Vintage coat

If you remember I posted a while back about making this coat for winter:

For reference, that's Butterick  B5824 - Patterns by Gertie. Yesterday I went fabric shopping with Carrie from Sewing Pretty and we spotted this lovely fabric, in a black/pink design and a matching lining fabric in dusty pink.

I also treated myself to a few new sewing things, some carbon paper and pin wheel, and a tailors ham! The Mr. did look very confused last night when he found it in the kitchen (where I keep the ironing board) and even more so when I told him what it was called! He is quite good and just smiling and nodding at sewing terminology - though I think he will always still giggle when I talk about boning (actually that's a lie - we both giggle at that!!)

First step today is to cut the pattern, and start to cut up the muslin. I know I'll need to modify the pattern to fit, the joys of being 5'10", so I'm doing things the proper way and making a fitting muslin first to save the proper fabric.

Gertie did a sew-along with this pattern, with videos and photos, so fingers crossed this should go well!

Oh and if you haven't ever read Gertie's blog you're missing out! I've been a fan for about 5 years and have half of her patterns (as two more were released last week!) and her book, so please go and check her out!

Minamicon Cosplays

Back in March I attended MinamiCon and not surprisingly, cosplayed! This time as Regina The Evil Queen, from ABCs Once Upon a Time, and Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager.

First, Seven of Nine

For the full shoot, please visit my lovely photographer Pouncy's flicker set.

Next up - Regina. Again not going to go through the full step by step of making this costume, but I will leave you with 7500 beads, or 13meters of beading!!!

Borderlands 2 - Mad Moxxi Warning! Photo heavy post!!

Last weekend, some friends and I went to Ayacon and as an event that includes cosplay, we naturally obliged!

Myself and my friends Carrie and Liam decided to make costumes from 2kGames' Borderlands 2, Myself as Mad Moxxi, Carrie as Tiny Tina, and Liam and Mordecai

We entered the masquerade, and Carrie won a prize!!!! (Walked straight out of a video game award) We had some amazing shoots with these costumes that weekend, and I've added a few of my favs below.

Moxxi was a relatively simple costume to make, velvet base, with fabric paint stripes. The buttons had to be hand painted, as did the swirls on the black and white collar&cuffs.

Speaking of which, those had to be hand crafted to look right, so the pieces were cut from white fabric, traced onto paper, cut up to give the exact right shapes and colours, re-cut in the back and white fabrics and stitched back together again (then painted!) Sounds complicated, but really only took an afternoon to do the whole thing.

Right now onto the photos! All credits go to:

• Andrew Reid http://www.flickr.com/photos/redkun/
• Luke Caines https://www.facebook.com/PharaohShoots
• Jonathan Cullinane http://www.manylemons.co.uk/)

1920s dress

I have a friend's hen do in a couple of weeks and the theme is 1920s flapper. Well as any curvy girl knows the traditional flapper girl isn't the most boob friendly design.

So I did what any maker does, any just made my own. I looked around at images of 20s dresses that didn't include fringing and came up with my own design.

I nipped into town yesterday and picked up some fabric, not sure what it is, there was just one roll in this color, but as far as I can tell it's a cotton/viscose blend, but in a gorgeous pink/coral shade. I also picked up some wide flat lace trim, and a few meters of embroidered and sequinned trim for decoration.

 

It was a simple draft, pretty much a tube dress with slight bust darts, I know darts aren't particularly authentic, but when you have bigger boobs.... then it was just a simple angular cut for the neck line and arm holes.

The arm holes and hem are overlocked, the arms then top stitched down. The neck line is faced. The trim and lace were just  sewn on top, the bottom trim encapsulating the bottom hem, and just peeking off to bottom edge to give the dress a softer bottom line.