From then on out, I always tried sewing things myself and by hand. Most of it failed. I hemmed alot of dresses by hand and tried to sew small bits of costumes. I made scrunchies by hand. I fixed my own jeans. My mother bought me a ridiculous, plastic hand sewer and thought that i could move mountains with it. It broke in a day.
I started putting together costumes from thrift store pieces. I put together a horrible tifa. I got my heart set on yuna. my mom commissioned me sailor jupiter, after we found the fabric at a thrift store. I joined the navy and my sewing abilities were relegated to mending uniforms, sewing on patches/rockers and buttons for about three years.
I bought my first sewing machine in 2008. It took me through one costume and a cape. It was a cheap plastic brother machine from walmart. It sewed me a cape and some of lady blaumeux. I mistreated it alot and had no idea what I was doing with it, most of them time. ('m the blue one. The green one is Brenna and her Ysera costume took second place at BlizzCon this year! Hooray! Here's a link to an article about it: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1734668 )
yeah i know, tits. Along with no idea how to sew, I also had no concept of sizing. The top fit great on my (flatter) sister, though. This was my first real jump into creating a costume from scratch. I learned about boot covers, body paint, hot glue, paper mache, bias tape and the PAIN that can come from doing a costume wrong or badly. Very important lessons in the world of cosplay.
That sewin
g machine died a violent death. I hated it so much by the time I was done, I relished chucking it across the room and then later into a dumpster. However, the costume itch was not satisfied. Plans started to hatch for yet another convention- ComiCon.Battlestar Galactica was mostly hatched from pieces bought from a surplus store. I did not sew the pants, jacket or gray undershirt. The black undershirt was a wifebeater i modified. I added all the details- patches, buckles and straps by hand sewing. The pins, patches and dogtags are replicas from ebay. I also have a set of triad cards and cubits I carry with me when I wear this. The cubits (coins) are made from model magic. The paper cubits are printed on paper. I drew out the triad cards in illustrator and printed them on a cardstock. Over all, it's a bad ass (and incredibly comfortable) costume.
Even then, the itch hasn't been satisfied. I start to realize this may not be a temporary thing. It seems I've fallen in love with pretending to be imaginary people. Plans for the next BlizzCon began to take form, much bigger than the previous year.
Auriaya was the biggest task I've had yet. It involved a weapon, which was a completely new area to me. Now that StoneRender is complete, I feel like I can make anything. I learned about wigs, interfacing, modeling clay, different paints, spray paint, body paint on a whole new level. This costume was more comfortable than Blauemeux and done better, though still not better than Battlestar. It also involved an investment on my part- a new sewing machine. That was when I bought my Rocketeer and began blasting off, full speed, into costuming.
I've also been working on two costumes since then- Princess Garnet and Zidane from FF9. They are not done yet and I'm not going to post them yet. Someday, my pretties.
