$\"G_owl\"$ <\/a>

I don\u2019t think I intended this to be a scary costume, but that mask is pretty terrifying.<\/p><\/div>\n

Every hero needs one, right? Even if I\u2019m only the champion\u00a0of\u00a0spending all my weekends buried\u00a0in fabric and thread clippings.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where it begins: I grew up in a craft-obsessed city, among a family of relentless creatives. My folks\u00a0are writers, designers, illustrators, crafters, and makers of all\u00a0stripes. On any given day, most of the horizontal surfaces in the house would be strewn with creative paraphernalia: beads and jewelry findings, colored pencils, stacks of origami paper. My parents both sewed, too\u2014maybe not every day, but given the right excuse they\u00a0produced marvels.<\/p>\n

It feels\u00a0appropriate to be writing this the week of\u00a0Halloween, because growing up it was probably the most-anticipated holiday of the\u00a0year. My sister and I always scorned run-of-the-mill witches and ghosts; instead we demanded wildlife, characters from books, and creatures of our own imagining, and our parents obliged. There was the year I thumped around with a flashlight in my purple taffeta firefly tail. There was my owl costume with embroidered feathers down the front and fleecy wings encrusted with hand-sewn sequins. There was my sister\u2019s utterly spectacular \u201cweather girl\u201d cape, painstakingly appliqu\u00e9d with clouds and lightning, and my satin sorceress cloak with a floating cloud of glitter tulle.<\/p>\n

$\"Second-grade$ <\/a>

Oh yeah. Me and being an INCREDIBLE DORK go way back.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Not that we always needed a holiday in order to dress up, as evidenced by my second grade school picture. My dad made me that purple superhero cape, and damned if I wasn\u2019t going to wear it proudly. (Three cheers for tolerant teachers, no?)<\/p>\n

Inevitably, my sister and I started making our own costumes. We\u2019d start contemplating ideas as early as July, and execute them through a combination of thrift store scrounging and handmade ingenuity. I don\u2019t know that I ever topped her handmade sumo wrestler suit, but one floor-length cloak in crushed black velvet, lined in coral jacquard, made for a particularly memorable ordeal of cutting and hemming. In eighth grade I wanted to be a mermaid, so I made a halter-neck fishtail gown in the scratchiest glitter dot fabric imaginable.<\/p>\n

Eventually, of course, we outgrew the candy-fueled tours of the neighborhood, and my costuming efforts became more sporadic. I continued to spend\u00a0time sewing clothes and experimenting with patterns, and even\u00a0made my own prom dress, but during college fashion sewing\u00a0fell by the wayside a bit too\u00a0(due in part to my lack of a sewing machine.)<\/p>\n

The summer I graduated I threw myself into learning patternmaking, got my own sewing machine, and started\u00a0making\u00a0pants, shirts, and jackets on a regular basis. It felt good to be making things again, and eventually it led me to my current career. But costumes were the beginning, so\u00a0when I finally fell into cosplay, it was a bit like coming home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every hero needs one, right? Even if I\u2019m only the champion\u00a0of\u00a0spending all my weekends buried\u00a0in fabric and thread clippings. Here\u2019s where it begins: I grew up in a craft-obsessed city, among a family of relentless creatives. My folks\u00a0are writers, designers, illustrators, crafters, and makers of all\u00a0stripes. On any given day, most of the horizontal surfaces […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[12],"tags":[11,9,10],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5soL3-e","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alltomorrowspatterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}