Ice Climbers process/progress

So, I made this blog before I made our Ice Climbers costumes, and I never took any progress photos during the creation of them. I'll describe what I can here, since I've had a few questions about them.



I will take a few photos of details and things so you can get a better idea of what I am talking about.

For the suits, I got a simple pajamas pattern and altered the shirt to close in the center front. I just used a drawstring pants pattern for the pants.

Everything is 100% lined because the fur I used was uncomfortably itchy. To line the top, I essentially made 2 of each jacket, one out of fur and one out of the lining fabric. I inserted the lining so the wrongs sides of each fabric were touching. since I was adding white on the edges, I sewed the lining straight to the outer fabric, and hand-stitched the white edging on the sleeves and the center front.

To make the pants with an elastic casing was a bit tricky since pants are usually fully lined. I ended up making the outer as usual, but I left a space in the crotch of the lining so I could turn it right side out.  I put the outer fabric inside the lining, RIGHT sides touching. I left a little space so I could string the elastic into the waist after I finished sewing it.
I then turned the pants right side out through the hole in the crotch, and sewed in the space for the elastic casing. I threaded the elastic into the casing, and hand hemmed the pants to finish them up.

For the shoes, I got some Uggs-style slippers at Wal-Mart, and covered them with some padding and white vinyl on the toes. To complete the shoes, I used a thin piece of upholserty foam sandwiched between a lining fabric and the white vinyl. I then handsewed it to the shoes, and hand sewed in a zipper to the back of each shoe. It took the entire 6 hour car trip to Katsucon that year to sew the tops on the shoes and the zippers.

For the hoods, I made some patterns based on measurements, tried them out in junk fabric, and then cut them out f the fur and sewed them. To make the edges extra puffy, I stuffed the white edges, and sewed with some strong thread around it to make the little puffs. I just looped it around and pulled tightly to get the puffs the size I wanted them.
For the mittens I just traced our hands and made the patterns from that. I really want to re-make the mittens if we plan on wearing these costumes again, since the pleather I used tore pretty bald in-between the thumb and fingers. I would also make the fingers roomier.

The hammers were designed by my boyfriend. We used a piece of wood as the handle, and 2 inch thick green upholstery foam from Hancock to make the base of the hammer. We skinned the hammer in 1/2" thick upholstery foam so it could be mostly hollow.  We made two intersecting pieces for the main base, and some quarters of circles to flesh it out, leaving quite a bit of empty space. We wanted the hammers to be as absolutely light as possible.
We glued the foam together with contact cement and we used some sewing pins to help hold it together
Here's a diagram of how the inside of the hammers look on the inside:

To cover them in fabric, I just pinned the fabric on and sewed it by hand.
I really wanted to take the fabric off and screen print a wood grain print on it, but I don't think I want to undo all that sewing.

That should pretty much cover everything about this costume. It's extremely hot to wear, and it pretty much a legit snowsuit, all things considered. I can't believe we wore it the first time we went to Dragon*Con.

Complete Weeping Angel!

From left to Right: me (Kilayi), Ktar, and Penwiper

Dragon*Con was AWESOME!
It was out first Dragon*Con, and hopefully one of many! (It was actually the largest con we have been to, and only Ktar's second con ever!)
Hanging out with Penwiper as the Angels was too much fun! Walking in the parade as the Angels was not nearly as bad as everyone imagined it to be for us, either. I was more uncomfortable standing in one spot for a long time than walking for a while. The photoshoot with the HUGE Doctor Who group was awesome as well. I only "knew" Penwiper, and that was really not that much, so we didn't talk to that many people, but who we talked to, I'm still trying to keep in touch with! :)

Some more photos and notes on the completed costumes:

Painting the Angel

Painting the Weeping Angels took about a week. Which was about 5 days longer than we expected, haha

Angelic arms and necks

This is a short post: we had thought about this independently, but Penwiper thought of it first.

Angelic Dress

The Weeping Angels' dresses were the easiest for me to think on how to construct it, and actually create. Ktar and I made each of our dresses a bit differently... (I made mine a tad "off" but it doesn't actually bother me, I'd rather be a tiny bit different, haha)

Angel Wings Part 2

So, after assembling the wings, we started to paint them.
We also needed to create a harness to hold the wings on our backs, but also underneath our dresses.
After much deliberation, we figure out how we wanted to do it:

Nice Face!

So, the Weeping Angels have big scary faces when they're going to get you.

In the actual show, the masks were latex, and were applied before the latex wigs were put on. I feel like I could do latex casting, but 1) I've never done it before, 2) it's kind of expensive, and 3) I don't have a lot of time.
We joked about using this mask available for download from the BBC lol:

But we decided that a better route would be to make a plaster mask then sculpt on top of it.

angelic hair

The Weeping Angels do not have lush, flowing, human hair.
Their hair is carved, as they are statues. :/

Figuring out what we were going to do to make hair that looked carved was one of the biggest problems of this whole idea.

So we paper mâché-d  our heads and sculpted on top of that with model magic!

Angel Wings

Today we glued the wings together! Or at least 90% done gluing the wings together!

there was TONS of planning involved, and yet only 4 action days! Amazing! (We're 3rd tier black belt lever procrastinators...)

So! Let me tell you about what's been put into these suckers:

SAVE ME! ... no, not really...

So, have you heard of Castle Crashers?
It's this really fun 4 player brawler game for download on the Xbox 360.

A few friends of mine were planning on making the knights' costumes for Dragon*Con, so Ktar and I wanted to join in the fun and be 2 of the 4 princesses that need to be saved throughout the game.
I chose to be Red (my fave color) and she chose to be Blue (her fave color)!

It's a pretty simple costume idea, but altering the dress is proving to be a bit of a challenge because of, well.... my boobs ):I think it's giving her a problem too.... this sucks.

I'm also going to try to make the grey knight for my boyfriend... if I have time, between the Angels and this dress...

I made the hats for the princesses yesterday, all that we need to do on them is add those little white dots on them. I might make a purse shaped like one of the animal orbs that you pick up in the game. they are little animals that float behind you and give you power-ups for different things.

 I don't know which one is the cutest / would work best to do it.... I don't even know if I have time :/

DON'T BLINK

A friend of mine and I love Doctor Who. Most of the aliens are so alien that it would be hard for us to make a costume of, and neither of us really want to be one of his companions (or look like them).

You're looking....

And now you're not!

We love monsters, so we decided to be the Weeping Angels! They're these scary angel statues that look normal until you aren't looking at them anymore. When you blink, or look away, they come to life and will kill you!

We're making this to wear at Dragon*Con this September 3 - 6!