What would the world be like without Captain Hook?

And we're back!

So. Last we spoke, I was sewing gold trim. I mean, I was always sewing gold trim with this costume, let's be real.

So I bought more trim. And I was able to do all the rest of the details, with a little left for the tunic that would come next. Once I was done with the trim, and got the cuffs and bias binding on the edges, I was as done as I was going to be at the moment with the coat. It needed buttons and tassels on each of the gold pointy things, but those needed to be hand sewn and I had a roughly 7-8 hour car drive ahead of me, and sewing buttons and tassels would be the perfect road trip activity.

I found some great sparkly buttons on ebay, and I bought a pack of 100 bookmark tassels and trimmed them to the size I needed. I was very proud of myself how I did that, I just made myself a small tube out of tape that was exactly the length I needed, then used a crochet hook to pull the tassel into the tube, lined up the top with one end, and trimmed the other. The tube made sure they were all the same length, and kept the individual strands from trying to slide away from my scissors when I cut. I also spent an absurd amount of time trimming and melting the ends of the strings the tassels hung from that I would use to sew to the coat. They were intended for bookmarks, so they were really long, which obviously wouldn't work for me. When I counted, I believe I needed somewhere around 60 buttons and 40-50 tassels. In the end, I had a huge pile of embellishments that looked like this:

But all that had to wait.

So, next I moved on to the tunic. I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I should have. I was working from this reference picture:

So I was just sort of vaguely approximating that with gold bias trim, gold rickrack, and whatever I had left of the gold trim from the coat.

Cosplay is chaos.

The piece of trim you see in my hand is how much of the gold trim I had left when I was done. The discarded packages of trim is what I used on this costume. I added it up, and this outfit has something like 54 yards of gold trim. OVER half a football field. And that was AFTER I gave up on being detail perfect.

Good god.

While working on this, I was also working on boots. I found a pair of plain black knee high boots made out of some kind of stretchy fabric. I cut them down to be more ankle height, leaving a large flap on the front I could fold down to be the tongue.

Ummmmm, unfortunately I didn't take any more pictures of this process for some reason. But I can tell you what I did at least!

So, I really wanted the boots to be shiny. But how to do this and still have them be flexible? I played with many ideas, and was looking at using black puffy paint that I tried to smooth to make a glossy surface, but then I discovered gloss upholstery paint! So I got some... and it did almost nothing. Sigh. In the end I sprayed it with Plastidip and the Plastidip glossifier, which made it a little shiny, but didn't give me quite the dapper gloss I wanted, but it was something I suppose. I covered the heels in red glitter, hot glued matching velvet fabric over the tongue so it would be red when it was flipped down, made some black bows that I glued to the front of the boots, just under the flap, and made some gold round buckles that I trimmed with rhinestones. Unfortunately, those buckles didn't even survive the walk to the con on the first day, so although I intend to go take a picture of the boots as the are now so you can see the finished product, you won't get to see the buckles. One I caught when it fell and the rhinestones promptly fell off, and the other vanished entirely. Halfway through the second day one of my bows fell off as well, I should not have glued these pieces together, I really should have sewn. That's what I get for being lazy. They still looked good. Even though the glitter chipped pretty badly off the heels too.... Man. My shoes didn't really hold up well. They weren't too uncomfortable though. I got one blister on one toe, but that's more to do with the shape of my foot and my toes overlapping a little in one spot- it's an issue I've had before, nothing to do with the shoes.

There you are. Current post con pictures of my poor battered shoes. They did their job, now they get to rest.

Anyways. At this point I'd started painting the hook silver. and it went on so smooth and pretty. I had an idea for adding lace around the bottom and chains around the upper bell for ornamentation and then painting over it. So I did. And it. Looked. Awful. The chains were weird and out of place and the lace just turned grey and it was so bad. I wish I had a picture. So I pulled it off, messing up my paint job of course, which then went through some drama of trying to re-prime and realizing I can't reprime over the silver, the silver makes the primer crack, sanding down the bumps in the paint and re-silvering. I eventually got it smooth again.

After a trip to the craft store, I bought myself some stick on rhinestones that I thought would look great. So I started sticking them on, I had to be very careful because the slightest bump marred my perfect silver finish.

Looks good, right?

Oh my GOD. What the ACTUAL fuck? Were you DRUNK when you put those rhinestone stickers on? What the hell did you do?

For a brief moment I tried to convince myself it wasn't so bad and no one would notice. But... I just couldn't. It's so crooked. So I removed that top row. And then had to deal with the mess of fixing my paint job once again. I decided at that point I was just going to spray silver over the rhinestones. The sparkly was pretty, but painting over ended up making it look more like they were part of the hook rather than just stickers. Also I got to tell Cari about how it removed the inherent perceived femininity that covering something on sparkly rhinestones can cause. And I loved the phrase "inherent perceived femininity" for some reason. Flex that vocab, man.

This time I got clever before putting on the top row of stickers.

This is my super fancy straight line draw-er. It's just a bowl, a sharpie, and some clay to hold the sharpie in place at the right height. I then just pushed my hook up against the marker and slowly turned it all the way around.

And it worked! I got a lovely straight line that I could follow for the stickers. They're still not exactly perfect, but much better than before. And now I could call the hook done!

At this point I just had a few accessories to do. I had bought a thrift store scarf for my ascot, I took a few minutes to sew lace all around the edges to make it extra fancy. I also had some lace doilies I sewed to the cuffs of my white shirt to add the extra fancy lace cuffs that come out of the coat sleeves.

For the hat, I flatly refused to go buy more gold lace or trim or whatever for around the edge of the hat. I have a large stockpile of lace I'd taken from my mom when making Princess Peach and trying to find the right lace for that. I knew something there would work. I also just happened to already have a pirate hat, that used to be just a regular wide brimmed hat that I had bought for a trip to Hawaii many many many many years ago, and I had covered it in brown fabric, sewed up the brim in three places to make it triangular and added fancy feathers to.

It was actually part of the generic pirate costume I wore to the Halloween party in 2014 where I first met Stu and he spent all evening telling me how pretty I was...... tee hee.....

So. I bought a small piece of black velvet, to match the coat texture-wise, and just recovered the hat, after carefully taking out the three points and removing the feathers. I found a lace that would be close enough from my collection, and with some shimmery gold fabric spray paint, painted it gold, and the carefully stitched it around the edge of the brim. I put gold bias around the edge of the hat, and out of sheer laziness, hot-glued the three points back in place and then strategically hot glued a fluffy white boa around the edges for the fluffy trim.

When I was shopping for the fluffy boa, I had a bit of trouble, I went to the section of Joann's where the boas were, and they didn't have any plain white ones! All they had was the white ones with sparkly bits.... all....over...... Wait. Aren't we doing drag? Shouldn't drag be as sparkly as possible? Why was this a problem? So I bought the sparkly boa. And it looks great.

At this point, I'd sort of finished my costume. There was a red striped sash that I needed, that I used a gold and burgundy scarf I already owned, with a red fabric base layer so it wouldn't be too sheer. I'd also already bought a mustache and a black curly wig. And I still had like two weeks before con! That meant I had loads of time to help Cari with costumes.

She wasn't quite ready, so I had a day or two where I actually started sewing on buttons to my coat just to be working on something, but we were finally able to make a fabric store run and split up the remaining costume pieces. She was going to handle Matt's Queen of Hearts, Dante's Ursula tentacles, and most of her costume, other than the white fluffy shirt. I was going to make her shirt, Danny's coat, purse and dress, and Dante's corset style bodice.

We used Matt for measurements for the bodice, since he's somewhat close in size and shape. It was so strange drafting a corset pattern with a man's shape, the pattern looked so odd! I added a bit of a bust to it, since it had been established that all the boys were going to have boobs. Once I had the pattern it was just standard corset construction, although somewhat simplified since it was just going to be a plastic boned bodice, not an actual corset. Pretty easy, really. We found the exact pattern we needed to for Danny's dress, just a basic sleeveless dress with a v-neck and princess seams to make it easy to fit to him. It took me maybe an hour to cut out and sew together, a few minutes to fit to Danny, and then a few more minutes to make the adjustments. I spent a great deal of time fighting with the facing though, that ended up with the neckline being all kinds of stretched out and had to be roughly stitched in place once he was wearing it, I was annoyed by that. But we were able to make it work still, so that's all that mattered. I did rediscover my lifelong hatred of facings though. I hate them so much. They fucked up Danny's dress neckline, They tried to fuck up Cari's shirt neckline, and forced me to to a metric FUCK-ton of hand sewing on Danny's coat to make everything stay in place. They were even a pain on my coat. God, I'd so much rather do a liner than deal with a facing.

His coat was a nightmare. I'd never worked with fur before and let me tell you what, I am not a fan. I cut out the coat pieces at Cari's place, and not knowing how to do it the best way to avoid shedding, made an absolutely horrible mess in her loft. I only brought it home to sew it together and was able to keep the mess to a minimum, but it still shed like crazy. And I broke FOUR needles while sewing it. Four DENIM needles. Thicker than normal needles. Shattered. It was awful. And I don't know if I just did it wrong or the patternmakers were drunk, but the lining pattern for this coat didn't even come close to fitting the actual coat. I should have ignored the lining pieces and just used the coat pattern pieces for the lining. I ended up having to sew random scraps of lining fabric to the liner to make it fit, and pinning and basting in random places to create this crazy franken-lining that had to be carefully hand sewed in place because there was no way I could keep anything in place to sew with a machine. Due to the size of the coat, I spent two hours on my living room floor carefully hand sewing the lining and fur facing in place. Godddddddd I hate facings. The effort was worth it though, the coat is kind of a major piece. The dress neckline might have been fucked up, but no one would care as long as the coat looked good.

It was only once I was done with the coat that I realized I should have cut the pieces facing the other way so the fur would be pointed down. The fur was pointed upwards which, I mean, isn't the end of the world, but it would have looked so much slicker if the fur was smoothed downwards. I realized it when I was making the fox tails for Danny's purse when I had to cut them out three times to make sure the fur was pointed the right way. I made the same mistake with his purse, the fur is still pointed up, and I hadn't figured it out in time to fix it. I mean, he still looked amazing and I'm probably the only person that had this thought... but if you're a creative type, you know how it is. It's so hard not to focus on the things you did wrong.

Danny's purse was just a tube of fur with a red lining and a drawstring closure, and three smaller fur tubes to be the fox tail things that hang from the purse, with the bottom three inches or so colored black with sharpies, which was time consuming but effective.

Danny didn't get pockets in his coat, because he was dressing as a woman. Women don't get pockets, they get purses. You want pockets? Dress like a man. I had added pockets to the lining of my coat, because I'm a man. I get real, functional pockets big enough to hold my money and my phone.

We all know it's true.

Cari's shirt is barely worth mentioning, the pattern I bought for my coat ended up also having patterns for the perfect shirt and vest for Cari's costume, which was super convenient. She was basing her Gaston off of the live action Beauty and the Beast, his outfit is so much more interesting than the animated Gaston. So I just used the pattern and made the shirt. And done.

Man, I wish I had a picture of something to break up this massive text dump. But I didn't take any pictures of progress on the other costumes.

I actually finished with a day to spare, which my poor neglected boyfriend appreciated, I was able to spend the last day before the con actually hanging out with him, which I hadn't done in weeks, con leaves no time for that.

And then it was time to go!

Even with the car ride, since I didn't work on the buttons the whole time, I still had a lot of sewing to do once we got to Portland. Luckily Matt is able to sew on buttons, so he did the buttons on my tunic, saving me so much time.

The next day, I was able to get ready pretty quickly, although I struggled with my eyebrows. I had intended to get them all trimmed and styled in shape before we went, but I never got around to it, so I was doing it Friday morning at the hotel, and I almost gave up. I wasn't sure it was worth the effort. But I kept at it and I'm so glad I did. They really brought the look together.

Uncanny.

Damn, I'm proud of that.



So, on the way to the con, a combination of Cari's encouragement and my own desire made me buy a photo op with Weird Al, who I've been a fan of my whole life pretty much.  But what that led to was on Friday we all underestimated how long it was going to take us to get ready, so I ended up having to take off before the boys were done so I could make it to my photo op.  But after my picture I was told that he and I could be brothers, haha

Apparently, it was taking forever to get the boys ready to go, so after my photo op (the walk to and through the con, and then after the photo shoot, was super gratifying. You would not BELIEVE the attention and compliments I got.) I went to the bar in the convention center to get a drink and something to eat. And also water. This might have been my most comfortable costume ever, but damn, it was hot.

And while I was sitting there, I got all kinds of compliments, and picture requests. It was crazy. And I loved it. And then I got approached by an actual professional photographer who was so impressed by my costume that she wanted to schedule a photoshoot with me. I was beyond flattered, and super excited about the idea of professional photos of my costume.

My golden ticket for my appointment!

Of course I told her about my group, and she said she might be willing to see them as well. They eventually showed up, and the photographer happened to wander by again and see us, and absolutely loved us, so we all got our own photo shoots.

OhhhhH!   I missed something.

So. The night before the con. I'm hanging with Stu and just taking it easy, and Cari texts me, telling me we might have a crisis. I'm concerned of course. And she tells me that Dante just texted her, and he apparently sprained his ankle and doesn't thing he's going to make it.

I realize this lacks some impact, because I haven't talked at all about what Cari was doing. I just don't know the details as well. But what I do know is she found the most perfect velvet sequin fabric for the tentacles and had a fantastic idea for basically a tentacle bustle for Ursula. It was turning out absolutely amazing and we all couldn't wait to see it all put together. And she'd been working so hard on it! This was devastating news, but we had to press on.

So, on the drive there, we ended up impulsively texting Rachel and trying to convince her to ditch work and come to con and be Ursula. She would appreciate it and we'd been trying to get her to come for ages anyways. And against all odds, it worked. She couldn't actually ditch work, but she decided to get herself a plane ticket for Friday night to Portland and come to con with us! It was amazing, we couldn't believe she was actually coming. We had the pass and the costume and it just worked out. And we were so happy the costume wasn't going to waste!

So. Back to Friday. We all did our photo shoot with the photographer- Susan Onysko-  https://www.susanonyskophoto.com  And we let her know we had an Ursula coming that night as well, and she made us promise to bring her by so she could get pictures of her too, and group shots of all of us.

I really can't describe the reaction we got at con. We've never gotten attention like that before. We couldn't go three steps without getting stopped for pictures and one picture turned into three turned into eight. We were a massive hit and it was amazing. We couldn't even do any shopping while dressed up because we just made too much of a stir. We were incredible.

So, at this point I think it's time to picture spam.

God, we looked amazing. Cari hit on all the women, particularly Belles. Danny spoke with a ridiculous rich lady accent, Matt was super posh and spoiled, Rachel had a glorious wicked laugh, and I just glared at everybody. My mustache was somewhat insecure, so I didn't go in for facial expressions much. And drinking out of a straw was my only option.

Susan, the photographer, is working on a book of cosplay in all 50 states, and this was number 29 I believe. So we could be in her book! She absolutely loved us, and insisted that we come back on Sunday when we weren't dressed up so we could do some side by side comparison pictures, which was also cool.  She also said any time we happen to be at the same con to come see her, because she loves our work and will take pictures of us any time we want. We're each going to get our own fully retouched professional portrait from the shoot, which is really cool. We also did a photo booth for each of us because we wanted more pictures.

This con was so good and so satisfying. Cari and I have talked about it, we should be burnt out after such elaborate costumes, but we're not. We've never gotten attention like this before and it was a high like you wouldn't believe. We loved it so much, we all agreed this was the best con ever. And now all we want is more. Luckily Halloween is coming up, and I have a Xena costume that desperately needs to exist.

But that, my child, is another story.

Ahoy, there.

So, I've got a bitch of a post for you today. I have failed entirely to post at all about the fact that it's now September, and do you know what happens in September? Rose City Comic Con. Which of course I'd been planning on going to since last year. So, that means I've had a whole new cosplay I've created and I haven't posted a damn thing about it.

Whoops.

So.

We had mentioned for Emerald City that we were going to do the Avatar the Last Airbender nomad band, which we decided to postpone for Rose City.  So, Rose City starts coming near.... and turns out we still don't want to do the nomad band. Which means we need a new idea. It actually didn't take too long to decide, we went with Disney Villain drag. It's like two months before con at this point. Totally doable, although I knew these were going to be elaborate and I still would have liked a bit more time, since with my job I wouldn't have as much free time as I used to. Previously I had been doing my work from home barely doing anything job, allowing me to spend all my time making costumes. With my current job I just had to grab all the spare time I could and pray nothing went wrong so it all went smoothly.

So, our group picked our costumes. I wasn't really sure what I wanted, I thought maybe Gaston or something? But then in conversation with Cari and Danny they told me they had picked the perfect one for me- Captain Hook. Yessssssssssssssss. I don't know why I didn't think about that. I grew up watching Hook with Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman and that is an absolutely amazing costume.

Look at that gorgeous elaborate bitch. My daughter doesn't really need a college fund, I need gold trim!

Cari wanted to do Gaston, Matt wanted the Queen of Hearts, Danny wanted Cruella DeVil and Dante wanted Ursula. They were all just amazing picks and I was really excited, even if somewhat nervous about the elaborate-ness and lack of time.

So, I did some shopping, found some amazing burgundy velvet at the thrift store, spent stupid money on ten yards of gold trim (ohhhh, as if that would be enough, you sweet summer child.) and found me a pattern.

I went with this one, the coat was the exact style I wanted. And in the end, the vest and the shirt ended up being perfect for Cari, so it was super extra neat!

I already had a shirt I could wear, one of the frilly shirts I got when I had my brief steampunk phase-

I also figured I'd just wear my black jeggings under it, nothing fancy since you wouldn't even see them. And I had found a plain black sheath dress at the thrift store that would serve as the tunic Hook wears under his coat. So I'm doing so well! But there's still so much sewing, and I really need to be able to actually help Cari with costumes this time. Chain chomp just had so many things go wrong I wasn't able to help nearly as much as I wanted. 

So I start cutting and sewing a bit when I have time and trying not to stress.... meanwhile work has just gone straight to hell and isn't letting up, I'm dying from the stress and hating my whole life. Do you know how hard it is to find just the right amount of wine to drink away the stress while still being able to operate a sewing machine? It's not easy.

Aaaaaaand then I stopped working there. It was unplanned and abrupt but that place was toxic. And lucky for me there just happened to be an opening on a contract with my previous company for something similar to what I was doing before, and I jumped all over it. And even better, I ended up with a week break in between jobs with nothing better to do than sew, which basically allowed me to practically finish my costume! But I'm getting ahead of myself. The moral of this paragraph is that suddenly the time constraints were lifted and my stress levels just plummeted.

So, cutting and assembling the coat went pretty well. I used a heavier velvet as a liner, I think they used to be curtains that I got from the thrift store for nothing. Nothing dramatic happened getting it together. So I started sewing on the trim. This is how far my ten yards got me:

 

Oh honey.

So, I had to go to the other Joann's location to get more trim, since I'd cleaned out the close one. When I handed the lady at the counter the spool of trim, I told her I wanted all of it. When she started unrolling it there was like a yard that was cut separate and she tried to set it aside. I stopped her. When I said everything, I meant everything. So I kept sewing... I swear to god, I saw lines of gold in my sleep. 

Around this time, I took a weekend trip with my family to visit my dad. In conversation I mentioned to my dad that I was going to be Captain Hook, he ran off back into his room and came out with a little $3 costume store hook prop. Because of course he just had that on hand. This is my family, people. Where do you think I got my nerd from?

So, this is the hook my dad gave me. Obviously it looks nothing Hook's hook, and the bell is too small for my hand, but that is a solid base to work with. Making a nice hook shape out of foam or plastic was a big concern of mine, since I couldn't just use a metal hook from a hardware store or something, since that wouldn't be allowed in a con. The hook popped right out of the bell, so I could use something else that would actually fit my hand. 

So, I bought a plastic stemless wineglass, drilled a hole in the bottom, and used thermoplastic beads to make a solid plastic core between the hook and the handle inside. I also added thermoplastic to the tip to give it a sharper point, I didn't love how blunt it was. I sanded the hook a bit, it had some brand logo on the side that was not gonna fly. It sanded off so easily though.

So, I made a batch of my homemade gesso that I used when doing Sailor Pluto's staff- half drywall joint compound and half white glue.

So, I put on a coat, let it dry, and sanded it. And then I put on another coat, let it dry, and sanded it. And then I put on another coat, let it dry and sanded it. And then I put on another coat, let it dry, and sanded it. And then I put on another coat, let it dry, and sanded it.  And somewhere in here I think I started to lose my grip on sanity. But the thermoplastic on the tip was so hard to smooth out. I honestly don't remember how many coats I did. But I finally got it pretty much smooth. So I bought a can of high build primer and sprayed on a coat, let it dry, stepped down to a finer grit sandpapter, and sanded it. And then I put on another coat, let it dry, and sanded it. And then I put on another coat, let it dry, and sanded it. And then I put on another coat, let it dry, and sanded it. And then I put on another coat, let it dry, and sanded it. And then I put on another coat, let it dry, and sanded it. And then I put on another coat, let it dry, and sanded it.

I used the whole damn can of primer on this thing. There are no pictures because there was no visible difference. But I became obsessed with perfectly smoothing this thing, I really wanted it to be smooth and metallic and reflective. So, I was doing all this in between other things, any time I had a gap in sewing I'd go sand and repaint. 

I also needed a skull shaped pin for my ascot pin, and I'd been keeping my eyes open for a skull of the right size. And then I realized my friend Sarah literally collects skulls. I texted her asking if she had anything and she sent me this back:

And I already could tell that white one by the rabbit skull was perfect. I learned to make a silicone mold so I could take a mold of the skull, it was just silicone and cornstarch, super easy and fun. Once I had the mold, I tried to use polymer clay in it, but the nature of silicone shifting meant when I pressed clay into the mold it distorted the clay and ruined the details. So I tried filling the mold with hot glue, which would have worked, but the first time I didn't get enough in there and it was really time consuming and used a lot of glue. So I tried thermoplastic beads, which of course worked perfectly. 

I actually used a gold shimmer fabric spray paint to paint it, and did a watered down black acrylic paint wash for the details. I don't have a picture of it, but I also added black rhinestones to the eyes. I love it.

So, in the meantime, I'm still sewing. I added gold trim to the coat cuffs, and a long line down the back of the coat, and realized I was not going to have enough trim to do everything I wanted. I needed more gold pointy things in the front, and lines down the sleeves and around the shoulders and I really wanted some pointy things on the back as well. Plus I wanted some for the tunic. So I made another Joann's run, this time to the next town over because the local ones WEREN'T RESTOCKING FAST ENOUGH. I had to hope that this last trip would be enough, because the next Joann's was nearly two hours away. At this point I gave up on screen accuracy. We were drag kings anyways, it didn't need to be perfectly accurate, it just need to be fabulous.

I also made the decision at this point that I wasn't going to do the sash as the sword. There were so many other details to this costume, as well as everyone else's that I wanted to help with, I'd be fine without the sword.

Okay. So, it's really late and I'm tired of typing. I will come back to this tomorrow and continue the process!