Costume-Con 32

Just had a fabulous weekend at Costume-Con 32!

I really loved the calm, open atmosphere. Everyone was very friendly and willing to talk about their costumes! In a way I preferred the demographic that attended this convention much more than that of Anime North. Overall the attendees were more mature, and very relaxed, whereas the AN crowd tends to be much younger and frenzied.

I bought some coutil for my next 2 corsets I have planned. (In theory I will be making these sometime this summer.)

Friday:
Wore my Eleventh Doctor coat with some more casual clothes underneath. I was on the "Intro to Tailoring Panel", which went fine overall, though I felt quite out of my depth. I went to the Single Pattern Contest and Monster Social in the evening. It was really cool to see the different things the contestants made with the few selected patterns. The Monster Social was a really cool event, that worked really well for a con of this size.

Saturday:
Although I was unable to finish the embroidered panel, which was to be the centerpiece of this costume, I still wore the rest of my Elven Archer original design costume. I did not compete in the Fantasy/Sci-Fi Masquerade, but I did go to watch it and it was absolutely amazing! Congratulations to all the entrants, your hard work really showed! Other than that I attended some really interesting panels.

Sunday:
I wore my new Steampunk Corset & Neckpiece. I won a Hall Costume Award for the ensemble, which was unexpected, but made me really happy! I attended the Future Fashion Show and the Historical Masquerade. It was cool to see the variety of costumes and eras represented in the Historical Masq. I went to a few panels, they were pretty good.

Monday:
I wore my Kero gijinka costume, which was its Canadian debut (previously worn at Otakon in Baltimore). I was on the "Cool Anime Costumes" panel, which was surprisingly well attended for 10am on Monday morning! The panel went really well, so that was good. Brought in some costume pieces to show. (Because panels are always better with things for people too touch/look at.) Went to a Game of Thrones Costumes panel, maybe someday I will make something from that series... Someday.

Overall, I really enjoyed Costume-Con. I picked up many good tips and ideas over the weekend and I am more motivated than ever to start working on new things! Looking forward to Costume-Con 35, which will be held in Hamilton, Ontario!

Pictures of my outfits are coming soon!

April Update

Hey all! This month is turning out to be crazy! So many projects, so little time.

Madly at work finishing my projects for school, while simultaneously working on my original costume (Elven Archer) for Costume-Con, which is coming up at the end of this month. Fingers crossed that I will manage to get everything done! Right following Costume-Con I will be barreling straight into prep for Anime North, so look forward to that. Once again, I encourage you to become a facebook fan if you want to see cool progress as it happens.

Recently I have done 2 tutorial style posts, specifically looking at one aspect of a costume piece and how to put it together (namely my Piping Trim Tutorial and my Busk Closure Tutorial). Fact: I actually started this blog in part for my own benefit, writing down how I made things/how I did stuff so I could look back and have everything documented. This way I could use it for reference later when I wanted to do something similar, and even if I forgot how to do something I would have no issue looking it up later. Wondering if you guys like these and if there were any specific simple tutorials that people would be interested in seeing in the future? (Like zippers, hook and eye tape, etc.)

Last month I did a collaboration with Crowtrees Studio! It involves 3D printing and cosplay! :) I won't go into too much detail now (saving that for a later post), but I had 3 costumes scanned to be printed in miniature. They are still in progress cleaning up the 3D scans, but I am very excited to see the finished product. Below is a preview of one of the models!

That's all for now!

November Update

Hey all! Haven't done an update in a while...

This month has been super busy, school is taking over my life. But I thought I would let you all know what I've been doing in the meantime. I am currently working on the rehearsal wardrobe for a production at school, which means I have spent a lot of time altering the corsets to better fit the actresses. This involves a lot of disassembling and reassembly. It's been a pretty amazing learning experience, and I have a much better insight of how corsets are patterned and constructed, even if I didn't get to make any myself from scratch. I hope to incorporate what I have learned into a future costume at some point... but what costume I am not sure yet.

Sadly I have run out of pre-prepared blog posts, so content may be pretty slim for the next few weeks. I'm also sad to say I did not carve a pumpkin this year...

In other news, for those of you that don't follow me on facebook I have been hard at work on my original design costume for CostumeCon, which is coming up in April 2014. It's an elven archer. I have been posting progress shots so be sure to check those out! ;D It's going to be pretty rad.

As soon as term is done I will be madly working on Christmas presents.

That's all for now! ;D