Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Absolutely Out Of Control Frenzied Crafting

So, it started in like, January or February of this year. I had a crocheted purse I had made a while back that I'd been using for some time. I don't think I've posted it.

The pattern for it is here, if you're interested:

It was a great purse, but it is somewhat small and I always cycle between big and small purses as I get tired of the different inconveniences that go with each. 

I had recently discovered a seller on Etsy who sells cool custom purse magnets and zipper pulls:

She had some really cool pentacle and dragon themed stuff that I just had to buy. I still had some decent chunks of the velvet fabric from my Yennefer costume, so I decided I wanted a new purse with the pentacle magnets and brocade velvet. 


And decided it was perfect for my new purse. 

It came out great.

I used it for a month or so and almost immediately came to realize I can't STAND having a flap over the top of my purse like that. I need my purse to have easier access, this was driving me crazy, despite how cool it looked. I was gonna have to make a new purse, no matter how silly it was to replace this basically brand new one. 

I knew for my second purse I wanted to use the dragon themed hardware from Natural Nerd. I ordered some alligator skin vinyl in black from Amazon:

https://a.co/d/b5fqwiR

And started looking for the right pattern. 

Around this same time, I saw a Facebook ad for a crafter/influencer/cosplayer girl named Charity Grace. She's crafty and athletic and gorgeous and I hate her. 

I don't. I'm just jealous. 


Anyways, she was advertising for a new tutorial on her website for a new costume that looked like this:

I.... I mean.... I had to have it. 

I, like so many other women right now, am DEEP into my smut fantasy books era, and while Charity doesn't say so, that is CLEARLY Violet Sorrengail from Fourth Wing, which is probably my favorite of the smutty fantasy books I've read. It's so good. 

Charity Grace was advertising for her membership only website that I did check out, but it was like $10 a month and I didn't think I needed it. I got most of the info on how to make the outfit from the ad, honestly. I watched it over and over and took a lot of screenshots. So I ordered more of the alligator vinyl and got ready to craft. 

AT THIS SAME TIME.

I stumbled across this pattern from Simplicity:

Holy shit. It's so beautiful. I mean, I wouldn't pick pastel purple but she looks straight out of a fairytale and I WANT it. 

Yes, I do see the wildly clashing vibes of these outfits. I have more than one side to me, deal with it. A woman can be both a badass dragon riding warrior and a fairy princess. 

I tried to resist, but in the end I ordered the pattern. The pattern designer even had a full sew along video for this pattern, just to make it super easy! I could totally handle two big costume projects at once. 

I did some fabric shopping and picked out a black linen for the base dress and a golden brown chiffon for the sheer layer, and I found a gold beaded organza for the flower layer, figuring I could skip the step where she manually attaches all the flowers by just using a flowered fabric. My plan was to go for a gold and black kind of theme, with brown leather accessories. 


I bought all my fabric for this project from https://fabricwholesaledirect.com/ by the way. It's my go-to when I can't find it at Joann's and I guess it's my primary source now that Joann's is out of business. 😭😭😭

I also realize how funny that sounds as most of the other fabric I've written about I ordered on Amazon. I swear I shop here more, sometimes Amazon is just convenient when I'm also getting other stuff!

I had some faux brown leather vinyl leftover from Rachel's Eevee corset I figured I would use for the accessories. 

I even managed to find what I'm almost certain is the exact same lace the pattern maker used for trim on her dress on Amazon. Since I was going black and gold, it worked perfectly for my version. 


I even discovered a local ren faire coming to town in May so I'd have somewhere to wear this outfit!

While shopping for this project I kept studying Charity Grace's video for the dragonrider armor and the thought that there was a more complete tutorial with more specific details on her website was absolutely TORMENTING me. Sure, I'm clever enough to figure it out, but what if there's some useful techniques or something?

So I ended up signing up for it. 

There was a free 7 day trial period, I figured I'd get what I needed for this outfit and then cancel. 

I get in there and I am OUTRAGED to find that her "tutorial" is a video that is maybe a minute longer than the ad, with zero additional info, just longer shots of each section and a few Amazon links for the supplies she used. This was NOT worth $10 a month. I guess there's a community and whatnot, but I don't care about that. 

The website is https://www.whimsyforge.co/ by the way. I may not think it's worth the money, but maybe you do and want to check it out. I'm not gonna steal traffic from her. And she does deserve credit for the ideas, after all. I didn't design this stuff.

So I screenshot and save any relevant information and go looking through the site just to see what else there is while I'm here.

Oh. Oh damn. Fuck me. 

I'm so fucked. 

There is almost no hesitation as I screenshot the information I need and go to the supply links and order everything. A mesh corset, TONS of various flowery and beaded appliques, and some very very pretty printed chiffon. 

I'm sorry, there just is no universe where I don't have this gorgeous drapey flowy elf gown. And it's actually a pretty simple assembly. So again, not REALLY adding that much to my rapidly growing project list. 

I also have half a dozen little things I'd like to finish while I'm at it, some leggings that need better elastic waistbands, a cloak project I started months ago I'd like to finish, a capelet I want to make, the closure for the velvet Yennefer skirt I made and just didn't QUITE finish. Things like that. It's getting crazy. 

Oh, and I also found the pattern I wanted to use for my new dragon purse. 

FREE The Gerbera Mini Crossbody Bag - PDF Sewing Pattern – Blue Calla Patterns https://share.google/mRJjKO34DiEKedAvz

I had a vague idea of turning those front panels into one solid panel that looks like a dragon wing and is a pocket for my phone with the dragon head magnet in the middle to hold it closed.

Around this time I was playing my way through Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2, since you know I played Baldur's Gate 3 and I wanted more from that developer. Good games all around. I beat 2, and then I put the video games down and went into SUPER CRAFT MODE. 

So, while I was waiting for my fabric for the princess dress to arrive, I started with the purse. My idea worked, I took the front panel piece and made it a separate piece with a lining. I tested several dragon wing designs until I got what I liked. I even figured out how to sew some black lacing on to be the ridges in the wing. 

It turned out perfect. My phone slipped right into that pocket in front, I was super happy. 

The three costumes I sort of worked on all at once, when I got tired of doing one thing I could switch to another, but it will get very confusing if I write it out that way, and honestly, it's not like I remember every detail at this point, so I will just describe each costume one at a time. 

First, the princess dress. 

So, as I was waiting for the fabric, I got an email from the company telling me that unfortunately they were actually out of stock of the beaded organza. I panicked, since I had sort of based my whole theme around it. Lucky for me they came back like a day later and said "oops! Nevermind! We totally have it!" Freaked me out for no reason. 

So my fabric arrives. The linen is lovely, the chiffon is good but the organza....

That.... That's orange, man. Going back and looking at the website pictures, I really don't know why I was so convinced it was a gold color. It's definitely orange. I hate it. Okay, I don't hate it, but it is ALL WRONG for what I was planning. I can't put orange organza with a black linen base, I'll look like a Halloween pumpkin. So I scratch the whole plan. I was going to try to return the fabric, but then I had the idea that the organza would make a really cute party dress with a fitted bodice and a circle skirt. And the chiffon would make a pretty tiered maxi skirt. 

So I set those fabrics aside. I was still gonna use the black linen and the gold lace, but I needed a new theme. Out of emotional distress over my ruined plans, I went to Joann's just to see what was left on their picked over shelves. This was in the last month or so of them being open, so everything was on clearance. 

I browsed around and eventually found this really pretty black tulle fabric with embroidery flowers, and a yellow tulle with 3d flowers that would be gorgeous as embellishments. I already had a fairly large chunk of burgundy chiffon in my fabric stash that would match that had a purpose at one time, but damned if I remember what it was now, I've had it for years. 

I then ran to Wal-Mart for unrelated reasons and in their fabric section found this really cool basket weave brown faux leather. This idea started to come together of a spring time basket of flowers kind of theme. The black makes it kind of dark though.... Wait, darkness and springtime flowers? Persephone! New theme found!

I bought the faux leather and went home and ordered a bunch of pomegranate seed beads to make jewelry and decorations with and got to work. 

And these are the beads I bought:

I used these to make a necklace, some earrings and a chain I draped around my hips, just for decoration. 

I also picked up some tiny ribbon flowers with rhinestones in the middle at Wal-Mart I figured I would sew to the black tulle for a little extra dimension and sparkle. 

The dress was a shocking nightmare to make, honestly. It should have been simple, especially with the video. But the sizing was all over the place, it tried to convince me I needed the largest possible size, which was obviously incorrect, plus the dress did this weird godet thing on the sides to make it flare out instead of just having panels flaring out as a solid piece. It also made the absolutely insane choice of having you hem the sleeves AFTER putting elastic in them to gather them up. Who in their right mind would hem AFTER gathering? It was such a strange pattern. I did not enjoy making it. 

I also made some minor alterations since I didn't want the whole chemise to be covered in a layer of chiffon, I just wanted it to be a skirt for the lower part, so I kinda had to get clever and just make a skirt with an elastic waist band out of the chiffon and tulle layers that would be hidden by the corset belt. 

I also made a flower crown and a little drawstring pouch to go with it for accessorizing.

The end result was gorgeous, but goddamn, 0/5 star pattern. 

I am kicking myself every day that I don't have a picture of myself actually wearing it. I did wear it to the Ren faire in May, and got tons of compliments, but we never got around to taking pictures. 

Shortly before the Ren faire I had a sudden intense desire for a crochet parasol. I saw one online and it was gorgeous and it's not like I didn't have enough projects, right?

I chose this pattern:


I worked on it during the early evenings, Stu and I were watching the Sopranos for the first time so I would just crochet while we watched. 

I'm not unhappy with it, but somehow I came out with two extra repititions of the pattern, I really don't know how, so it doesn't sit exactly evenly on the frame. I didn't even end up taking the parasol to the Ren faire, I took the fan I made for Yennefer, and between that and always having a drink in my hand I would not have been able to handle a parasol. 

I also made a black snood (medieval hair net thing for women) like, the night before the Ren faire because it was supposed to be like 90 degrees and I wanted to put my hair up. It's nothing fancy, but the pattern I used is here:

Ravelry: Snood-Tastic pattern by Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall https://share.google/7opmnfdvQHw4eEzJv

That's it for the princess dress. Next up, the elf dress!

The chiffon was from a site called Before & Ever, but that company apparently has become a children's clothing company now? So I can't even link you to the fabric I got. They had like 40 different patterns, and I did consider getting a different one from the one Charity Grace used, but in the end I just really like the green leafy vibe. The fabric was being sold as a prop for photography, mostly for what looked like maternity shoots, so if you're looking for something similar, maybe try something like that? 

I got various different appliques too, some the same but not all because some were just too expensive and I think you might understand why I was starting to hesitate to spend more money. Mostly just a bunch of random things from Amazon. 

I also opted to cover the mesh corset, her version is much more daring and revealing and  I mean, damn she's got the body and the confidence for it. I do not. 

I had these semi-sheer moss green curtains I'd picked up from the thrift store years ago just because I liked the fabric, so I used those and a great deal of fabric glue to just cover the mesh corset in that, making a green corset top that still has sheer vibes without actually being sheer. I also used the rest of the curtains to make a lining/underskirt to, again, reduce sheerness, hide the seams of the skirt, and also just to add fullness. Nothing wrong with a fuller skirt. 

The whole thing was really simple, cutting the chiffon into triangles and sewing them together, attaching them to the corset. The sleeves are separate pieces, cut out, hemmed and attached to elastic to basically wear as flowy armbands.  The fun thing I did learn from Charity Grace was the idea of sewing fishing line into the hems to make them all wavy and flowy. I doubted it at first, but it really added a lot of movement and fun flowy-ness to the dress. 

 I had no intention of copying her hot glue method for attaching the appliques but I wasn't gonna sew them either, so I used my old friend fancy fabric glue. Just put the dress in my mannequin and went to town. 

This is what I came up with. Charity Grace's version is more sparkly with gems and whatnot, I went more leafy with vines and I'm very happy. I don't have a picture, but I even found some pearls that match the ones in the dress and made some jewelry, plus a leaf crown. 

Also, for literally no reason, I bought a long while wavy wig from Arda Wigs to go with it. Here's the thing, in any fantasy game where there is a character creator, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, etc, I will always, ALWAYS choose to be a white haired elf, as long as I have the option. Even if I can't be an elf, like in Dragon Age 2, I still have white hair. It's my dream hair color. So we're gonna call this elf dress my OC costume, and if she's an elf, she needs white hair. Plus someday I am gonna cosplay Ciri from the Witcher 3, so I will need a white wig eventually anyways. 

I still don't have a plan for when I will wear this, I'm kinda hoping for a Halloween party this year. Or a con, I suppose, but I have other plans for con. 

Next up, the dragonrider armor. 

So, Charity Grace bought a generic Amazon corset for her armor. As an experienced corset maker, obviously I didn't need to do that. But with everything else I was working on, I didn't REALLY want to make a new corset from scratch. So I dug through my corset collection.

And I came up with one of my oldest corsets, my first overbust, second ever, made from a random generic pattern I found online, lined with denim, burgundy steampunk corset. You might remember it from one of my way, way, way back posts. 
It was a solid little corset, but the bust shape never worked right for me. The cups just opened outwards and didn't actually come back in to cover anything so it could be we be worn without a shirt. I had a theory that I could gather in the cups with some heavy duty stitching, which would of course be as ugly as sin, unless of course one were to cover the area in dragon scales. But I wasn't using the corset as it was, it was worth seeing if I could alter it to make it wearable. 

So, two big problems to start with. It was burgundy, and I needed to be black, and also, you better BELIEVE that corset is too small for me. Technically I could get into it, but only if the lacing was left so open you could see my whole damn back. 

The first problem was easy. Fabric paint. It took two coats to make it solid, but I just straight up painted the thing black. Easy. The second problem was MUCH more complicated. 

In the end what I did was carefully open up a seam on the back, attach a strip of canvas to either raw seam on the inside, add a layer of alligator scale vinyl to the outside, top stitch it flat and then add bias binding to the added sections. Luckily it was just store bought bias, no fancy homemade stuff on this one, and I had some on hand. 

I also added a scale modesty panel in the back just for security. 

We'll get to the paint job in a minute, but doesn't it look cool?!?!?

I was also able to run some stitches along the top of the bust and gather it in like I thought. And yes, it is ugly as sin. But it worked. And it will be invisible. 

Next up was making the scales. These were really very simple, but good GODDAMN if I didn't overdo it. 

This was just a process of cutting out strips of vinyl of various sizes, cutting those into small rectangles, and then cutting the rectangles to a point on one end to make it scale shaped. 

I had a 1 yard piece of vinyl that I had cut a few things out of for the dragon purse and bracers and whatnot, and I decided to take the remaining vinyl in that piece and turn it all into scales. 

THIS WAS WAY TOO MUCH. 

I cut it into strips of 1 1/2", 1" and 1/2". Cut those into rectangles, cut the rectangles into points, as described. I did try to curve the cut I made for the points so the scales weren't just harsh straight lines, that wouldn't look natural. 

I didn't count, but I must have made HUNDREDS of scales. SO MANY. I should not have used most of a yard of vinyl. I needed like, a half to a quarter yard. It was an absolute nightmare. But once I was in, I was committed. I cut out all the scales. 

The next detail on the scales was putting a ridge down the middle. Charity Grace just holds the folded in half scales up to a lighter to warm the middle, then presses the fold while it's warm to set the crease. This works wonderfully, but staring at the mountain of scales in front of me, my thumb skin would be ripped off my finger flicking a lighter that many times. I needed an alternate method. 

My solution was a hair straightener and parchment paper. I would take a piece of parchment paper, fold it in half, settle a scale in the fold so that it was also folded, and then I would press it with the hair straightener fairly briefly. I had to be careful, because the straightener could and did melt the vinyl if I held it too long, but this worked perfectly. And was way less violent on my fingers. It was however somewhat rough on my shoulder, due to my couch setup where I did this, my straightener was on the end table to my left, and constantly reaching over to set down and pick up the straightener just ruined me. I counted and I spent about 20 hours creasing scales. Just the creasing step. That does not include all the cutting. It was awful. 

In the end, I had three very full ziplock bags of various sized scales. 

Next, was attaching them. I just used glue. Again, Charity Grace used hot glue, but that just feels like asking them to fall off if they get bumped. I used fabric glue. I originally intended to place the scales so that the buskin the front of the corset could still be used to get in and out of it, but it really wasn't going to work, so I just sewed it shut. It is a non-functional busk now. 

I followed her recommendation for larger scales in the middle and fading out to smaller scales and just worked from the bottom up between two of the side front bones. It took some time since regular fabric glue doesn't grab as fast as hot glue, I had to hold them down a bit while it set, but I got there. 

Finally, painting. 

Charity Grace uses the Folk Art Color Shift paint in White flash. I went to Michael's to get it, and while there saw the full line of the Dragonfly Glaze iridescent paints as well. I bought them all. I didn't even have a plan but they're soooooooo SHINY. I also picked up a bottle of the Color Shift in Black Flash, figuring I'll play with the paints and see what I like. 

I tested ALL the sparkly paints on some scrap vinyl, and in the end the White flash was too opaque. Made the scales look kinda silver, which isn't a bad thing, but not what I'm going for. After playing around, I settled on these three:
I think. I do not confidently remember at this point. 

What I believe I did was start with the blue-green-gold, and I painted that in the edges and ridge of each scale. Loosely and messily, it really didn't have to be perfect. And then I went in with the black flash, hitting the unpainted sides of the scales. Again, messily. After this I was somewhat dissatisfied with the green-ness I had going on. I wanted to lean more into a blue-purple like Andarna's iridescent-ness in Fourth Wing, even though I KNOW the scales in Violet's corset aren't from her. So then I took the violet-blue-green and just did light streaks all over everything. In the end I got something that sort of looks like an oil spill, which wasn't my intention, but I LOVE it. 

It just, really, really doesn't photograph easily. 

It's also not as aggressive as the White flash would have been. More subtle, which is what I wanted.

You might notice there are some grommets in the lower edge of the corset. Well those were added because I want to be able to have a pouch with this outfit to carry things in, but I do not trust those scales to put up with the pressure of a belt worn over them. So I made this. 

Just a real simple pouch with clips on the back that will hook into those grommets, no belt needed. And I put grommets on both sides so it looks like an aesthetic choice when I'm not using the pouch. 

For the shoulder armor, I originally tried to make my own shoulder piece out of black vinyl, but failed utterly. It fit poorly, edges didn't line up, I just apparently did a bad job. So I just bought the one Charity Grace used from Amazon. 


Getting this ready just involved more scale gluing and the same paint job. 

I made the bracers as well, Charity Grace provided a pattern for the shape, and it was as simple as cutting it out, gluing scales on, adding grommets for lacing, and painting to match everything else. 

I also made an undershirt to go under the corset, just a basic sleeveless top with a high collar out of a soft stretch fabric with a scale pattern I got on Amazon. 


I was tempted to buy some scale print leggings as well, but at some point it's too many scales. I already own black faux leather leggings, it's good enough. Which did get an upgraded elastic waistband in the midst of all this!

I'm beyond pleased with all of these pieces, and when my friends started talking con this year, I desperately just wanted to do this. No one could come up with a compelling group con costume, so I'm totally doing it. I'm in the process of collecting the remaining accessories to complete Violet Sorrengail's look.

I have a jacket:

With patches I have ordered from Etsy that I will attach once they get here:


Flight goggles:

Of course, daggers:

I intend to cut them down a little and improve the paint job. I will also only be carrying six, I cannot figure out how to place twelve on me like she does. 

And a wig:

Psst- they do have a different version that is a little longer and does not have a permanent part, if you're looking for one, I just like the length of this one better. 

I don't even need to buy boots, the ones I got for my Goth Fauna outfit will work just fine. I'm so excited for it. 

I may have also bought a Violet themed perfume:

Just for the sheer hell of it. I'm really looking forward to wearing this costume. 

Okay. So this post has gone on FOREVER. But like I said, it was a pretty serious crafting frenzy. I've never crafted that hard and that consistently for that long. It was kinda nice to get back to video games, honestly. 

But apparently, I wasn't done yet because very shortly after I finished all this, I had a burning desire to cosplay Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn. Obviously she's not for this year's con, but with how complex this outfit is that's probably a good thing. I will be taking way more progress pictures of this one and writing it all up as I go. But for now, I think it's time to call it. 

Good lord, blogger is struggling to load as I type, this post is so big. 
 
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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Yennefer!

Okay, I know it's been over a year. I never claimed to be a regular poster. I do need to be better about it when I make something though, the whole point of this is for me to document my process for my own future reference, which doesn't work so well if I wait so long to post it that I don't remember what I did. 

Anyways.

So last year I elected to skip Emerald City con for financial reasons, but I was determined to go to Rose City so I bought my pass nice and early. Aaaaaaand then like half the group couldn't go and the rest backed out leaving just me and Rachel with passes and wanting to go. We talked about just calling it off, but then as we talked about it we realized that with just the two of us we could wear whatever costumes we wanted, leave when we felt like, maybe even attend some panels at the con or something, it had the potential to be the most chill con ever. So we decided to go. 

That year a lot of Star Wars actors were going to be there, including Hayden Christensen, and Rachel has gotten very into Star Wars, so she chose the green velvet dress Padme wears in the third prequel movie:

 
It's basically just a hooded cloak dress with a purple sash, I could make that in my SLEEP. 

And I elected to go as my muse and goddess, absolute queen of the bitch queens, Yennefer of Vengerberg from The Witcher 3. 
 
More complicated, sure, but with these being the only two things I was making, definitely not a problem. 

Rachel's was just as easy as I thought it would be, with a few small hitches. I got 10 yards of olive green velvet and some purple satin, and this pattern:
The black robe there is literally the same dress. 

The only hitch was that the dress has some embossed patterns going down the front, so I had to learn how to emboss velvet. Turns out it's very simple, it just involves dampening the fabric, placing it on top of a rubber stamp and ironing the back of the fabric. 

I found a nice scroll pattern stamp of a good size on eBay and embossed the pattern down the front of either side of the front center seam. It was kind of a pain at this scale, trying to make sure they all lined up, but I managed. 

I threw together a little drawstring pouch out of the leftover velvet scraps so she'd have somewhere to carry her phone and whatnot. 

The sash was literally just a rectangle of fabric. I got a little fancy and just added some Velcro to the ends so it would be easy for her to get in and out of it without struggling with just wrapping fabric. 

I also made a small beaded brooch, just a circle of felt that I embroidered beads on, very simple. It took maybe an hour. 

Overall, her costume was beautifully simple and she looked amazing when it was done. 
Now, on to Yennefer, my love. 

Yennefer is true bae, don't come at me with your Triss bullshit. Triss took advantage of a man that had lost his memory. Do you know what that makes her? A bad person. I have opinions about this, I will fight you. 

First, the saga of the hair is kinda funny. In the interest of saving some money, I figured I would dye my hair black, as I like to do anyways, and just learn to curl it. I'm bad with hair, but I can learn, right?


No. No, I cannot. As I go through the costume making progress just imagine me, every weekend, spending a day watching videos and tutorials, buying so many hair products, new curling irons, SO MANY heatless curl options, spending hours in the bathroom in front of the mirror only to end up with some vague curling at the end of my hair and me in tears. I tried. So. Hard. 

In the end, I bought an Astraea wig in black from Epic Cosplay.

It was perfect and I stopped stressing over it. 

Quick side note, the main reason I chose to do Yennefer this year is because I had recently gotten into perfume collecting and had tried several times to get my hands on that perfect lilac and gooseberries perfume, since it's just so iconic. I finally succeeded:

It's gorgeous and I highly recommend it if you're a fan. So I was going to be able to even smell like my character, not just look like her. I even got a little travel perfume bottle so I could keep it with me at the con and make sure I left a trail of scent just like she does. 

I feel like finding her choker should have been easier, but the market was just flooded with replicas of the TV show version, which is nice, but I was specifically doing video game Yennefer. I did eventually find a good one though.


Now, I had been struggling with motivation to make costumes for a while, so as I was making this costume, I ended up taking no progress pictures, as I was just trying to make it without stressing myself out. But I will describe what I can to you. 

So, I was able to buy and modify a lot of pieces for this without making it from scratch, and that helped a lot. 

I found some perfect thigh high boots just on Amazon:
Knee High Boots Women Thigh High Over Knee Stretch Fashion Low Chunky Heel Round Toe Zipper Winter Boots Black Red US4.5-14 https://a.co/d/0V1ZMaU

Yes, I know they should be high heeled. I even found a different pair that had heels and would have been perfect. But I've worn heels to con before and that is a special kind of hell. I declined. 

They were actually a little too tall, which is an experience my 6 foot tall ass almost NEVER has, so I had to cut them down a bit and re-hem the top. 

I made several straps with faux leather and some buckles leftover from previous projects and attached them to the boots for all the buckles and straps Yen has on her boots. I elected not to worry about the fact that the boots bunch up around her knees. 

For her pants, yes I could have just added white stripes to some black leggings or something, but honestly that sounded like a frigging chore. After some research I found that at one time Spanx had sold some black faux leather leggings with a white stripe down the side. While they no longer so, I did stumble across someone on Mercari selling a pair second hand in my size. Fucking jackpot. 

Now, the thing is, Yennefer has lines of white stitching down the front and back centers of her pants. I could have just sewn some decorative stitching into the pants, but it wouldn't stretch with the fabric and as these bastards cost SIXTY DOLLARS for a pair of leggings, I was hesitant to make permanent alterations to them like that. 

So I got clever. I bought a black garter belt and painted fake white stitches on the straps, added small loops to the insides of the boots and just wore that. The straps down the front gave the illusion of the stitching, while also providing a little more support to keep my boots from sliding. It was perfect. 

I also elected not to make the undershirt. YES I can do it, but like I said, I was taking it as easy as I could on myself for this. This is the one I got:
Men's Renaissance Pirate Shirt - Cotton Linen Long Sleeve, Lace-Up V-Neck, Medieval Viking Style (US, Alpha, X-Large, Regular, Regular, White) https://a.co/d/2C9t3Yl

I needed a lace up collar with sleeves that weren't too baggy, this worked perfectly. 

The gloves were just some faux leather gloves also from Amazon:
DooWay Leather Gloves https://a.co/d/07jIvCf

I cut the gloves down to about 3/4 of the way down my arm, took the cut off part and sewed it back on facing downward to make a cuff, and then added some black faux fur to the top. Added the white stitching around th edge of the cuff by hand with embroidery thread. For the little cord bracelets she has I just took some beading cord I had in my own stash, one in a silvery grey and one in a taupe kind of color, and twisted them together. 

Her fur collar was super simple, it's really just a crescent moon shaped piece of fur, with some of the same cord I made for the bracelets attached to the end so I could tie it in front. 

Okay. Time for the money piece. The jacket. 

I looked everywhere for a pattern or a tutorial or something to help me get the shape with the kind of seams I wanted. But every cosplayer I've seen drafted their own pattern. I was on my own. In the end I used a combination of the good old wrap-myself-in-duct-tape method and this pattern:
It's  Simplicity 3628, by the way, since the picture doesn't say. 

It was a strange, incredibly janky process where I made a mockup from the commercial pattern and then laid my duct tape pieces over the mockup to get the angled seam lines of Yennefer's jacket, then cut the mockup along those lines and made a new mockup with those pieces. It was a mess, but it worked in the end. 

I got this gorgeous brocade velvet for the jacket that I kind of became obsessed with on Amazon:
Brocade Upholstery Fabric by The Yard https://a.co/d/1z2BJLp

That is apparently NO LONGER AVAILABLE in black, how sad. I loooooooved this fabric so much. Later after the con I bought more and made the long trumpet skirt Yen wears for formal events just to have it. 

I added the decorative stitching to the sleeves by hand with embroidery thread before assembling, I don't know why, but I love the way they look. 

I made SO MANY faux leather straps that were sewn along all the edges of the jacket, but I absolutely could not find a manageable way to sew the v shaped straps on the front of the jacket so I ended up just putting the jacket on my mannequin and gluing those bitches down with really good fabric glue. 

The loops around the cuffs of her sleeves are just two different ribbons looped together and sewn down, with pearls in between each loop hand sewed on. 

For some reason I had it in my head that her jacket buttons were gold, so I bought these:

Carytalee Metal Buttons https://a.co/d/e9CYAaA

When I realized I was wrong, I spray painted them silver, but if you want to use them, they do come in silver so you don't have to repeat my mistake. 

I bought some loop trim that I sewed to the opening to hold onto the buttons, but I also added an invisible zipper in front, I absolutely had no faith that those buttons would hold straight without gapping when I bent and moved. I needed a zipper to hold the front closed and steady.

There's an extra band of fabric plus a flap hanging down underneath the bottom edge of the jacket, so I just added a band of fabric with some black cord I tied in bows and sewed on at regular intervals. For the flap I made a rectangle out of the brocade and I added a secret pocket on the back of it that was big enough for my phone, a perfect secret phone holder. 

I also added boning in all the seams of the bodice to try to keep it from wrinkling. It didn't super work. Oh well. 

Oh! Also, I learned something back during the Emerald City con I didn't go to. The group did an Avatar themed costume, and I made fans for one of my friends who was going as a Kyoshi Warrior. It was shockingly easy to just buy dollar store fans and replace the fabric on them, and she told me about how those fans saved her life at con, being able to fan herself when she got hot. So I made some matching fans for both me and Rachel out of scraps of our costumes' fabric. 

In the end, I was very pleased with the costume. I started early and finished with two weeks to spare, so I was able to do a costume test run which was amazing. I was able to find small issues, like the straps on the boots not staying up, and fix them ahead of time instead of scrambling the night before. It was so fantastic. 

I even found this absolutely amazing Geralt!

Rachel and I got tons of compliments but since we weren't a large attention grabbing group we didn't get stopped for pictures so we could just relax and browse. We actually got to see the areas we wanted to see since we didn't have to follow the group, we went to a panel about haunted places in Portland, we left when we were tired and didn't bother to go back on Sunday because we had seen what we wanted and we were tired. And the fans totally did save our lives, we were both covered in velvet and it was WARM. I will be making custom fans with all future costumes.  We now refer to this as chill con and I'm gonna be real, all future cons really need to step up their game to hit that standard. I loved it. 

Hilariously enough at the same time I was sewing these costumes I worked on a whole second costume for myself just because I wanted to and I had plenty of time. 

I have been watching V-tubers streamers for some time now, basically just streamers that have an anime avatar they use for streaming. They're very cute and very entertaining. One of the cutest ones was a girl named Ceres Fauna, her "lore" is that she is basically Mother Nature and a kirin, a deer spirit from Japanese lore.

Absoloutely gorgeous. 

Well, it's been a thing that she talks about that she was goth in high school, so finally she was given a goth alternate outfit by her designers and it was just adorable. 

And then because they know their audience, the company she works for actually printed and sold the t-shirt she's wearing. I had to have it. 

But to be cute Fauna usually wears it kind of sliding off one shoulder. As a regular T-shirt the neck wasn't wide enough to do that on me. So I got a hold of some ribbed fabric, cut the neck off the shirt and gave it a new wider neckline so I could let it slide off one shoulder all cute-like.

I really didn't intend to go any further than that. I was just gonna alter the shirt and call it good. But then I looked at that skirt and realized it would be very simple to make. 

So I bought some sheer black fabric and threw together a skirt. The straps were just faux leather, I was making miles of straps for Yennefer anyways so it wasn't even out of my way to do so. It came out very cute. 



And then it took shockingly little effort to find the rest of the accessories.

The lace sleeves:

The chunky boots:

The stockings:


The heart thigh garter:

The green wig: (I intend to dip dye the ends of the wig to get the gradient at some point but I haven't done it yet.)


And the heart choker:


I even bought some yellow contacts so my eye color would be right. 

I still need to make her kirin horns to complete the costume, I intend to do that out of foam clay and wire and have them attach to the wig with magnets, but I haven't gotten around to it. Plus there's a few little details like ribbons in her hair and the necklaces. I don't have an immediate con to wear this to so it hasn't been pressing.  It was just wild that I made an entire extra outfit while making con costumes. I'd normally have never looked twice at a side project no matter how small during con prep. 

I still have more to write about, a few months ago I had the most intense crafting surge where I made three whole costumes and like, half a dozen smaller projects. Plus I am just now starting on an Aloy costume from Horizon Zero Dawn that I really want to document, I just need to get caught up. So I'll be back to write about my crafting frenzy, but I think this is enough for now. 

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