The Everyday Geeky Girl: disney

Her undershirt is very similar to her Resistance shirt, just made with one layer of fabric unlike the screen used Resistance shirt. For my costume, I actually used a older version of my Resistance shirt but I highly recommend the pattern I suggest above, just without the collar part.

Tunic

For my tunic, a good friend made my pattern and I altered it. But the pattern created by Sew Corellian is excellent! The only alteration I suggest making is to the back, placing the panels more side by side. Mine starts overlapped under the obi, then falls side by side.

I highly recommend making a mock up or two, as the front is very tricky to get to sit right, especially if you are busty like me! Once you are happy with your mock up, I recommend cutting your lining first, as if you make a mistake, the broadcloth is SUPER cheap to get more of. (lol I made one and was glad I cut that first!) Also, the slits on the side are not flush together, they split far enough apart so that the holster does not bunch.

Mock Up

Once you are happy with your lining, cut your tunic fabric. TAKE YOUR TIME, this stuff snags! You will want to lay your lining down as a pattern on your fabric first, the diamonds standing TALL, not wide.

Lining pinned up after adjusting (the wrap is going the wrong way lol)

I sewed up my bodice first leaving the bottom where the panels go open. This would ensure I placed my panels correctly and is I had to remove them later if the weren't falling correctly I could take apart the waist seam easily. First, you will want to sew up your lining, followed by your diamond fabric. Next, right sides together, sew the lining and the diamond fabric together. Make sure you are sealing the edges with a zig zag or surged edge as this fabric will bunch when washed because it will unravel.

Now you can sew your panels up, right sides together. Make sure you also surge these edges. Once you get all the panels sewn, place and pin them onto your bodice. Once you are satisfied, fold your raw edges in and sew.

As you can see here JUST the top of my back panels overlap, to account for my butt/hips. After about 1.5 inches, the whole thing falls side by side. My obi covers this overlap.

Now here is an optional thing. I added cap sleeves to mine as the shoulders were not wide enough with my design, and the whole thing would have sat funny on me because I am busty. NOTE: If you are applying for Rebel Legion, make sure these are covered up by your wrap, as it will NOT pass (I know, I'm a judge lol)

Wrap and obi

Remove your cheese cloth from their packets and unfold them both. Lay them flat on top of each other. If you have a hall or an large open space this will work best. Once you do that, fold the whole thing like a hot dog, so that its a about a footish wide. Sew up that side. Next get a dye bath of WARM water going of the charcoal. Do a quick dip, rinse, then let it air dry. Do that until it's a shade lighter than what you want.

While this is drying, if your obi fabric is NOT the shade you want, drop it into your charcoal dye bath, then rinse and throw it into the dryer. Repeat as needed to get the shade you want.

Next get a dye bath of pearl grey in WARM water going and do one last quick dip and rinse and let dry.

To make your obi, there is a great tutorial here to make it. I used Velcro to close mine.

All put together with belt by Aethereal Designs

Pants

My pants were a Good Will find! I highly recommend you check out thrift stores for this as you will be cutting it up!

So after looking at images, and this wonderful sketch made by a fellow Rey, I cut up the inside seam of the pant and the outside of the legs until I reached the curved seam.

I did a pin tuck down the center of the front of the pant legs until a reached where I wanted that half moon curved seam. This was also just a pin tuck into place, as well as the bottom seam below the knee. The darts were sewn on either side of the curve, but done on the inside. However recent photos look like these seam are also top stitched like the others. Now, recent photos also show that the curved seam continues to the back, which is something I will be adding. When I was done with all the pin tucks and top stitching, I sewed up the inside and outside pant seams. Last I added elastic to the bottom for stirrups, but that part is completely up to you.

Boots

My boots were a thrift store find, too, but another Rey found the same boots which I have linked above for you. See where the over the knee part is? I cut that off first. That has the faux leather on both sides. I separated the two pieces. Then on the part I initially cut, which was straight, I sewed up. I removed the straps and buckles.

Testing spat height

Next I cut them up and used them for the loops. There wasn't enough of the wider straps from the bottom, so for the last two loops on both sides, I used the thinner straps on both sides.

With loops and testing out the laces. This is before I cut down the top 1.5 inches

Realizing that for my short stature the boots were still a wee bit too high, I chopped off about 1.5 inches off the top of the boots then hot glued the layers together. Next I trimmed the bottom of the "spat" I had made to fit better over the bottom of the boot in sort of a curve. Then I used the suggested leather dye from Tandy, but if you can order the conac color, that would be closest!

Spats trimmed everything glued in place and the boots dyed

One final note

When you have your belt made or if you are making your own belt, make sure you account for about 8 layers of extra fabric!!! Otherwise your belt will not fit right!

And there you go! As always, please feel free to message me if you have ANY questions at all as I may have left out something I'm sure!

21 July 2015

Giselle is finished

Sorry for not posting sooner! I have finished Giselle, and have been busy working on the wig and having a photoshoot done. I am so pleased with the result!

Once I finished all the painting, I proceeded to ironing the fabric to set the paint. After that, I stitched together the two underskirt pieces, using a rolled hem foot to hem both layers. After this, they were attached to the lining of the bodice.

Next, I stitched the lining to the overskirt together. I almost didn't buy the lining, but after holding the top fabric up to the light, I realized that it was really needed, and would be more accurate to the film. However, when I went back to JoAnn's they were out of the This was also hemmed, but it is not necessary, as the overskirt is bagged lined/attached. I wasn't really thinking when I did this, as I did it for both the lining and the overskirt, lol. Next, I stitched the front of the overskirt together, then I placed the fabrics right side together. Before stitching it all together, I placed the eyelet lace and the pink rope bias tape between the layers, the pink right next to the painted side. I stitched the sides and bottom together, leaving the top open. Then I turned the whole thing right side out. This was then attached to the top layer of the bodice, right sides together. (As you can see, Baby Who enjoyed watching me work!)

I didn't attach the ribbon just yet, I know it looks like I did, but this was just for the sake of measurement and placement lol. Next I installed the zipper. This is where the dress form really came in handy, as it had accurately measured exactly how much extra fabric I would need to make it fit correctly! I cannot recommend getting one strongly enough!

I did not add the ribbon until afterward, when I could measure it out so it wouldn't be too tight or loose, but that was just me being paranoid, you can add it when you install the zip. I tacked on the center of the ribbon to the center seam of the bodice with the machine at the same time I added the longer piece of ribbon for the bow, which ended up being the whole roll of ribbon. Next I did some hand work, tacking the bodice lining to my interfacing so that it wouldn't move about. A hook and eye was added to the top of the zipper and the rosettes added to the sides of the lace on the top of the bodice. These were made from scraps of the pink fabric left over from the underskirts, and simply were rolled and folded to look like roses. The flowers for the center of the bodice were a Dollar Store find, and just tied into the ribbon. I didn't want to sew it in, as I wished to be able to remove it when I had to wash the dress. These same flowers were also used in the wig.

Then, after a month and a half of work, I was done!

Next came finding and styling a wig. This took a long time to find, as Amy Adams has a very distinctive hair colour. In the end I found this great wig off of Ebay which I was really pleased with. It runs a wee bit small, but I have a tiny head, so it fit perfectly!

And there you have it! Just get yourself some white Victorian lace up boots and you have the complete look! Here are a few photos from my shoot. I am SO in love with the cosplay!!!

Click here to go to the whole photo shoot!

I hope you have enjoyed following this project! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

Giselle progress

I took a break from the dress over the weekend to spend time with my husband and Baby Who. He works every day, so I took Saturday morning and early afternoon to just crash with them, make pizza and be a family. When you're working on any project, it's important to take some time out to spend with those you love and just relax. It also can give you some perspective on what you've worked on, and where you're going next with said project.

On Sunday, I had to make a stop at the Dollar Store and I found the perfect flowers for the front of the dress! The colour matched the flowers I had painted, so I was very pleased with that find. Monday, the eyelet lace I ordered for the overskirt arrived, which I was really pleased with. I also ordered the wig for the costume, which I will post photos of when it arrives along with a review. It was from a wig seller on Ebay for a great price, so we'll see how the quality holds up.

I've spent the last two days working on the second overskirt panel, with lots of interruptions to play with Baby Who, who has discovered that he can get mum's attention by crawling up to my feet and "talking" to me. He's nine months this week, and is commando crawling and learning to sit up. When I take breaks with him, we are working on learning to sit up and stand. He loves standing, but sitting up on his own is something he is really not a fan of.

Last night after I put him to bed, I completed the second panel, which I was really pleased with. However, last night I had to deal with Baby Who teething, so I was up quite a bit comforting him and didn't get much sleep. I started panel three this morning, but I don't think I'll have that done until Friday at the rate I'm going lol.

20 June 2015

Giselle cosplay work in progress

I know, long time no post! Since my last post, I've had a baby, who for the purposes of the internet I call Baby Who, and I'm no longer teaching. This has given me more time to spend as a mum and time to work on cosplays, which is one of my many passions.

Right now I'm working on Giselle's curtain dress from Disney's Enchanted. I have been posting my work in progress on my Facebook page, and as I've been going I have had quite a few questions. So I decided to use my blog to talk about what I'm working on, giving tips along the way. Think of it as a geeky version of Julie/Julia!

And now onto Giselle!

Pattern: McCall's 6030

Fabrics: Joann's silkessence in light aqua (sorry I don't know the color name, they were out when I went back) and tile blue white chiffon, pink lining--three yards each

Notions: Aqua ribbon, white eyelet lace, teal ruffle trim, elastic, teal 14 in zip, pink cord trim, pink flowers.

Other materials: Delta Creamcoat textile medium, acrylic paint

I have been in love with this dress since I first saw the film back in college, so I was very excited to start this project. I spent about a month doing my research on this dress, from fabric to pattern. Surprisingly, the pattern was the easy part, it was the fabric that really was a problem. I chose McCall's 6030 as my base pattern, which needed very little altering. I spent hours scouring the net looking for teal or aqua fabric that would match closely to the fabric used on the screen worn dress. I wanted to tare my hair out, as I don't usually chose costumes that has a pattern to it, and I was reminded once again why lol. After not finding what I wanted, I saw that Spoonflower had a version of the fabric. After doing the math on how much it was going to cost me, I decided not to go that route, however, if you are interested in purchasing it, it can be found here.

Finally, I came upon this lovely costumer on DiviantArt, FlowerPowerStock. She had hand painted the dress using puffy paint. I was not a fan of the puffy paint, but I loved the look of her pattern. She too had used the same pattern as I was using, but she did not alter it. She had posted the pattern she had used, which looked great. I decided that I was going to dive in and actually paint the dress, using acrylic paints with textile medium mixed in.

Next, after saving my money, I was off to Joann's Fabrics. They had an awesome fabric on sale that was very close to not only the color of the original dress, but also the texture, which had a lightly crinkled feel. The under skirts are deceiving I discovered thanks to Lady Eowyn's blog. It's not strictly white as it appears, but white chiffon over pink chiffon. I was able to to find white at Joann's (which is ridiculously over priced I discovered) but not pink. Turns out that Joann's if phasing out many of their costume fabrics I was told, which is unfortunate and may find me back on Ebay ordering my fabric in the future. So instead of pink chiffon, I opted for a simple light pink lining, which looked lovely under the white. I also picked up most of my notions there save the white eyelet trim for the overskirt, which I opted to purchase on Ebay, as I found a closer match on there. The teal ruffle was purchased over at Hobby Lobby, which I'm fortunate enough to have in the same shopping complex lol.

Before I got to anything else, I FINALLY ordered a dress form for myself, as I knew I would want to make a mock up for this dress, which it turns out was a good idea. I had bought the pattern in a larger size so that I could alter it as needed. The pattern called for rather straight seams on the bust, so I curved them more toward the armpit. The original pattern also made the very front of the bodice one piece, so I placed a seam in the center for more screen accuracy. Next, I elongated the pattern to compensate for my bustiness, and to create the inward V shape, a the original pattern ha a straight Empire waist. Once I was done creating my mock up, I laid out the pattern on the aqua fabric and cut. I also made sure that the top of the front of the overskirt was shaped correctly when cutting to compensate for the new design of the bodice.

After I had cut my fabric, I used the scraps to experiment with. I had already cut out my stencils out of cardstock and covered them with wax to make them repel the paint a wee bit (which by the way, isn't the best way to do this. I HIGHLY recommend that you either by Wax Resist and paint in on your stencil or invest in stencil film. I have a hand painted shirt business and will be purchasing the stencil film to replace the cardstock versions of my stencils.) In my experimentation, I discovered that the paint could bleed very easily if improperly applied. Usually, I would have used sponge brushes for this, but I'm really glad I took the time to really play with the fabric. After it bled, I tried tracing with pen, then painting, but the pen just showed through. I next tried pencil, and that did the same, followed by coloured pencil, thinking that by matching the colour to the paint it would be masked. The result looked lovely, but when I tried washing it, the paint came right off, so that was a no go. Finally I went back to just using the stencil as I had originally intended. I used a very small hard bristle stencil brush with very little paint at a time (called dry bushing) and this worked the best. After the stencil was applied, I went back and hand painted over much over it, so that the lines were crisper. Certain colours such as the light pink, and yellow needed several layers to show up correctly, which really made this a time consuming process.

Now, let's talk about paints! The colours on the dress are deceiving. After painting all the pieces for the bodice, I discovered that the white for the flowers was far more vibrant that it should have been, standing out like a sore thumb! So I dulled it down with a cobalt blue, so the flowers are actually a very, very light blue, even though they appear pure white on the dress. The same issue was apparent with the large yellow flowers. I had originally chose a lovely antique yellow, but when painted on, it was far to vibrant. So I dulled it down with orange. That still wasn't quite right, still standing too far out. However, when I added a hint of sage green, the colour was perfect!

I placed my stencil on the pieces to try to accurately replicate the placement of the pattern on the screen worn dress. After I was done painting I discovered that my stencil is slightly smaller than the actual pattern. I'm not too worried about it, but if you are striving for complete accuracy, then I would recommend sizing up the stencil a wee bit, by half an inch at least.

Before I moved onto painting then overskirt, I stitched together the bodice, which was a bit tricky. First I had to stitch together the lining. I had underestimated how much fabric I was going to need originally, so I had to run back to Joann's and buy a half a yard more for the bodice lining. I accidentally grabbed the wrong shade of fabric (tile blue) which was darker than the fabric I was using. I kicked myself when I got home, but moved on, knowing that no one was going to see it lol. After stitching that together, I used a thick interfacing to put between the layers. The original pattern called for boning, but I opted for this as I knew it would be more comfortable. I made it slightly smaller than the lining and the bodice so that it would slide right in between the layers.

Next I got to the exciting part! I stitched up the bodice front, which really looked great when I was done. Then I moved onto piecing together the sleeves and the trim to attach to the bodice.

Before I worked on the sleeves, I stitched the the ruffles eyelet trim to the bodice. Now looking at the photos of the screen worn dress, I discovered that there are actually two layers of eyelet trim on the bodice, one at the same level as the ruffles, and another higher above the ruffles in the back.

The sleeves were tricky, because they didn't allow for attaching an elastic. So I used some remnants of the pink fabric, which had already been cut for the underskirt, to encase the elastic to attach to the inside of the sleeve. with right sides together, I stitched the lining, elastic casing and outter fabric together. I then followed the directions that the pattern called for. I pulled the elastic tight to fight my arms, then stitched the elastic and trimmed it. When turning the sleeve right side out to attach it to the bodice, I had to manipulate the sleeve in a weird way to hide the seam stitching, and I can't really explain how I did it lol. However I left a hole so that I could attach it to the bodice and add more elastic. I hand tacked the the sleeve long the edge to keep the elastic from moving in the sleeve at the top. I tightened the elastic after pinning it to the bodice. This adding a wee bit of gathers in places, just like the screen worn dress.

After all that, stitched the whole thing to the lining. I then placed the thick interfacing inside between

the layers. I was really pleased with the results!

Next I moved on to painting the over skirt.

I placed my stencil as close as I could approximate to the original dress. From there, I created a repeating pattern, similar to that of actual fabric or wallpaper. This took about two days (with lots of interruptions to play with my son and do housework lol).

So that's where I have left off for now. I'll be posting more as I go! If you have any questions, please feel free to message me on my FB page Owl Feathers Cosplay