Luna P!

So, I actually attended my first convention recently.  It was originally going to be this really cool thing, I was getting my picture taken with Firefly actors, Rachel and Cari were going to go with me and maybe even dress up as Sailor Scouts with me, even though neither one of them really had strong feelings about Sailor Moon.

And then the Firefly actors cancelled. (Jewel Staite and Sean Maher, if you were wondering. Kaylee and Simon. Man, that would have been such a great picture.) So, I guess maybe I see James Marsters? Spike from Buffy? That's cool. Nope. He cancels. Leaves me with Jason David Frank, the original Green Ranger, which I suppose is something, but nothing to write home about. And then it turns out that that day is Cari's wedding anniversary. And Rachel doesn't have the money for it. And admission tickets are absolutely nonrefundable. (I know, I tried. Repeatedly.) Soooooo.... looks like I'm gonna solo it. I figure I'll enter the costume contest at least, I have all these fancy costumes after all.

I decided to go with Sailor Pluto. She was my first major costume that I finished, and I'm pretty proud of that staff after all.

So the thing is, I believe I've mentioned this before, I can't stand the thought of carrying a regular purse while cosplaying. It would just be so jarring, take you right out of the coolness of the costume. If you remember I have plans to turn a Toad plushie into a bag for Princess Peach, and I always intended to do a Luna P bag for Pluto. I know technically Luna P belongs to Chibi Moon, but she gets it from Pluto, so it works!

So, it's like three days before the con, I have exactly one evening to get this done, no more. The rest of my time is full. There's definitely no time for shopping for supplies, so I make up my mind that I'm going to dig through my stockpile of fabric and craft supplies, and if I can come up with the stuff to make a Luna P bag, I'll make it. If not, I'll just take my phone wallet case like I would for a concert, it's at least smaller and less obtrusive.

So, originally I had intended to actually sew a ball shaped back with maybe some kind of drawstring at the top or something like that, so that it would actually look like the "real" Luna P. I figured that might be a little complicated, and awkward to store stuff in, but I didn't really have a better plan until I found this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018ODZ4FU/?coliid=I1KA5RW96VMVN4&colid=WVV2QWR3H1GZ&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Which is just darling, but like $40. Although I will admit, I did briefly consider buying it, if I could have gotten it here before the con.  However, it did make me realize I could easily do a flat circle bag like this and it would be much easier and much better for carrying things inside.

So I get into my big plastic tubs of fabric scraps, and by an amazing miracle, I come up with two cut off pant legs from a pair of black cotton (twill maybe? I'm not sure.) pants. I have a whole stockpile of cut off pant legs, I never can just throw those out when I cut off a pair of pants into shorts. Hilariously enough, I don't even have the shorts that were made from these pants, I have no idea what happened to them. I suppose it's not really relevant. So I dig out my biggest pot lid that will fit on the widest part of the pant leg and we are off and running.

I think it's like a 9"-10" pot lid? I'm not positive on that, I didn't measure it. Probably less that 12" but not by much?

So I trace and cut out two circles in black, and four from a chunk of canvas I have left over from corset making. I wanted to line it in canvas for strength, and also to make some pockets in the inside.

Heh, the canvas circles look like tortillas.

I measured the circumference of the tortillas, it was 36", so I divided that in half and cut out two strips each of the black and the canvas (with a little extra for seam allowance) one for the top of the circle and one for the bottom. I cut out four triangles for the ears, and one really long strip for the shoulder strap. I wanted the bottom and top halves of the circle to be separate to create a seam on each side for the shoulder strap to be sewn into.

Obviously I ironed the hell out of everything, being stuffed in a plastic tub with a bunch of other fabric for years makes some amazing wrinkles.

Next came the face. I was going to just applique it on using scraps of fabric from old projects, I had plenty of that, mostly from my Princess Peach dress. My process for the face really wasn't complicated, I mostly just freehanded the shapes, the eyes were two half circles, the nose is an oval, the mouth was a rounded triangle that I cut the little curves at the top once I had the size right. A close observer will notice I'm missing a rather important detail of this MOON cat face that it took me an embarrassingly long time to notice.

I made a different mistake here, however, I used fabric glue to attach the face pieces before sewing, and the stuff I used ended up soaking through and looking all blotchy, which I wasn't happy about, but I left it for the moment hoping it would clear up as it dried. I basically just satin stitched around the edges of each piece, and for it being basically the first time I've ever appliqued I think I did okay.

I stitched the ears in place, and took a piece of the bottom hem of the pants since it was already a tube, stitched it a little narrower and attached that for the antenna. I left the end open, since I was not yet sure how I was doing the little bobble at the end of the antenna.

So after that I took two of the tortillas, folded and stitched down the top third or so, and on one of them I added a strip of elastic across one of them, sewn down in several places for things like pens and chapstick. After that I sewed those to the full tortillas. I then stitched down the middle of the tortilla just across the folded portion to make some pockets. Once those were attached to each other I sewed them to the black tortillas.

This picture was taken after the bag was fully assembled, but you can see what I mean.

This bag is definitely not as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside. As you can see, I also made liberal use of my serger, both the canvas and the black fabric loved to fray.

At this point, I sewed the ears together and set them aside, I added a layer of pink satin so that they'd be pink on one side, I serged the top and bottom pieces to their canvas linings, and got the strap ready to go.  For the strap I just folded the edges into the middle and then folded the whole thing in half, like a giant strip of bias tape, and then just ran it through the sewing machine down both long sides and serged the ends.

The next step was getting the zipper installed in the top piece. I didn't mention this previously, but do you remember that sweet biker jacket Stu's mom got me for Christmas? The one I had to add cuffs to the waist and sleeves so it would be long enough for me? Well, the shirt that I got from the thrift store to do that with had this sweet rhinestone zipper on it that of course I couldn't throw away, it was an amazing zipper. So I cut it out and saved it. And this was the perfect project for it. What better use of unnecessary rhinestones than a Sailor Moon bag?

So here's how it went. I took the top strip of fabric and I made a long lengthwise cut down the middle the same length of the zipper, with two small cuts at each end, like this:

This allowed me to fold the long flaps under, serge the edges, and stitch them down. Obviously this left those short cut ends raw and fraying. So I smeared those ends with fray check and then folded a small piece of ribbon over the end and stitched it down. Installing the zipper was as simple as lining it up with the nice neat rectangular hole I'd just made, and stitching it down. Easy peasy. I'd never had such an easy time installing a zipper, I should do them all like this! If only that were possible.

Again, this is after assembly, but you can see what it looks like.

At this point I carefully lined up the top and bottom strips with the tortillas, making sure everything was straight and carefully lining up the seams on the sides. Once I had them lined up I was able to insert the ends of my shoulder strap into the seam and sew it down. Everything was pinned all to hell here, I stabbed myself brutally and repeatedly trying to handle this and manipulate it so I didn't sew anything that shouldn't be sewn.

Very VERY carefully, I worked my way around the edges sewing them down, making sure I had opened the zipper beforehand so there would be an opening to turn it right side out, otherwise I'd seal the thing shut since the zipper pull was on the other side.

Once that was done, I was basically finished, aside from a few finishing details. I turned it right side out and started trimming away loose threads, and only now did I notice that I had managed to forget to put the crescent moon on LUNA P. IT'S NOT LIKE HER NAME MEANS MOON OR ANYTHING. WHY WOULD THAT TRIGGER ANY THOUGHTS OF MOONS?

I was so annoyed.  Luckily I still have that gold puffy fabric paint from Princess Peach's dress, so I just used that and drew a crescent on there. At Stu's suggestion I put a straw in the antenna to make it stand up better, although it still has issues, I need to mess with it. I then realized the face was still going to be blotchy, so I took the fabric paint medium I bought forever ago and made some fabric paint in those colors and basically just painted over to cover the blotchyness. It helped immensely, although I think I may do a second coat, I think it could be even better.

So, for the bobble, I wasn't sure what to do. I was planning to go to Joann's with Cari the next day for a different upcoming cosplay (that you will be updated on soon) so I thought maybe I'd buy a pom pom or something. But then I thought, No! I haven't bought a single thing for this whole damn bag, I want it to stay that way. I want this to be the bag that didn't cost me anything I hadn't already spent.  So instead I stuffed a small wad of tissue in the end of the straw and then just globbed on a massive amount of gold puffy paint. And it worked perfectly. The puffy paint has shape so it was still round and it didn't weigh the antenna down too much.

And the result:

She's so damn cute I want to use her for my daily purse. I love how it turned out. And I'm super proud of the fact that I managed to not spend a single extra penny on this bag. And I've made up my mind that whatever alterations or tweaks I may make to it, that's the rule for this bag. No shopping. Use what I have. I'm so thrifty!

She worked wonderfully too. I'd made her wide enough that I could easily fit my phone, sunglasses, portable charger, a water bottle and several other small things in there. I don't have any pictures of me holding it in costume, I set her down for the few pictures I have.

I had a great time at the con, even though I was on my own. I had a little trouble actually getting into the con, for some reason when we pulled up to the building and it was time for me to go in, I had a sudden crushing wave of anxiety, I was positive I was going to look ridiculous and I wanted to just go home. I came very very close to having Stu take me home so I could change into normal clothes and come back. But after a few deep breaths I knew I'd be annoyed with myself if I did that. I think the hard part was that I was going alone. I really wish I'd had someone with me. But once I got in there and saw other people dressed up I felt much better. It took me a bit to calm down, I was shaking and sweating for a bit, but luckily they were serving drinks, so I got myself a nice cold hard cider and just chilled for a second. Then I went shopping.

I explored the center, had my picture taken like a thousand times, visited the celebrity area, saw Jason David Frank, Thomas Ian Nicholas (Rookie of the Year), and Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I went to Brent Spiner (Data, Star Trek the Next Generation) and John De Lancie's (Q, Star Trek the Next Generation, Discord, MLP) panel, and then watched the Nerd Off panel to extend the sitting time. I tell you what, I regretted those boots like nobody's business. I knew it would be bad, but I severely underestimated how bad. I will not repeat that experience. If I take Pluto to another con I'm going to have some nice comfy flat boots for walking around, and the heels will be only for the costume contest. Which I didn't win, by the way, but I didn't really expect to. It was only my first con, and I'm still very much an amateur. But I enjoyed myself, even though I was alone. I'm glad I went, and I'm glad I went dressed up.

There's me, right after the con wearing my sweet new Wonder Woman tank top I bought there, completely wiped out, but happy.