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The Hero’s Closet

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Published on December 10, 2014 at 512 × 512 in Large Blog Image

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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!

Mobility was a major goal for my Tifa build becaus

Mobility was a major goal for my Tifa build because her athleticism is such a defining trait, and the practical skort is one of my favorite things about her new look. While I may be more craft gremlin than gymnast these days, there's enough juice in these old bones to pretend for a few minutes. (Though I'm still working on her chin-up record).

Oh, and the handmade gloves and shoes held up better than my knees did. 😅

Thanks @cornettocosplay for the video!

#tifacosplay #tifalockhartcosplay #finalfantasy7remake #ff7cosplay #ff7remakecosplay #cosplaycraft #cosmaker #handmadecosplay

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

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

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

Fancy abs! Officially checking off the lower torso

Fancy abs! Officially checking off the lower torso armor for this costume. The leather plates were wet-shaped, tooled, dyed, and highlighted with gold paint, then sewn by hand to the steel-boned vest. The worbla breastplate will attach on top with a combination of hooks and magnets, and I wanted to finish the base before starting that piece so that everything would match up perfectly. So that’ll be the next step now!

I also finished the undersuit, which has been sitting around half done for about a month now. The fabric is a coated doubleknit I’ve had stashed for a couple years - I think it actually came from the much-missed Paron Fabrics - and I added gold leather piping on the collar to help tie it into the armor. The pattern is my own, based on the jumpsuit from the book but modified to remove the side seams for a slightly cleaner line. All the seams are pinked and topstitched as well, to keep everything as flat and smooth as possible, and it closes up the front with a heavy-duty invisible zipper.

#cosplayarmormaking #leatherarmor #cosplaywip #cosprogress #cosmaker

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

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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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