hang from the belt. I may start patterning that out tomorrow once I get back from my friend's house.

Then it's just the wig and the insane head dress. That's my late June/early July project.

Of the sailor senshi costumes.. it's resin casting, finishing the skirts and getting started on the boot covers. I'm mostly waiting for the sleeves from Akira before I really work on anything else for them. And then wigs. That's going to go with the resin casting time period. I'm mostly trying to get a lot of Tomoyo done before the middle of this month so I can work on Nave's Syaoran costume without panicking and worrying about my own. His is going to be way easier in terms of decorations.

and thus appeared a Lira

hello, world! Akira & Kaye may have mentioned me in passing as a model, but I've been enabled by their talents into jumping back into the world of crafts, needlework, and winging costumes-- which I haven't so much as touched in at *least* four years. So here's to getting my rusty crafting neurons back into gear.

My starter projects are:

- at least two mods of old Threadless t-shirts & old shirts in general
- beachparty!Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender (I decided to bite the bullet & go for the slightly more complex version, to challenge myself) for Otakon

Possibilities, if I de-rust myself adequately with the above:

- accessories to add to my Victorian/steampunk wardrobe, also for Otakon
- Sailor Saturn's glaive

I'm a strong believer in winging...pretty much everything, so I'm going to need to rein myself in to some extent.

Oh, and I also have a tendency to be very OCD about geometric shapes, lines, parallels, etc...so I'm also going to need to rein that in lest I spend over 20 minutes pinning & cutting one t-shirt hem...like I just did... *facepalm*

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