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The Hero’s Closet

G_owl

Published on October 23, 2014 at 280 × 427 in G_owl

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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

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

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

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

Oh right, I’m supposed to be working on the big

Oh right, I’m supposed to be working on the big thing. So here’s a progress dump for the Empress blouse! Not gonna lie, the white-on-white-on-white thing has been torturous. But then bits of this utterly ridic garment start to come together and I start to think maybe this is going to be worth it.
This is the little inset right below the collar of the blouse, in gauzy silk jacquard partially flatlined with organza to stabilize the embroidered area. The thread is two different weights of silk embroidery thread, a fine one for outlining and a slightly heavier one for the satin stitch. My stitches still aren’t as clean or consistent as I would like, but at this point I desperately need to stop wasting time on redoing things (and shredding the delicate fabric as I rip stitches out over and over)

I haven’t been great about keeping track of how long I’ve spent on this thing, but it’s probably in the neighborhood of 30-40 hours just for the bit shown (though even that would be leaving out a bunch of time on false starts and so forth.) This is the main visible bit of the blouse under all the other layers of this costume though, so I’m going to pretend it’s justified. Need to finish embroidering the ‘wings’ on the front yoke piece before I can go any further with the assembly. #cosplaywip #cosmaker #silkembroidery #handembroidery #monstress
#monstresscosplay #shamanempress

Current status of the Empress bodice drape! I’ve

Current status of the Empress bodice drape! I’ve been struggling a little bit to get back in the productivity groove during this inter-holiday period, but getting this beastie wearable is my number one cosplay goal for next year.
Now that I’ve got the style lines for the bodice sorted out, the next step will be adding all my reference marks and then very carefully unpinning everything and tracing all the pieces out on paper. Then I can do any corrections that might be needed and sew up a muslin to see how she fits on me as opposed to the form.
#cosplaywip #cosprogress #cosmaker #draping #patternmaking #monstresscosplay

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