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The Hero’s Closet

09pauldron09

Published on December 19, 2020 at 900 × 1200 in 09pauldron09

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pauldron strap mock-up tried on

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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!

So I nearly forgot to talk about this at all in pr

So I nearly forgot to talk about this at all in prejudging (thanks @pitchforkcosplay for the timely reminder) but I’m actually really happy with how the new scabbard turned out and I don’t want it to get overshadowed entirely by the boots. This was my first real attempt at tooled leather, using a medium-weight veg tan leather from Tandy (don’t remember the exact thickness.) I created the pattern by wrapping the sword in tinfoil and tape, drew out the design by hand, and transferred it to the leather by rubbing a soft pencil on the back of the pattern. Then I etched the whole thing with a swivel knife and opened up the lines a bit with a modeling tool to make them more pronounced. I actually carved the whole thing twice because I wasn’t thrilled with how it came out the first time.
I cut a plastic template for the finished scabbard shape and stitched the center back seam closed over it, then slid in a dowel that I’d shaved into a point to force it into the oval shape while it dried. I also added some scraps of cardboard to ensure the finished shape would be open enough to fit the sword.
Once the scabbard was dry I re-wet it lightly and dyed it with water-based leather dye ordered from @sorrellcustomboots , then finished it off a light wax coating. I adore how this dye worked out - there’s no separate antiquing or painted weathering going on here, just the dye itself and how it settled into the tooling.
The end caps are worbla painted with metallic acrylics, and the straps are just scrap leather lightly painted with the same stuff. The upper clasp hooks into my armor strapping, and the lower strap attaches to my belt to keep the scabbard from swinging. I’ll probably do a blog post a bit later with all the wip photos, but the folks who’ve been following my stories have seen most of it already.
#leathercrafting #cosplayprop #propmaking #witchercosplay #ciricosplay #thewitcher3wildhunt #zireael

It's the shoemaking wrap-up post! Making Ciri's bo

It's the shoemaking wrap-up post! Making Ciri's boots was a goal from pretty early in the project, and I made the pattern and my first attempt at sewing the uppers way back in fall of 2018. Then I sat on them for a good 10 months while working on other things, and only came back to the project briefly and unsuccessfully in July of last year. Finally at the beginning of February I decided to go for it for real, and this is the result.
The entire process of building the boots is documented in my story highlights, and I'm planning a build diary post as well, so I'll just do a quick summary here. I used a lightweight but fairly stiff buffalo leather for the uppers, pig suede for the linings, and super thick veg tan insole and sole leather. The uppers are assembled with lapped seams, glued and then hand sewn in topstitching thread with a saddle stitch. The lining is the same, but sewn by machine because it's mostly not visible.
For safety reasons I don't use solvent-based glues at home, and standard cemented shoemaking uses a lot of them. Instead I decided to attempt a traditional hand-welted construction for the soles. In this method the insole is carved out and pre-punched with stitching holes, then hand sewn with the uppers to a welt, which is a strip of leather that's then stitched down to the sole. The technique is pretty much only used for very high-end and custom work today, but might be pretty normal in the kind of fantasy-medieval villages Ciri traipses through. It also probably added 40-50 hours of physically demanding labor to the project, so that tells you roughly how deep my hatred of barge goes.
The heels are stacked leather, assembled with nails and water-based glue, except for the rubber end cap which I glued in the fume hood at work. I wore these to C2E2 with the natural soles because I ran out of time, but now they've been finished off with the sole dye and polish as well. The whole thing is probably a little rustic looking for any fine shoemakers who might come across this, but this is the Witcher after all.
#cosplayshoes #cosplaycobbler #witchercosplay #ciricosplay #cosplaycraft
#cosmaker #leathercrafting

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I recently reminded mysel

Vambrace complete! This is my first real armor pie

Vambrace complete! This is my first real armor piece in leather, except for the elbow bit which is sculpted in worbla. I used a medium (6oz?) veg tan for the base layer and decorative red plates, and odds and ends of other things for everything else, including some leftovers from the boots. You can’t see much except on the top binding, but there’s quite a bit of hand sewing in there to hold things together because I don’t fully trust rivets or glue.

My favorite bit is probably the pivot at the elbow, which I worked out through a long series of paper mock-ups because I wanted to preserve as much mobility as possible. What’s the point of cosplaying the pull-ups champ if you can’t move in her costume?

#cosplaywip #cosmaker #cosplayarmor #leatherarmor #ff7cosplay #tifacosplay #peeressofpullups

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

It’s been a whole year since my big bootmaking p

It’s been a whole year since my big bootmaking project and apparently I forgot just enough of the misery to decide to tackle creature feet. So yes these are also boots, but designed to look like weird toes in a little sandal, and yes I built them completely from scratch because I enjoy suffering, apparently.

The upper part of the boot is constructed pretty normally, with leather outside and a cotton canvas lining (but suede for the toe and heel where I needed to shape it around the last). The toes are 3mm wool felt covered in wool interlock knit, with loose wool fiber needle felted over the top to hide the seams and give the illusion of fur. I hand sculpted the claws in worbla, with a little knob on the back to insert in the toe seam. I stitched the toes to a separate leather lining before attaching them to the uppers, then stretched that over the lining and stiffeners like you’d normally do for a shoe. This is a mostly cemented construction due to time constraints, but with a lot of creative use of water-based glues which will probably be fine considering these are...for extremely occasional wear.

I’m not feeling quite brave enough to take them off the lasts yet, so we’ll see how they actually perform at some later date when I’ve summoned up the necessary fortitude.

#shoemaking #monstermaking #cosplaywip #cosmaker #cosprogress #freyacrescent #finalfantasyix #finalfantasy9

Recent Posts

Why I Draft my Own Patterns
The Problem of Categorizing Cosplay
How I made Ciri’s Boots
Building Ciri’s Sword and Scabbard
Ciri’s Armor (Pauldron and Poleyns)

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