Hey Pittsburgh Geeks. I’m back. After many broken computers, I’m back.
My daughter and I are into Cosplay. That’s obvious if you peruse my landing page. We made a few attempts at making costumes over the last few months. I’d like to share our experience with you. I will alert you to the fact that we are newbies or sewing virgins as you will. I am artsy but have never learned to make friends with a sewing machine. They don’t like me, I don’t like them. It’s mutual.
SIDEBAR: I have a weird thing with technology. It seems to malfunction around me more than the average person. I know this sounds like a weird delusional fantasy and maybe it is, but as all delusions do, it seems real.
Back to reality. My daughter wanted to cosplay as Link. Awesome, right???? Yes! She is 12, did I mention that? She is 5’6″ tall, so standard kids costumes are out. Also standard adult costumes are usually too small for anyone with more than 1 ounce of jiggle or boobs or a butt. HEY makers of costumes!!!!! Larger people like to cosplay. GET A CLUE!!!!!
Anyway, as Link costumes for purchase were a no go, Liora (my fabulously talented daughter Instagram @the_abstract_kitten) and I decided to build one.
She is a talented painter so she worked on Link’s shield.
I got the job of creating Link’s hat and tunic. Having made hats for myself and the other actors playing wicked step-sisters in Cinderella many years ago, I headed to Michael’s confident that inspiration would hit me. It did. I found plastic mesh that I hoped would create a foundation for the hat.
Hey look! I’m a milliner!
I hand sewed the material onto the mesh and shaped the hat to match the picture of Link as best I could. It required some folding and rolling, but the end result is good.
The tunic was not too hard, except that Liora wanted it to be long enough to cover her tush, so I bought 2 identical shirts and cut 1 up. I used several inches of 1 shirt and added them to the bottom of the other. I think it looks pretty good.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, my son (who is now 17) was into this stuff a bit and wanted Link’s sword for his 12th birthday. Mama was cool and got a wooden replica for him, so now Liora will use this for her cosplay. Bam! The planets align!
We added a cool renaissance style belt to give her a waist and a 2nd belt to hold her sword and scabbard. You can’t see here, but she’s wearing black leggings and boots.I’m biased, I know, but isn’t she adorable? I would like to point out the shield. Nice work!
This cosplay was for the SteelCityCon back in the winter of 2015. I went as Agent Bobbi Morse from Agents of Shield. I bought a Shield patch and sewed it to my jacket. I also got a Shield dog tag for fun. My daughter is a brown belt in karate so I borrowed her escrima, which made the cosplay, I think.
I’m fairly pleased with this. I didn’t really “make” it, but I did assemble it which took some forethought and a bit of confidence to show up at a Con where most people were dressed in Star Wars gear. Oh boy, I have a story about that in the next installment. I dressed in Star Trek Cosplay and was harassed by some Storm Troopers. Tune in next time for that story.
Here are a few more pictures of Liora and I at the Con. This is my favorite.
Holy Cow! I almost forgot to mention that we got to hear Gates McFadden speak!!!!! Such a treat. Those who know me well know I’m a hard core Trekker, so that was a dream come true. She had so many great stories about ST:TNG and working with David Bowie as choreographer on Labyrinth.
Thanks for reading about our “virgin” experience making a costume from scratch. It was a challenge, but I think we rose to it. There will be another installment coming soon where Liora cosplays as Zelda. THAT was a challenge. Stay tuned.
April
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