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.

Jadesprite progress/process

(I apologize for the lack of progress photos of this! I made most of this in the middle of the night and didn't feel like looking for my camera. I'll add in some detail shots of what I'm talking about later. As always, feel free to ask me any questions you might have!)

For Jadesprite, I just used a lot of materials that I had lying around. The only things I bought specifically for this costume were the wig, makeup, and glasses.

I made the dress out of a cotton/poly jersey that I had bought over a year ago when it was $1 a yard at Wal-Mart. I lined it with a combination of green fabric and white fabric I reclaimed from sheets bought at a thrift store. I used the green at the bottom of the skirt, so my legs might blend into it a bit more, hoping that it would help the illusion that I had no legs.

Since this character is only depicted as a sprite, not even having arms, I had a lot of freedom with how I would make it. I decided that a wrap dress would look a bit more "ethereal" or something. I wanted the jersey to drape a bit in the design, so I cut the jersey bigger than the lining. There is one instance in the comic where Jadesprite is shown in a more human form, and she has large puffed sleeves, and a furry chest, hence my decisions to make my sleeves so big.

I started by draping out the basic design in some fabric I got for $0.50 a BOLT. It was $0.10 a yard, so I didn't care that it was gaudy Hannah Montana fabric, haha
I came up with the design for the puff sleeves by drawing out a basic sleeve shape, cutting off the sleeve cap and cutting it in the middle, and separating it in quarters. I stretched out the sleeve cap more widthwise than I did lengthwise, if that makes sense. When I went to construct the sleeves, I just gathered the top and bottom of the sleeve cap before sewing it to the rest of the sleeve and the armscye.

To keep the sleeves puffy, I sewed in some tulle, which I had gathered up a bunch to puff out a lot, and covered the itchy ends of the tulle with ribbon. I sewed in a length of ribbon to help hold the sleeve cap to the correct length. I think I might add in a couple more ribbons in each sleeve to hold the puff up better.

The sash attaches with two pants hook and eyes, and a single snap to hold the bow in place on one side, and it is sewed down on the other side.

The ears are on a thin black metal headband. I cut some super heavyweight interfacing into the shape I wanted, and whipstitched it to each side of the headband. I then cut out the fur and hand-stitched it to the interfacing. I had to cut the fur to the length that I wanted it to be.

For the furry neck, I got some really long fur from a friend of mine, and colored the roots green with 3 different colors of Sharpies. It took a while, and my finger tips were all green from smudging it around as I went. I'm really happy with how it came out. After it was all colored, I trimmed the fur on the back of the neck, so it wouldn't rub on the wig quite so much and tangle it.  I then lined it with a white fabric, and added a tab of fabric and snaps to close it.

I made gloves similar to what I did for my weeping angel costume, by gluing on painted fingernails to make them a little more realistic. I just traced my hand carefully and sewed around that to make the gloves out of some leftover jersey.
I didn't want to deal with painting my hands for this costume, so the gloves were awesome to have.

All I did for the glasses was to paint them. I looked at other peoples' Jadesprite costumes, and I didn't like how the glasses were whatever color they ordered. I wanted mine to match and be green, like how they are in the comic.

For the makeup, I used the method I described in my post about our Adventure Time costumes' makeup. I just used white as a base, and green to contour. I painted the bottom of my nose green to emulate a dog's nose, and used green to color in eyeshadow and my eyebrows.

And that's pretty much how I went about Jadesprite. Nothing fancy, but a lot more planning went into it than I thought I would put into it.

As always, if there are any questions, shoot me an email or something! I'll try to answer as fast as I can!

Sophitia's Dress

I realized that I never really wrote much on how I made my Sophitia costume.
Sorry about that, and here it is about a year late, haha


Well, The dress was probably the simplest part of this costume.
I started by measuring where I wanted the dress to fall on my thighs, as well as how wide across my breasts it needed to cover.

I have a dress form, so it was easy to figure out approximately how big and where the "bodice" of the dress should go. I cut out tapered rectangle shapes for the bodice, and used 3 layers of sheep and one layer of white, so it was the same thickness as the skirt.

After I made the initial measurements, I looked at the reference photos, and figure out where the pleats on the skirt should be. They were box pleats, so each pleat is 4 times as large as the overlap on the pleat, if that makes sense. Here's a drawing if that will help.

I took my waist measurement and added the size of each of the pleats to that measurement. I then marked out a rectangle on a large sheet of paper, the length of my waist + pleats, and the height was how long I decided the skirt needed to be.
I figure out where each pleat was going to go, and marked that on the rectangle I had drawn. I then made a template for the bottom scallop shape to fit evenly into the rectangle and drew it onto the rectangle, completing the pattern.

I'll take some detail photos and add them in a bit later. Sorry about that.

I then cut out 3 layers of sheer fabric, and one layer of white fabric to make up the skirt. I sewed the scalloped edges together on 2 layers of sheer fabric, then again on the layer of white and the last sheer layer, ending up with 2 layers to my skirt. I topstitched each layer before screen printing the design on the skirt. I used a french seam to finish the skirt up nicely, and I serged it together.

For the sheer layers that tie on the shoulder, go under the shoes, and drape on my upper arms, I used my serger to create a rolled hem edge along all the sides of each piece.

After turning and pressing the bodice, I sewed it to the skirt, with the sheer triangular layers in-between the bodice and skirt, and serged it all together. I added in an elastic casing and added some 3/4 inch elastic to the waist of the dress to help hold it up.

To make the shoulders of the dress, I used some pleather lined with cotton to create the shape, and the straps are made out of the same pleather. I used some thick wire to sew under the "shoulder pads" to make them kind of clamp onto my shoulders.

The shoulder pieces are the main thing that holds this dress up, along with fashion tape, haha.

Looking at the dress, I didn't have a problem figuring out how to make it, but how to wear a bro with it… I don't know if this is too much information, but I thought I could share, incase other people are having problems figuring out how to get support in a similar situation of a backless, center cleavage to my waist, side boob included dress.
I used one of these sticky bras:
and instead of putting it on the way listed in the instructions, I didn't clasp it in the center. I turned the sticky cups 90 degrees, to where the part that would clasp together was on the top… uh well, I applied it to myself like it's shown in this video:
_____