Rydia Dress

And finally...Rydia's dress!  Even though this cosplay adventure started 6 months ago, it was not until one month before ConnectiCon that I started working on the dress.  I purposely waited as long as possible so it would fit my [new] frame (goal of 6-7% weight loss, plus building muscle tone).


This was my first experience making actual clothing and feel really, really good about how it turned out!  I made one alteration from Rydia's actual dress in order to hide the bra.  I wanted the bra to provide lift and support to give the illusion of more, and in order to do that I needed to maintain the integrity of the built in bra (i.e. keep the fabric/hook between the cups).  That's why it is not fully open at the breast area.  I used clear bra straps, which are hidden by the beaded straps that Rydia's cloak clasps onto.  You can see one of the straps in the photo below:

Like all the other pieces of this costume, the dress was also custom design.  I created my own pattern from scratch by taking numerous measurements.  The fabric is a thin, stretchy knit, which allows room for movement and expansion.  There's also a hidden zipper built into the side---another new sewing adventure for me!

My crown achievement is the embroidery and beadwork, which took about 50 hours to complete.  The smaller design is made of an embroidered plus sign (+) with a diamond-shaped exterior and a single bead in the center.  The larger design is a combination of beadwork (both "jimmies" and round beads) to emphasize the highlights and embroidery to bring life to the shape as a whole.

  
What went well:

1. Overall dress shape
2. Built in bra
3. Extensive beadwork and embroidery
4. Decorative leather straps & gold eyelets
5. Designed to take on/off without any assistance (woot!)

What could be improved:

1. Less modesty!  I was a bit nervous over how revealing the dress is on the legs and hips.  I could probably take the bottom up another couple inches without feeling too terribly self conscious.  As for the sides, those should probably come up another couple inches as well.  However, I may run into issues as the top of the tights and my underwear line are *just* covered up at the current length.
2. More boobs!  After sewing in the bra, I read some good tips online to create larger, fuller breasts.  If I had started a cup size or two higher than actual and used more padding, it would have looked like there was more.
3. Stronger material for beaded straps.  I had a couple wardrobe malfunctions at CTCon when seated---the stress put on the straps when moving my shoulders caused the bead string to snap.  Originally, the straps had 4 strands of gold thread to hold it together.  Then, when I used extra strength Gutterman brand thread (2 strands), it still ended up snapping.  I'm open to suggestions on how to make this work.  A friend suggested I try fishing line, so I may give that a shot.  The holes in the beads are rather narrow, which may limit the types of materials I can try.

Rydia Belt Accessories

I really like the accessories to Rydia's belt. There are a number of fun, visually pleasing details that add a touch of flair to her ensemble:

1. A pink and yellow bead chain that runs from front to back, with a large round "bead" in the very front
2. A yellow sash that hangs around Rydia's waist and drapes off to the right side.  The draped part has pink trim and is weighted by a small bead string at the bottom
3. Lastly, a sheer green draped number with embroidered interior and yellow trim.

The bead chain is fairly straightforward.  A.C. Moore had a huge supply of beads in various pearlescent colors and different sizes, as seen below.

For the larger "bead" I used InstaMorph moldable plastic.  This was my first experience working with moldable plastic, and it will definitely not be the last.  It's a very handy material in that you can shape it virtually however you want.  I bought a small can of it for $20 and still have a lot left over.

In order to get the correct shape, I made a pattern in clay and then froze the clay (so the headed plastic would not melt the mold and cause it to warp).  I then inserted the ink tube from a pen inside the mold so that there would be a clear path to string this "bead" on the rest of the chain (any type of straw or small tube would suffice).
Lastly, I airbrushed the design details.  This step is very important for moldable plastic.  If you try to paint by hand, you are going to get brush strokes and it won't look nice.  In order to only spray the targeted area on the "bead" I covered up the other sections with a paper towel.

I designed the sash as two separate components: the waist wrap and the drape.  Because my choice of fabric is a satin-like material, it is very slippery, and I was afraid that the sash would unwind itself throughout the day and malfunction.  The waist wrap goes around my waist twice and ties in the back (cloak conveniently hides the ties).  The drape attaches (clips) on to the belt.

The drape was extraordinarily frustrating to make, and it was 100% my choice of satiny fabric.  I ended up throwing out my first attempt because none of the lines were straight.  And, despite my attempts to iron and smooth out any creases, there were a number of creased lines that I could just not get out.

Satiny fabric is very difficult to sew straight.  It is slippery and uncooperative material.  I made sure to use the proper sewing needle for the sewing machine and even looked up some helpful techniques, such as placing a layer of tissue paper in between the layers of fabric to prevent slipping.  While these helped, they did not solve the problem entirely.  I am not fully satisfied with how the drape turned out, but I decided it was not worth dwelling on further to have any chance of finishing this Rydia cosplay before ConnectiCon.

For the beads at the end, I used Martha Stewart's Pearl acrylics and hand-painted them.  I did this piece before learning how to use the airbrush, so there are some paint lines on the beads if one looks close enough.
 

The green draped piece in the center was more fun.  I used sheer green fabric from Joann in two different shades of green.  I used two layers of light green for the entire drape and one layer of dark green for the middle section.  The sheer material is very delicate and frays easily.  A thin yellow gold rope was used to separate the three sections and sewed on by hand.  The yellow trim around the edges is made from the same satin fabric as the belt.

For the two gold studs, I found something close at JoAnn's in the button section.  The rest of the detail in the interior is hand-embroidered.  I used metallic silver thread for the very bottom.  The remainder was done with normal embroidery floss.  To make the flowers stand out just a bit more, I added a couple red and orange beads.

You may be wondering what that small dark green thing is in the corner.  I made two drawstring bags to hold personal effects (ID, credit cards, etc), which are tied around my arm and hidden inside the sleeves.  It helps avoid those situations where someone asks for a photo and you either A) have purses or other non-cosplay items in the picture or B) make them wait while you pass all of these items to a nearby friend.

Lessons learned:

1. Moldable plastic is awesome.
2. Airbrushing is superior to hand painting.
3. Avoid working with slippery fabrics.  It is extremely hard to sew them to one another in a straight line.   Or even to cut in a straight line.  It's impossible.
4. Hand embroidery really adds something.  Look for opportunities to include this level of detail in small amounts (enough to get that "oh-ah" effect but not enough to drive you insane).

Rydia Boots

 
Oh boy.  Rydia's boots are pretty crazy.  Crazy and gorgeous.  This portion of her outfit took a bit of research to try and pull off.  I spent several hours browsing the internet for all manner of possible boots that could possibly be:

• in that color
• with a thick, low heel
• reaching just above mid-calf
• that didn't have a zipper in the front (difficult to cut)
• and were less than $100

Needless to say, nothing was an absolute perfect match.  Fortunately I was able to find something fairly close on Amazon for about $70: Diba Women's pro gress riding boot.

The boot is suede, so it was fairly easy to cut.  For the intricate pattern around the edges of Rydia's boots, I decided to do beadwork.  All of it by hand.  All of it.  I probably poured close to 60 hours into plopping beads onto the boots.  When showing them to a friend, they asked why I hadn't simply used a bejeweler.  A bejeweler?  Never heard of one before!  I have heard of a Time-turner though, and could have used one to turn back the clocks before starting on this arduous beading endeavor.

Lesson learned: before tackling a difficult and/or time consuming task, do your research first!  It may end up saving you a lot of time and frustration.

It may look like the body of the boot is staying up nicely.  Lies and slander!  It was horribly flimsy even before cutting out the front.  Removing the front simply made it a lot worse.  In order to get the boots to stay up, I decided to attach them directly to the leggings.  Original plan was to use little velcro patches, however, they did not work very well. I ended up hot gluing the boots to the leggings.  Not the classiest approach, but it was at least functional.

Also, with all the beadwork I had a lot of knotted string on the interior.  In order to not have any of that nasty business show or irritate my legs from constant friction, I lined the insides with a suede-like cloth.  It ended up working nicely.

You can see that the bottom does not fit snugly to my leg, as the boot is wider around.   And, when walking (as above), the boot material bulges out toward the bottom.  If I had to do Rydia's costume over again, I would have tried to make boot covers instead of modifying the real deal.