Walkthrough: Punk! Usagi

The photos from February's shoot are in. Credit to Simon Spiteri Photography https://www.facebook.com/simspiphotography/ and Glen Taylor https://www.facebook.com/taylorsphotographymalta/ for their fantastic work. Check them out!

This costume is based on a drawing I did of Usagi from Sailor Moon, dressed in a punk style outfit. 

I don't think I sewed anything from scratch: everything was either taken from my wardrobe or modified.

The Denim Waistcoat

 Initially I bought a denim waistcoat and tried to bleach it. I failed spectacularly, because I could not get the colour to shift. I submerged it on bleach, I tried applying bleach directly, I put it in the washing machine with bleach, I even tried soaking it in salt water. Nothing. 

Instead, I bought a light blue denim jacket and cut off the sleeves. I designed the patch using watercolours and photoshop. I printed the final design on to t-shirt transfer paper, and transfered the design to a piece of fabric. I cut out the patch and stitiched it to the back of the waistcoat. For decoration I added metal studs, and my boyfriend let me use some of his badges and pins. I also made a pin from an old bottle cap

You can buy prints, t-shirts and more with this design on my Redbubble

https://www.redbubble.com/people/malteselizzie/works/24045245-in-the-name-of-the-moon-i-will-punish-you?asc=u&c=615024-sailor-moon  

The T-Shirt

Initially I had another t-shirt for this costume. I took a white t-shirt and dyed the top part red, and added eyelets and lacing to the sleeves. Unfortunately, the dye ran in the wash and turned the t-shirt orange. 

The shirt began as a plain white t-shirt. I drew the letters on with a permanent marker, tracing each letter carefully. A textile marker would be better, as permanent marker sometimes blurs in the wash. Instead of messing around with dye, I bought spray fabric paint. It has a liquid consistency, and behaves a bit like dye. It takes some practise to use, but I like the result. 

 The Bat

The bat is made from foam: the original wooden bat was unfortunately confiscated at the airport :( I cut up a camping mat and used a bamboo stick for the core of the bat. I painted it with acrylic paints, and wrapped the handle in duct tape. I also used a small piece of styrofoam to shape the end of the handle.

My cat would make a brilliant Luna, but I don't think he'd appreciate having to wake up for a photoshoot

The Wig and Accessories

The choker is a piece of ribbon, with a sequin cut into a moon shape. It closes with a snap. The shoes, gloves, earrings, tights, and shorts are all from my wardrobe.  The wig is from Coscraft: it's lovely, but as with all long wigs it tangles easily.

Suicide Squad: Harley Quinn: Wig

Wig time! For Harley Quinn, I bought a blonde wig from ebay. I chose one without a fringe. A lace front wig would have been ideal.

A friend (Vladas cosplay https://www.facebook.com/VLADAScosplay) helped me to put the wig into ponytails. 

She recommended adding wefts to the back to hide the wig base, which I did. I also curled Harley's "not fringe".

The next step: dying the ponytails.

 I used the FW Acrylic Ink/Rubbing alcohol/surgical spirit. I’ve heard that you need 91% isopropyl, but I bought normal surgical spirit at the pharmacy and it worked well enough.

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According to the tutorials I found, you should use 1 cup of surgical spirit mixed with 8 to 10 squirts of the ink - there a dropper in the lid of the ink which you can use to suck up ink. I’ve been warned against using colours containing white ink, so I used a cerulean for the blue tail, and a mix of red and pearlescent pink for the other tail (8: 2 ratio of red to pink ink). 

I mixed the ink in old jar and carefully dipped the ponytails in. Later I transferred the mixture into old plastic and styrofoam trays (the kind you get frozen meat in - clean it first!)

I left the wig to dye overnight, then carefully rinsed out each tail in the sink - it’s made of ceramic so is much easier to clean than the plastic bath. While I rinsed the blue tail, I used a hair clip and a plastic bag to keep the red tail from dripping everywhere. I rinsed out the ponytails with a mixture of shampoo and fabric softener. 

Once they tails were dry I combed them with a wig comb. Be warned that if you use normal detangling spray it may lift some of the colour from the dyed wig, and it also gave my blue tail a strange texture. In general wigs dyed with this method have a slightly rough texture, but if you rinse them thoroughly they should be fine.

I’m storing this wig with the ponytails plaited-it gives a nice wavy texture and stops them tangling.

Over the Garden Wall Cosplay: Progress 1

Been a while since I updated, but I have been working on a few projects. I've almost finished styling a wig, and sewn about 50% of my Beatrice costume. 

The Wig

1) Here’s the wig I bought. The ponytails are quite thick, so you will have a lot of wefts to work with. 

2) You should only need a single ponytail for Beatrice’s bun. I’m keeping the other ponytail for a different costume. 

You also need something to wrap the wig hair around. I bought a hair donut, but it was too small. I cut the donut open, and I took so old socks and twisted and sewed them to form the other half of the donut.

3) Remove the ponytail from the clip, then use a seam ripper to remove the wefts. 

4) I used hot glue to attach the hair. It’s best to use loose hair, unless you can somehow hide the stitching of the wefts. I cut off the threads of the wefts. Glue the hair around the donut as best as you can.

 

5) My bun was a little messy, so I used hair spray to try and hold down all the little fly away hairs.

Not sure how to attach this to the wig. Maybe wig clips or hair pins? 

The Dress

I spent most of my holidays sewing this costume. 

Pattern was a Burda style regency pattern: I don’t think it’s a historically accurate pattern but it looks great. b

The light blue material was found in a thrift shop. The white organza came from a curtain remant, and the slightly darker blue is actually that I used on the neckline. So far the dress looks quite pretty, though for some reason the under-stitching didn’t work as well as I hoped it would, as at the moment the lining keeps rolling out. This may change once I put a zip in. I also need to finish tacking on the sash, and to make the light blue under-dress. 

Bombshell Harley Quinn: A Walkthrough

Although I've already got a lot of costumes done for Expo and Malta Comic Con, I thought I'd add yet another one: Bombshell Harley Quinn. Harley is a favourite of mine, and I love this design. 

Cheap and easy, I said. Really simple to make, I said . . .

To be fair, this was not an expensive project, because I already had most of the supplies: the wig, stretch fabric, goggles, the boots etc. I only spent 4 Euro on this project: 50c on the jacket, and 3.50 on the rib knit. 

I made the stockings by stretching material around the leg and pinning it into place.

 I then sewed it up. There's elastic in the stop and bottom of the stocking. I ironed interfacing on to the black diamonds, and sewed those on by hand. The stripes were harder to do. I partly hand-sewed them, partly sewed them on with a tiny zig zag stitch on the machine.

Next was the jacket. I bought a jacket from a charity shop and took it in at the sides. I also removed the sleeves and turned the lower part of the collar under to change the front of the jacket (hope that makes sense - you can see the basting stitches on the front), and shortened the jacket.

 Next I draped fake sheepskin over the collar to get the right shape and sewed it on. There are two layers of sheepskin.I then sewed on a piece of rib knit, and them added the zip. I also added epaulettes. These are just little rectangles of fabric sewn along the shoulders.

 The last steps were to reattach the sleeves and add the patch. Easier said than done. I had to keep trimming the arm holes to get the sleeves to fit. Lots of trimming and pinning to check the fit. The patch also took a long time to do, because there was embroidery on the back of the jacket that had to be unpicked and removed slowly. The patch was made by ironing interfacing on to a piece of white fabric, tracing the design on to the cloth, and adding detail with markers and paint. Next I used a narrow zigzag stitch to sew the patch on.

 The shorts were very easy to make: just cut off the legs of some trousers. I actually had to lengthen the shorts because they were just too short.

The bra was quite simple to make: I just stretched some red jersey over on cup and sewed it down. I sewed the diamonds n top. Not totally happy with the bra; sewing on the jersey crumpled the cup a bit. The bra is a bit skimpy, so I made a tube top to wear outdoors.

 Harley has a lot of accessories, such as this belt. I made pouches and the belt buckle. The pouches are made of scraps of jersey and interfacing. I added snaps, and glued on gems for decoration. The belt buckle is made of craft foam, PVA glue, and acrylic paint. The buckle and pouches have pieces of ribbon glued/sewn on to the back, allowing them to slide on to the belt.

I originally bought this wig from Coscraft for a female titan cosplay, but it's too yellow for my taste, and a bit too long (yes, I know I could trim it, but I hate doing so). I found a tutorial on how to turn a normal layered wig into a pony tail wig, and added red hair ties. There are clear hair ties on the ponytails for a more secure hold.