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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!

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

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

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

Here is my awkward glee face! Thank you @keystonec

Here is my awkward glee face! Thank you @keystonecomiccon and @singersewingcompany , thank you to all the rad maker folks I met today and thank you to @peppermonster @lua.stardust and @canvascosplay for thoughtful judging eyes and all the nice things they said about my interdimensional bandit princess. On to C2E2! #keystonecomiccon

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

Bootmaking, round 2! I chose a much stiffer leathe

Bootmaking, round 2! I chose a much stiffer leather this time around, which gives the finished uppers a ton more structure and body. It’s definitely going to make my life harder for the second half, when I’m forming them around the lasts and stitching on soles, but they’re already looking much livelier and more bootlike and I’m much happier with them.
Just like the first pair, these are assembled with lapped seams and all the external stitching is done by hand. I switched the center back to a butted seam with a reinforcement strip stitched over the top, which worked better in the stiffer leather, and used 4mm stitching punches to pre-punch all the holes. In addition to making the stitches very even, the punches create an angled hole that gives the stitch a slight slant. It’s a lot of work for something that in the end looks very similar to a machine stitch, but the saddle stitch is a bit tougher and I can use a heavy topstitching thread throughout (which even a lot of industrials I’ve used tend to struggle with.)
I’ve got just under two weeks left, which will hopefully be just enough to carve the insoles, do all the lasting and soling, and build the heels.
#cosplaywip #cosprogress #cosplayshoes #cosplaycobbler #cosmaker #leathercrafting #witchercosplay #ciricosplay

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