Who Needs Clothes?

I like to think of myself as a fairly crafty person.  Not everything that I make is clothing.  Sometimes I like to to try my hand at other things as well.  In my bellydance post I mentioned that my style is tribal fusion.  One of my favorite things about the style is the accessories they wear with their costuming.  It's a neat mix of goth/roaring 20s/tribal topped off with some giant silk flowers. 

<-- This is a close up of the detail of one of the hair falls I made

 This is what the full fall looks like.  It's about three feet long. -->

I made a matching set of these.  They are fairly simple.  The top is four-strand braided down to and in between the cowrie shells.  The bells came from so old anklets I had.  They add a nice little jingle but nothing too extreme.  I plan to make more of these in the future and experiment with different lengths and styles.

I am really pleased with how the headband turned out.  The base is just a white headband with gold accents threaded in the design.  I found it at Hobby Lobby as well as the flowers.  I had the long chains left over from when I made by scale bra and the little bit of metal you see on the other side is an old gypsy earring I owned.  I just sewed everything onto the headband and it came out quite lovely.   I also plan to make more of these, again in varying colors and styles.

To see these two pieces worn with an outfit see the last picture in my bellydance post. 

Costuming for Others

On occasion I will sew costumes for other people.  This doesn't happen very often as I am lazy with my own sewing and am generally putting things together last minute.  This means I end up spending the three or four nights right before a con sewing in the wee hours of the morning so that I have a finished costume for the event.  But this doesn't mean I don't ever make costumes for other people.

These skirts were made for two friends of mine for Grande Masquerade 2011.  We were all performing together at the Toreador Salon and so we all wanted to coordinate.  The gold skirt is just a simple panel skirt (6 I believe).  The red skirt was made with the two slits up the front much like my white skirt (which I wore for the performance).  The red skirt just had a  simple elastic waist.  I also broke down Katherine's red dress (see previous post) and used it to line the skirt which turned out really nice.

I made this top to coordinate with the red skirt.  Sadly the person it was meant for lived in Arizona so I had no one to do fittings with and I ended up making it much to big.  It's a little big for me, but it's close so I plan to adjust it some and use it for myself.  I was really pleased with how it turned out.  It's lined with leftover cotton from my gypsy skirt.

This is actually the second costume I've made for V.  The first was a plain black cassock.  When I get a picture of it I will post it.  This is for a Victorian character he plays.  I made the coat and the Vest.  They both had welt pockets so that was a little bit of an undertaking but they turned out pretty decently considering it was the first time I ever made one and the directions were terrible and hard to follow.

I would like to start making more stuff for other people in the future especially now that my skills are much stronger than they used to be but my biggest problem is time.  I work all day and I don't have many free weekends.

Game on!

I don't generally make costumes for everygame wear.  Instead I like to reserve grand costumes for grand events like conventions.  Part of what drew me to gaming in the first place was the ability to wear fantastic clothes, and I don't mean that in the stylish sense.  The opportunity to create unique looks for each character was very exciting to me.  While it is certainly not the only reason I game I still love designing and creating costumes, and my skills have only improved because of it.

I joined in 2007 and later that year attended my first ICC.  It was in Nashville, TN and I was playing Katherine my, at the time, Ventrue Crone.  Unfortunately not many pictures of this dress exist so this is all you get.  Sad I know.  It was a red halter dress with a low cut back.  I based it on a dress from the Kusheil series.  I also had a rose drawn on my back (sadly no picture of it exists). 

And now we will skip to last year because I don't have any more pictures from my beginning times in MES. 







This bra was made for my original costume design for Anat.  Which consisted of this, snake patterned silky wrap pants and a red belt.  I also wore the top for Grand Masquerade 2010, but there are currently no pictures of the full thing.  I know they exist because I posed for a lot of them but none ever made their way back to me :(  But!  I plan to wear it again for this years Not-so-Grande Swell Masquerade in Atlanta so hopefully there will be pics in the future!

For Anat I began to base costumes off of paintings of Cleopatra.  So I will post the painting as well as the finished costume.

 Obviously the top couldn't be exactly as it was in the painting.  That would be inappropriate <.<

It's hard to see the slits in the skirt from the way that I'm standing but I was really pleased with the shape of the belt.  I still need to find a badass collar though.






For this next one there are no actual pictures of me in the whole outfit.  But I mismatched the pieces at various other conventions so you'll have to use your imagination.  Hey, we pretend to be vampires right?  How hard can it be?

taken by Seraphina

These skirts + this scale bra =

Tada!  Not quite as close to the painting as I had hoped but it's meant to be based off of and not an exact replica.  Also my torso is no where near that long.  I thought the top turned out great and the skirts are multi-functional.  This was the outfit I wore for Grand Masquerade 2011.  I also danced in the white skirt from the costume above and the scale bra on one of the nights as well.  It was a smokin' combo.  I also paired the first coin bra with the blue and red skirts for the second night of XX con (first night was the courtesan dress).

Now for my most successfully executed costume ever!  This dress was completely designed in my head.  I saw a picture of a lace dress in a magazine (it was just the back and the front was actually velvet) and thus the idea was born.  It may also be my most daring dress to date.  Unfortunately there's only one picture and it's not great.  There was one that was taken in the hallway but I lost the card of the guy who took it and I don't know where it ended up.  As a side note I would like to get some photos done is several of these costumes of a more professional variety.

Anyway, the dress...
What you can't see is that the back buttons all the way up with little red buttons.  It was epic.  I need to wear it again *sagenod*

Bellydance

Gaming isn't my only hobby; I also bellydance.  I've been dancing on and off since I started college so I'm going on 6 years at this point.  Recently though I began dancing with a troupe in Auburn and have made some costume pieces for such a purpose.

These were taken at the first performance by my dance instructor and troupe leader Seraphina.  She's a wonderful dancer.  You can find her at http://www.facebook.com/OtakuBellydance.

I did not make the pants.  They were yoga pants that I just split up the side.  The base of the bra is just a black bra from Ross.  I added a black beaded trim with silver embroidery.  The coins are actually from a pair of necklaces I bought some time ago.  All the members had a color.  Mind was peacock blue so I made stripes from a deep blue braid.  I studded it with colored seed beads as well as some silver beads.  Just call it my version of sequence.  The center piece and drape chains are from Hobby Lobby.  Behold my mad hand sewing skills!

I also made the belt.  It's rather simple in it's construction design.  It's also a black base with coins that match the one on the bra as well as heavy middle-eastern coins.  They are sewn over a lighter blue ruffly trim and interspersed with seed beads.  There is a large Kuchi pendant in the middle of the back and it ties in the front through two silver loops.

This picture is from our second performance.  I added yarn falls to the belt and I wore a mesh undershirt.  I was performing a gothic tribal fusion piece.  More on the hair things in another post!  This picture was taken by Layna.

College!

My group of friends always dressed up on Halloween.  We also instituted Corset Mondays.

This was from my first Halloween at LSU?  I'm fairly certain.  The corset was the very first one I ever bought (also from www.crimsongypsy.com).  It's not too much of a costume piece, but I made the tattered skirt so that I could be an Amy Brown style fairy.  I do have wings but they are very hard to see in this picture.  My sister (who is also crafty) made them out of silver and copper wiring.  They were very light and actually tucked into the back of the corset so that it looked like they were actually coming out of the back.  She's a genius she is!  You might can make them out if you click on the picture.

Zombie prom!  This is also something that occurred while I was in college.  Though it was at a club not on campus.  I didn't make the dress, it's actually from Goodwill, but I did destroy it.  We had a great time tearing and bloodying them up.  The blood around the rips was actually red nail polish which worked perfectly.  We also dragged them behind us as we walked to the car, letting the concrete fray them.  When we got to grassy patches we ground them into the dirt.

Another shot of the zombie clothes.  My sister (I'm telling you she's brilliant) did the bite/bruise makeup for everyone.

The Early Years

My earliest costuming projects were mostly for the renaissance festival.  I went to my first one when I was 8 and in 2000 Louisiana started it's own.  I've never gone to one out of costume and over the years I began making my own pieces.  Since my skills were still pretty fresh this mostly consisted of skirts.

This skirt was originally paired with a green one underneath.  The top was hitched up in the front so you could see the underskirt.  I also had a while chemise and tan bodice with trim that matched this overskirt.  The pattern was made up of pine trees, stars and suns.  The coins are sewn where they are because I didn't have enough to sew around the hem.

The chemise was made by a friends mom and I was just borrowing it for the day.  The corset came from www.crimsongypsy.com and is exceptionally well made.  I still have it and it hardly shows any of it's wear and tear (I bought it in 2006).
Around the same time that I bought the corset I started pulling together a gypsy ensemble.  I made a full circle skirt, shown in the two pictures above, made from cotton.  It alternated unbleached white panels with a creamy yellow and red striped design (not shown).  I made it before I understood some basics about making skirts and the waist is extremely big.  It closes with a draw string.  That's my sister btw.

This was from the year that I worked at the archery booth.  It was bitterly cold (it even snowed that year) and we all had to wear a lot of layers.  I made a capelet from a crazy orange fabric with gold stripes that my sister found and it was lined with a similarly colored fleece that was cut from a 5 dollar Walmart blanket.  I did not make my Jayne hat.  It was bought at D*Con.

On Silence

I apologize for being so silent lately.  While sewing/costuming is something I'm very passionate about I haven't really done much since XX.  So in the mean time I will post pictures of other finished projects both gaming and non.