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The Hero’s Closet

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Published on February 27, 2017 at 360 × 210 in banner_gray

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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!

Tiny progress is better than no progress, right? I

Tiny progress is better than no progress, right? I’ve been floundering a bit and not really working on the big projects, but I did finish ff7r and I have IDEAS now. Not sure if I’ll do the full costume but I thought I might start by having a go at Tifa’s gloves, so I started tinkering with a pattern for that. And since my patternmaking scrawl isn’t very photogenic, have an attempt at some materia instead. I need to get some smaller glass cabochons for the real thing, but I like these as a proof of concept! #materia #ff7remake #ff7cosplay #tifalockhartcosplay #cosplaywip

Wowza what a trip. It feels a little wild that all

Wowza what a trip. It feels a little wild that all this was for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it trip across the Crown Championships stage, but actually the point was all the other competitors I got to meet and the truly top-tier fabulous costumes I got to ogle. All of these were people I’d previously only met online if at all, and builds I’d admired from afar, but there’s honestly no comparison to seeing all that hard work in person and getting my nosy eyeballs right up in the fabric textures and sculpting work. I was absolutely geeking out all day and it was just the best thing.
I crunched four separate times to get the various incarnations of Ciri built over the last two years, but I’m happy to say that I actually accomplished-or-near-enough my entire upgrade list this time around. I finished the BOOTS, which was a wild project that’ll get its own wrap-up post, and I’m very happy with how the tooled leather scabbard came out as well. I need to finally plan a photoshoot now that all the elements are actually where I want them - was hoping to get a wintery Skellige one with snow but I guess that’s not going to happen this year, freaking thanks climate change 😠. Very well deserved congrats to all the winners (including armor category winner @paisleyandglue and third overall @leelookris in these photos). Also, thanks to the fabulously talented and extremely nice guy @sameertikkamasala for sending over the second picture, and super extra thanks to travel buddy and heroic handler @pitchforkcosplay for coming along on this little adventure and taking all the others. #crownchampionshipsofcosplay #c2e2 #cosplayarmor #witchercosplay

Three weeks and 60-odd hours later, I’m official

Three weeks and 60-odd hours later, I’m officially past where I was before I decided to remake the boots. Welts are on, shanks are in, and now I just need to fill and level the underside of the boots, put the soles on, build the heels, and finish and polish the damn things. Not so bad, right? Except for the bit where we’re down to the wire now 😅

#crownchampionshipsofcosplay #cosplaywip #cosplaycobbler #cosplayshoes #cosmaker #cosprogress #ciricosplay #witchercosplay

So this is what happens when I attempt a moderatel

So this is what happens when I attempt a moderately ambitious superhero build in one month. I end up with no brain cells left to get a decent picture of the thing while I’m wearing it 😓

Regardless, I thought I’d at least share detail shots of some of the pieces I made. The top and pants are heavyweight ponte knit detailed in leather, which was a little softer than I wanted (thus some wrinkles) but gave me the opaque high-contrast look I was hoping for. The armor is worbla (normal and mesh versions) with some oaktag for structure, strapped together with Chicago screws hidden underneath the spikes. The spikes are also oaktag, reinforced and glued on with kobracast, with some extra worbla sculpted around the base of each one to give them a textured crudely-welded-together look.

I didn’t get to finish all the details I wanted for the boot covers, but they’re a medium-weight garment leather backed with canvas for structure and glued down on a platform sneaker base. My favorite thing about the boots is that they’re held together entirely by stitching and water-based glue - no solvents required. To accomplish this I sewed a strip of leather around the base of the faux leather shoe, which gave the glue something to stick to so I wouldn’t need to crack open the death snot. They held up totally fine for a long convention day with lots of walking, so I’d definitely use this method again!

The sword was the major crunch casualty, and didn’t get lights or the level of finish I put into the other pieces, but it was close enough to complete the look and didn’t fall apart. It’s made of thin plastic, frosted glass effect vinyl, a layer of tracing paper to finesse the opacity, cardboard, oaktag, and an embarrassing amount of worbla just kind of piled on there until it didn’t wobble anymore 😬

Not perfect, but it was a good palate cleanser between competition builds and gave me something new to wear to nycc (which I love dearly even though it’s a crowded exhausting capitalist nightmare.) Now it’s time to get serious about my Empress build and see if I can’t bash it out before C2E2.

#cosmaker #cosplayarmor #magik #illyanarasputin #marvelcosplay #cosplaycraft

Finished the first set of outlines for the Empress

Finished the first set of outlines for the Empress blouse embroidery and was second guessing whether I really want to satin stitch over all of them as planned or leave them open. I do think the outlines look nice on their own, (I was worried they would get lost against the jacquard pattern but they actually stand out pretty nicely in the silk thread) but if I’d planned to leave them open from the start, I’d probably have been more particular about the stitch consistency. Or picked a chainstitch or something instead of this split stitch. If I decide to keep this I’d probably want to rip a bunch of it out and try again, which would be its own kind of nightmare with the tricky-to-undo split stitch on delicate gauzy silk jacquard.
Anyway, I did a little sample of the satin stitching just to see. I do think it’ll help to define the smallest feathers a little better, but the thread I used for the outlines looks a little chunky in satin stitch and I might want to step down to a finer silk. At least satin stitch is easy to remove cleanly.
#handembroidery #silkembroidery #cosplaywip #cosprogress #cosmaker #monstresscosplay

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

Recent Posts

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

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