About
Costumes
The Hero’s Closet

08carve

Published on March 14, 2020 at 1200 × 1200 in 08carve

Next → ← Previous

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Hey there!

I’m Gillian, a cosplayer, writer, editor, and occasional illustrator with an unruly fabric habit. I love patternmaking, fabric manipulation, embellishment, and big, ambitious projects.

My book The Hero’s Closet is available now!

Stealing my own thunder a bit but holy heck dudes

Stealing my own thunder a bit but holy heck dudes check it out. My sister @kathleenconahan commissioned me to make a Tifa for her as well, and while mine’s still in progress hers got shipped out at the beginning of this month. She just sent these photos of the whole thing (which are way radder than anything I can get while holed up in my brooklyn cave, lbr) and I’m beside myself with glee.

Kathleen made her own earrings, materia wristband, and gloves, with hand-etched aluminum plates. I made the skort, tops, leather vambrace, belt/suspenders, socks, and arm warmers. 📸 by @jeremysilvertongue

#tifacosplay #tifalockhartcosplay #ff7cosplay #ffviicosplay #finalfantasycosplay #leatherarmor #cosplayarmor #cosplaycommission

SheProp Challenge day 12: favorite character. This

SheProp Challenge day 12: favorite character. This one deserves a real post, yes? Maika is my favorite character I’ve cosplayed for a lot of reasons - her toughness, her resilience, her gradual process of making peace with an internal demon that periodically sneaks out and eats people.

I based this armor on the cover of Monstress issue 13, which I adored so much that I completed most of the build in the two months between when the cover was revealed and the issue actually came out. It was my first big go at worbla armor, and you could call it my first attempt at monster building as well. (I want to remake Zinn at some point, but it’ll probably be a new version for Empress rather than a revisit of this one.)

I wish I could bring Maika out more often but she’s also by far my most difficult costume to wear, between the ridiculous amount of worbla and the floppy unbalanced demon arm. I can manage maybe two hours before I have to go lie down, so she’ll probably never make it to NYCC, for example.

I’m perpetually astonished that Monstress doesn’t get more cosplayers; it’s a glorious fantasy epic with the kind of detail-rich visuals that most of my friends salivate over. I’m about to dive back into my Shaman Empress build, so there’ll be lots more monstress content around here pretty soon, but more people should join @pitchforkcosplay and me in yelling about this series.

#shepropchallenge #monstress #monstresscosplay #worblaarmor #worblasfinestart #cosplayarmor

Apparently I like making swords now? Baffling. I’ve been working on Utena for AnimeNYC and was worried about getting the Sword of Dios done in time, but then I just sort of went ahead and ground the whole thing out in one ten-hour binge.
I used basically the same method I used for my Ciri sword, but slightly simplified since this one doesn’t have a silly cutout in it. I started with a 1/8” kite rod core, and made the blade with creased oaktag backed in kobracast. I bulked up the hilt by wrapping the core in cotton string, then wrapped it in worbla and sculpted the details on top. The stone in the hilt is crystal worbla pellets colored with liquid watercolor (which was a bit awkward to work with and dyed my hands green) and a little bit of metallic powder pigment. I finished it with a rose-shaped bead for the pommel, held on with a loop of wire and a scrap of kobracast. Just needs priming and painting now!
#cosplayprop #propbuilding #worbla #utena #utenacosplay #swordofdios #animenyc #cosplaywip #cosprogress #cosmaker

As seems to be the case for a lot of people my age

As seems to be the case for a lot of people my age, FF7R nailed me right in the nostalgia button. Not just a remake, but a loving and expansive remake that’s been updated just enough to live up to the rosy teenage memories. (Not to mention, the climate change themes are more timely than ever.) On the frivolous end, Tifa’s outfit is a case in point: the silhouette clearly evokes the original, but the details are thoughtful and functional. 2020 Tifa wears a sensible sports bra. She has a pleated skort instead of a pencil skirt, in order to more expediently kick fascists in the face. She has cargo pockets and twelve kinds of non-functional hardware, because it’s still a final fantasy game.
Patterning this skort/buttcape situation and working out all the fiddly construction bits has helped me to shake myself out of my unemployment-amid-a-global-cataclysm funk. I wouldn’t say it’s going quickly, especially with having to mail order all the little bits and pieces that I can’t stroll up to Pacific Trim for, but she’s starting to come together now. (Protect and cherish the USPS, which is a lifeline for cooped up New Yorkers as well as being y’know a cornerstone of democracy and all)
#cosmaker #cosplaywip #tifalockhartcosplay #tifacosplay #ff7remakecosplay #ff7cosplay

Tifa’s vambrace, step 1: scratch in the teeny ti

Tifa’s vambrace, step 1: scratch in the teeny tiny runes for the decorative border with a glover’s needle mounted in the handle from a tambour hook. I did make myself a digital pattern to refer to, but the larger of these pieces is less than six inches long and the design itself is so tiny that it was easier to mark some guidelines and then freehand the runes.

I found the reference for this detail on a late-night research binge and much cursing ensued, since it looks like stitching or maybe an embossed pattern in-game. But then I pulled it together and gave it a shot, because I love a challenge or whatever.

I spent a bit of time trying to figure out if the text was supposed to mean anything, but couldn’t find any existing alphabets that use all of these symbols. But maybe I’ve missed something and swarms of people are about to pop up to tell me how wrong I am! In the absence of a reference text, I interpreted the art as well as I could and that will have to do.

The big advantage of working with natural leather here is that once I’d etched in the design, I just had to brush on the dye and it settled into the grooves and darkened them up nicely. I don’t know if I could have gotten this level of detail in worbla at all, but certainly I would have had to go back in with washes and antiquing to get the same level of definition, so there would have been a lot more steps involved.

There are three more layers and several more pieces to this vambrace, and I’ve just had to order rivets for the third time because I’m having trouble finding ones that are small enough, but the most detailed piece is done and it should be more straightforward from here.

#cosplaycraft #cosprogress #cosplaywip #cosmaker #leatherworking #tifacosplay

The payoff for my satin stitch hell on Ciri is now

The payoff for my satin stitch hell on Ciri is now I can dash off a pair of these little jerks in about three hours (give or take another hour of nitpicking the symmetry.)

This is one of those cute little details that some game artist probably thought nothing of and nobody in their right mind would EVER design on a real garment. See how the little emblem crosses a seam? I don’t do a lot of machine embroidery but I bet a lot of them would just outright choke on the differences in thickness there, and in any case you’d have a hell of a time hooping it because it has to be done on the almost-complete garment. If it was all on one piece, the embroidery could have been done flat, before assembly, and made everyone’s lives a little easier. As it is, the only other way to do this would have been to embroider a patch and sew it on. Which is not what it looks like in the art!

Of course, this is me, so I require very little prompting to dig out the hand embroidery needles. Seam lumps aside, this was a pretty straightforward little design without any additional padding or anything. The main trick was transferring the tiny design, and I ended up printing out a vector version and glue sticking it onto wax tracing paper. Then I used cardboard shims on each side of the seam to level the fabric enough for a clean transfer and cleaned up the result with a gel pen. The hardest part was maintaining symmetry, since the lines are so tiny that a tiny little difference in interpretation can significantly change the look of the result. They’re not perfect, but after some ripping and tinkering I’m calling them close enough!

#tifacosplay #cosplaywip #handembroidery #handsewing #cosplaydetails #cosprogress

Recent Posts

How I made Ciri’s Boots
Building Ciri’s Sword and Scabbard
Ciri Chainmail
Embroidery Purgatory
Ciri Build Diary – An Introduction

Categories

backstory
books
build diary
cosplay
day job
introspection
rants
tutorials
updates
vintage
wardrobe

© by All Tomorrow’s Patterns, 2020 // proudly powered by WordPress // Theme: ilisa by pixxels.at

Top