Um of Umbridge

Finally, photos! A friend and I did a mini photoshoot in a garden. It was very sunny, so a few of our photos were too bright, but for the most part we took some great pictures. 

The wig I'm wearing came from JCpunk on ebay. It isn't accurate, but I didn't have a dark blond curly wig on hand.

You can't see him very clearly, but I'm talking to one of my cats in this photo.

 We had the idea to get out a paintbrush for this picture!

You can clearly see the cat in these two. He is such a good model. 

 And another cat, helping me paint the roses red. I couldn't keep him out of the shot, so just included him instead. He makes an excellent Cheshire cat.

 The dress kept getting caught on rose thorns. I think tulle tends to get caught on things in general. 

My friend tried to get a few pictures taken from a lower viewpoint, to make me look taller. 

You know what the trickiest part of  this shoot was? Spider webs. The spiders in the garden love making webs across paths, and if you aren't paying attention, you walk right into them. This was one of the few areas not covered in web

This costume was very comfortable. It's as accurate as I can afford to make it, and I'd love to wear it to a convention in the future.

Um of Umbridge: complete!

 And it's done! Um's dress is complete! The finishing touches involved gluing on little black velour hearts on the white parts of the bodice and overskirt. I used glue because I'm lazy.

I also made the shoes. They're not accurate: Alice's shoes have more red on them, which I might add, but I quite like them as they are. I made little loops of elastic, and sewed them to the shoes, then made a cord out of bias tape, and threaded it through.

Now all I need is a wig. I quite like the JC punk wig I found, but if anyone has any recommendations, I would love to hear about them.

Alice Um dress Progress

Progress report! Last time, the base dress was finished.

And the tutu was done.

Next came the bustle or over skirt. Alice has a striped overskirt on top of the tutu, presumably attached to the striped bodice. I measured out a rectangle that, when gathered, would find around the waist of the dress.

 I then had to make a ruffle to go around the perimeter, and around the bodice. 

This ruffle was easy to make, though time consuming. Basically you cut a lot of long rectangles of material, and hem the edges. I chose to double turn all the edges to prevent fraying. Once you have one long strip of fabric, you make a ruffle by sewing along the edge of the strip, using your longest stitch length and the highest tension setting on your machine. Like magic, the fabric will become ruffled.

Once i had a long enough ruffle, I pinned it to the rectangle of cloth, and sewed it on.

This hasn't been sewn yet, just pinned to see what it would look like. I added the red ruffle before I started the striped ruffles. I loosely pleated a strip of cloth and sewed it around the top of the bodice.

I didn't sew down the ruffle on the bodice: that was saved for last. Instead, I sewed a long black ribbon along the sewn edge of the ruffle, which hid the stitches. Then I gathered the bustle and sewed it to the dress. The bustle is attached all the way round except for the front panel near the side zip: that is held in placed with a snap fastener. The ruffle of the bodice was hand sewn to make sure it looked neat. 

There's still work to be done, such as bustling the over skirt, sewing the ruffle on to the back of the dress to make a sleeves, adding the black hearts to the dress, and making the black and red arm band, and the shoes. But the main portion is almost done!  

Tulle Monster: the revenge!

My next planned costume is . . . 

I began this a while ago, probably last year, but quit because the skirt was a disaster, and was stating to look like a plate tutu. I asked a few other cosplayers, and one of them was kind enough to explain that she made her tutu separate from the dress 

Whenever I have a costume that involves a voluminous skirt, I end up with a monstrosity of ruffle tulle lying on the floor.

Eventually, it became THIS. I used Sugardale's tutorial for this, but had to adapt it to work for 6 tiers. I basically made the lowest tier about 8 metres (I know!), the next 1 a metre shorter, and so on. To be honest, it's not the best method for a big petticoat like this one. If i ever make a similar petticoat again, I'll make it like a normal tiered skirt without worrying about ruffles, then make the ruffles separately and sew them on top. 

Would anyone be interested in a proper tutorial on making this skirt?

 I do like the way the skirt turned out. It's HUGE.

The next step is figuring what the heck is going on with the bustle Alice has. 

Also, I love this wig-not entirely accurate for Alice, but gorgeous. Has anyone had any experience with this seller?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=111045697081