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 Leggings

The leggings were a very difficult problem to solve, and I am pretty sure I went about it very ineffectively.  Rydia's leggings have giant openings toward the top with golden trim on the edges and lots of fancy gold designs.
 

 I was able to purchase leggings in a very similar color that were super opaque (partly because they were a one-size-fits-all and actually men's leggings).  That's the only piece that ended up going according to plan.


Lessons learned:

1. Do not cut stretchy material while wearing it, as it may result in overstretching and/or warping.  I thought it would be a great idea to cut the leggings into just the right shape while I had them on.  The material ended up stretching out significantly in the thigh and had to be hemmed.
2. Match the stretchiness of the fabrics being sewn together.  I really wanted to match the trim on the leggings to the yellow fabric I picked out for the rest of the outfit.  But, the yellow fabric is not stretchy as all, and in fact is downright slippery to work with!  I was able to overcome the issue with fastidious execution.  I basically measured out one-inch increments of the stretchy fabric while wearing it, and then pinned those stretched out increments to one-inch sections on the trim.  Heck of a lot of pinning work.

The slippery yellow fabric also frays very easily.  In order to make the trim, I folded and ironed the strips of trim into quarters, with the raw edges tucked into the center.  This technique seemed to work well.

I could not solve how to make the pretty swirly designs in the yellow fabric, and ended up using some of the leftover material from covering the interior of the boots.  The discontinuity in colors is a bit bothersome, but it was certainly better than not including the details at all.  I used Elmer's spray adhesive to get the designs to stick to the leggings and then did some hand-stitching to ensure they would not fall off.

Rydia Sleeves, Part III

Only two parts remained to finish for Rydia's sleeves:

1. Incorporate gold-colored string ties for the upper arm
2. Add the starry details

For the upper arm tie, I decided to use gold eyelets and weave a thin rope through the openings.  I bought one of those multi-dial eyelet crimper tools.  The tool itself worked nicely.  The tool in the hands of yours truly, however, ran into a small snag along the way.  The multi-tool ended up being too handy for me... when the gadget is squeezed shut, it has three different (simultaneous) uses:  1) make a 1/8 inch width hole in your fabric, 2) make a 3/16 inch hole, and 3) crimps eyelets shut.   Yours truly was trying to do #1 and had the fabric all bunched up in my hand, so I actually did #1 where the eyelet was intended to go (hooray!) and inadvertently made a small hole with #2 in the sleeve (doh!).

As for the stars, I thought embroidery would look the best. But, there are a lot of stars, and...

...so I listened to my husband (for once) and went with his suggestion to try airbrushing instead.  By making star-shaped stencils and using airbrush fabric paint, I was able to get crisp edges and vibrant color without having any nasty paintstroke lines.  I wish I had bothered with airbrushing around the sleeve opening, as that did have paintstroke lines.  It was actually kind of fun to use and gives a great result (with a little bit of patience to figure out how to spray evenly).  At least, it was fun for the first couple stars.  After that, it was downright tedious.  There are about two dozen stars on one side of the sleeve.  With two sleeves and two sides each, we're talking roughly 100 stars to airbrush!

A word of advice: use a hairdryer on a low heat setting to expedite the drying time for airbrushed paint.  Also, music and/or mindless tv shows on Netflix help to pass the time.

Rydia Sleeves, Part II

So, about those intentions to blog concurrently with costume design...blogging definitely fell by the wayside.  There were a couple months where I had to take a hiatus and figured if I only had time to do one or the other, costume should come first.

As of today, I can officially say that it is finished with a week still to go before ConnectiCon.  Woohoo!

It's definitely a great feeling to have seen this process the whole way through.  Now, time to start sharing the rest of the process with you! 
Some of the posts were drafted back in January/February and simply never published until now, like this next part about the sleeves...

Sleeves are starting to take form!  At this point there are only a few finishing touches left to make, but I can't help give a sneak preview.  Again, this took me far longer than expected...I was hoping to spend perhaps 3 to 4 weeks tops to completely finish this piece.  In reality, it has taken me almost 6 weeks.  It's hard to stay motivated when ConnectiCon seems so far away.

Here are a few handy tips for how to get yourself back on track and to stay motivated:

1. Plan ahead how much time you will need to complete your project.  If you set milestones along the way, you'll gravitate toward trying to meet your self-imposed deadlines.
2. If there is a craftsman competition, register!  It will put the pressure on you to fully commit to your project.  (Be sure to register way in advance, as spots fill up quickly!)

It was not easy to sew the yellow boarder around the sleeve opening.  First, I sewed the outer edge the length of the green fabric to eliminate raw edges.  Then, I carefully pinned the yellow strip to the midpoint of the sleeve (with raw edges ironed and pressed underneath).  The hardest part was ensuring the strip length was even on both the exterior and interior of the sleeve.  I used a shorter stitch length when putting it all together.

The next step was to put a yellow/gold trim around the edge.  I traced a pattern in paper and transferred it into the cloth using pastel pencil, and then carefully hand painted the design.  The pastel transfer pre-painting is just visible below.  I was not very impressed with the quality of the paint job, but it looks ok from a distance.

Rydia Sleeves, Part I

I first began my journey on what looks to be the easiest part of Rydia's outfit: her long, flowing sleeves.  When you boil it down, there really is not much to them, yet somehow they still manage to take an inordinate amount of time.

 

Part of the snag I ran into was how to get the yellow border around the opening while still effectively hiding the inner seams.  I decided to do a test run with some scrap fabric and hand-sewed it to get a feel...

Practice attempt did not go as well as planned.  Originally, I was going to give French seams a shot --- this would hide the seams on both the outside and inside edges.  However, my mind simply cannot wrap itself around how to do that when working with one continuous piece of cloth.

I took custom measurements based on my 5' 6" height to develop a pattern for the sleeves.  It looks like the point on each sleeve hangs just below Rydia's knee when her arm is out straight, and falls below her knee when her arm is folded.  I used tissue paper to make the pattern (for best results, iron or flatten prior to making a pattern).  Here you can see the work in progress with the yellow trim around the sleeve opening:

It's a slippery material.  This is good because it will help the sleeves to "flow" nicely.  But, it makes it darn tricky to sew.  I've tried working with slippery fabrics before with lots of frustration and mixed results.  This time I am [hopefully] coming at this more prepared.  I found a helpful video that provides some tips on working with slippery fabric.  It was incredibly helpful!  I never eealized before that all those different dials on the sewing machine had a real purpose.

Lesson learned: for sewing slippery fabrics, use a lower tension setting, smaller needle, and shorter stitch length.