Prop making can be FUN. But not for me.

So, I've been working on the staff, naturally. There's been a few... shall we say... hang ups along the way.

So I showed you all the cut out pieces. I was able to successfully drill holes all the way through my wooden balls for the metal bolts to connect everything, that wasn't too bad.

This was my work space and tools. Yes, that is a clamp attached to a bar stool with a kettlebell to weigh it down. A bit ghetto, but it totally worked. The glass of water was there because I learned a lot about friction and the heat it generates here, and I needed to be able to cool the drill bit and to keep my sawdust from being lit on fire. I definitely made some smoke doing this.

So I drilled the wooden balls. After that I needed to cut down the metal bolts I was using, they were pretty long and I didn't want to have to drill holes quite that deep. I tried my dremel first with a cutting attachment, with the bolt secured in the clamp. It worked, but it was difficult to control. So next I went to my hacksaw.

This little guy. He's just a mini saw, but I figured he'd be big enough for my purposes. (That's what she said!)  It was very difficult cutting the bolts with this, but easier to control than the dremel. But then halfway through the third or fourth bolt the blade on my saw broke. It was just the one that came with it in my tool kit, and I'd bought more some time ago so I'd have extras. I replaced the blade, and holy smooth easy cutting through solid metal, Batman! Apparently the blade that came on my saw was a shitty, shitty terrible blade, and when I replaced it with my decent ones, it just melted right through those bolts. It was wonderful. I got everything cut pretty easily. 

Next, I went on to drill my holes in the wooden segments. Figured it couldn't be much harder than drilling the wooden balls had been. (That's what she... said?) But I was wrong. (Foreshadowing! Dun dun duuuuuunnnnnn!)

I realized almost immediately something was different. I was drilling and drilling and drilling and almost nothing was happening. One quick google search later I come to realize the dowels I bought were OAK. Which is apparently an INTENSE HARDWOOD that usually requires INTENSE TOOLS and SPECIAL DRILL BITS to drill. Well that's good to know. So those were useless to me.

So the next day I went to the craft store and bought some new wooden dowels made out of some kind of generic garbage wood I'm sure, I couldn't find out what but it didn't feel like oak. This meant of course that I had to cut the pieces apart myself since my step dad had done the others for me on his table saw and I didn't want to take the time to take these over there again. Luckily I had a hacksaw with a spiffy new blade on it. So I marked it out, clamped the dowels down and cut them my own damn self. It wasn't too hard, which reassured me that this wood was much softer. (Awww, that's what she said. :(  )  I had a few somewhat crooked cuts before I got the hang of it, but it wasn't too bad. And I was able to straighten those out with my dremel and a sanding bit. I then proceeded to drill the holes for the metal bolts in each segment. It all took me most of a day, what with having to recharge the cordless drill occasionally.

I have since developed a strong hatred for cordless tools. Having to stop to charge a battery is just the worst thing ever.

Look at those pieces starting to connect! It was fun to get a better visual for how it would look all put together.  My joy was short lived however.

The next day, I began to assemble the pieces. Basically I'd dump a bunch of wood glue in the hole, put the metal bolt in, squish glue everywhere, and then slide the next piece over the bolt, with it's corresponding hole also filled with wood glue. Glue would just squish everywhere again, effectively covering both sides of the connecting pieces as well as the metal bolt. I went through so many paper towels cleaning up excess glue. I eventually got my proportions down so I didn't squish quite so much. I ended up having to give up on the idea of having it screw apart in segments for transporting because I needed a bigger drill bit to install the hardware for it, and I didn't have one, I'd been using the biggest one my brother had for his drill for the bigger posts for the joints anyways, and I didn't want to go buy a new drill bit. So I just glued the posts in without the extra screwing hardware.

As I assembled the pieces though, I began to realize that not one of these holes was drilled straight. And most of them didn't line up with each other. I mean, in retrospect this isn't surprising. I'm only human, with my imperfect unsteady hand, the chances that I could drill a bunch of perfectly centered absolutely straight holes are basically zero. If I'd had a drill press maybe I could have pulled it off, but I did not. As the pieces went together I just felt this horrible sick feeling when I realized how drunkenly crooked this thing was going to look. I almost quit halfway through, but I finished assembling just to see how it would turn out, all the while coming up with a plan B in my head. This was the result:

Look at that nasty, drunken curvy piece of crap. It's like it's not even trying!

 Wildly off center.

Trying for a goddamn 45 degree angle there? What was this?

I just... How drunk was I while drilling? (Zero. The answer is zero drunk. I have no excuse.)

And upon further inspection after the glue had set, it's not even a sturdy hold, the whole thing bends and warps even further than this if you leave it standing. It's own weight warps it! UUUUUUHHHG.  I HATE IT SO MUCH.

There was no way I could use it. Stu and Rachel (my roommate) tried so hard to convince me that it didn't look as bad as I thought, and maybe it didn't, maybe I'm just sunk into that creative place where all you can see is the flaws in your project, but all I knew is I couldn't live with this. I probably could have improved it with some sanding and gesso and more sanding, but at this point I didn't even want to look at this thing, much less put more effort into it. So I ditched it. I had another plan.

Luckily, plan B was an inexpensive and fairly simple one, and even more luckily, I had enough leftover pieces from the first one that I could return to stores to get enough money back that I wouldn't have to spend anymore to restart. Nothing could give me back my time and effort though... Sigh....

So this time, I bought the same wooden dowel, and a big bag of 1.8" styrofoam balls. Using my dremel I hollowed out the balls, making a hole big enough for the dowel to pass through, and just slid the balls into position, after I had measured and marked out every segment of the staff on the new dowels.

 I had to trim them down a bit to get the right length, and I had to do one join in the middle since I couldn't get just one dowel that was long enough, but by drilling very carefully I was able to make that one join pretty near perfect.

Look at that beautiful son of a bitch. It's ever so slightly off center, but that's easily fixed with some gesso and sanding. It was also a little crooked, but apparently they were crooked in opposite ways because I was able to twist them to make them align and stand up straight. You can't see it here, but I actually took a small piece of cardstock covered in wood glue and stuck it in between the two segments on one side just to make sure it was perfectly straight. Then once the glue was dry I just trimmed and sanded the extra cardstock away so it's totally invisible. I also drilled one more wooden ball for the one that's on the base of the staff, I knew styrofoam would be completely unacceptable for that one, the weight resting there would crush it. Luckily I had extras. And I was just using the pieces of metal bolts I had cut off earlier for support, they worked perfectly.

Look how lovely and straight it is! I just brushed wood glue over the places where the balls went and then slid them in place. Worked like a charm. I then coated the styrofoam balls in a thick layer of mod podge which has made them significantly stronger. The next step is coating them in gesso to smooth them. Well, when I say gesso, I mean what is essentially homemade gesso, a combination of joint compound and white glue that serves the same purpose as gesso and is a million times cheaper. 

I have also put a few more layers of papier mache on the hearts for the head, and I've painted the smaller balls that go in various places, as well as the actual garnet orb.

Those are just terrible pictures, my apologies. But you get the idea. I have also done away with the idea of trying to make the orb light up. I bought some dollar store LED candles with that thought in mind, but I cannot come up with a way to make the candles invisible while also being replaceable for when the battery runs out. So due to the time crunch, I'm not worrying about that. Maybe some other time if I redo this.

It was almost offensive to me how much easier this was. This version took me a quarter of the time and a tenth of the effort of the other terrible one. I should have just done this from the beginning. It would have been much cheaper too. Well, a little cheaper, I wouldn't have needed so many metal bolts, but those were like a buck each. The price difference wasn't really that much. Mostly it's the lost time and effort that I'm unhappy about. I have a Halloween party this Saturday and I have my doubts about whether Sailor Pluto is actually gonna have her Time Key Staff in time.  Man I wish I could really stop time...

So much costume progress!

Okay, so we're getting somewhere now. For reference, I've been using mostly this tutorial for making the costume: http://youcancosplay21.tumblr.com/post/46384010954/firsttimecosplayer-sailor-fuku-cosplay  

So, I cut down the fabric for the skirt, I ended up cutting it to 12" long total, the bottom was already hemmed, so that's 12" with the hem finished on the bottom. I repleated everything and stitched it down, and then, based on the tutorial I was using, cut the V shape into the front and back, but I didn't cut my V as deep as the tutorial did. I believe in front I cut it to 10" and in back I cut it to 11". I have very long legs, I didn't want the skirt to end up too short.

I made the padded hip rolls with the same tutorial and sewed the skirt to it, it turned out to be kind of a perfect length. Still short, like it's supposed to be, but not so short I'm uncomfortable in it.

Ignore the dirty mirror. I should really learn to clean my mirrors before taking selfies in them, this isn't the first time I've made this mistake. Anyways, this is before the skirt was fastened down, so it's hanging a little low. I did end up sewing the collar to the leotard, I had intended to just do snaps so it could be removable and replaced with a different colored collar if I ever make a Sailor Jupiter costume, which is the next one I'd want to do, but I decided I didn't want to fight with it. But it only has two lines of stitches going down around the collar in front, it would be really easy to remove and replace if I wanted to.

For the bows I used this tutorial: http://amishanda.deviantart.com/art/Sailor-Moon-and-Sailor-Scout-Bow-Tutorial-363194911  There is one for the bows with the other tutorial, but I like the look of these ones better.

My front bow is roughly 13"x11", with the tail being 15"x9" or so. I think. I honestly don't remember, haha. I'm just pretty sure I added an inch on the measurements in the tutorial because I wanted a little more oomph. I think the back bow is 15x13 with the tails being 17"x11". The front bow is pretty perky, but the back bow droops a bit, I'm thinking about adding a few hidden stitches to the bow to make it stand up, but I haven't decided exactly how to work that yet. I was worried the front of the collar was too narrow, but I think it looks fine. The skirt is attached with four snaps, one on front and back and one on each hip. So far the one snap in back holds up the bow just fine.

With that, all the sewing is done. I only need two more accessories:

Jewelry! I made the earrings myself out of Sculpey using a youtube video I found ages ago. The choker gem I bought off of Catzia's Collectibles on Etsy, which is the same place I bought the tiara, although I realize I don't have a picture of it. I had to attach a little metal loop to the back of the gem so I could attach it to the choker, which is just a black ribbon with eyelets in it to connect everything. So now, technically, I can dress as Sailor Pluto more or less completely. I still want to pump up the wig by sewing the two I have together, but technically it works as it is. And of course, I don't have the staff yet.

SO.

Staff work. 

Man, this thing is a hell of a project.

I already showed you the paper pattern for the head. Well I traced it onto cardboard twice:

Twice for front and back of the big main heart piece and the little one that goes on top. My experience with expanding insulation foam is that you want to do it all in one go, there's no spraying one side and letting it set then spraying the other because the foam hardens in the nozzle of the can and then that can is just done.

My weapon of choice. Great Stuff Gap Filler, the kind meant to fill gaps larger than 1". This is actually a leftover can from when I made my sewing mannequin, you remember Space Princess? I kinda wondered if it would still be good. And gloves, because goddamn do I remember what a pain in the ass it is to get this stuff off your skin.

And spray! The little hearts were too small to try and outline them so I just straight up covered them in foam. Too much is better than not enough, right?

Incidentally, the really big heart piece there is for a different project, that is eventually going to be a large replica of Majora's Mask that I am going to hang on my wall. Basically it's just something else I've been wanting to make and I wanted to have something else to do to make sure I didn't waste any of my can of foam, because I knew it wouldn't take a whole can just for the head of my staff. It'll be a bit before I get to really working on that mask, but rest assured, you shall get updates when I do.

I let them sit for like a day, which is longer than necessary, but I just didn't have time to get to them sooner. I brought them in and kind of roughly trimmed them with a serrated knife. As you can see, I still hadn't cut out the middle of the small heart.

Later, I VERY CAREFULLY cut the cardboard away from one half of each piece, and then glued the foam to the cardboard of the other half, making a very thick foam sandwich. You can see the line of the cardboard in the middle of the small piece. Obviously these pieces are way too huge for my purposes, but that just gives me lots of room for error, right?

Still using the serrated knife, I trimmed the pieces down even more. Look at that pile of scrap! I tried to use a utility knife for this at one point, but you really need the serrated blade to bite into the foam.

Haha, god, look how lumpy and uneven and malformed those look at this stage. It's so bad!  My confidence wavered a bit here.

But then my Dremel entered the picture. I just used a basic sanding bit and just smoothed and trimmed and rounded everything. Look how pretty they are now! Not like 100% perfect or anything, but pretty damn good, enough that it made me happy. 

The next step is covering everything in papier mache. This is kind of funny actually, I was trying to figure out where I was gonna get the paper for this step, I certainly don't get the newspaper and I don't think I know anyone who does, and I'm not gonna go out and buy one. And then suddenly it occurred to me, we have had a phone book sitting on our front step for literally months, it's actually less useful than a newspaper and we'd all been too lazy to pick it up and throw it away. It was just waiting for me. So I finally brought it in and shredded a bunch of pages. The paste is just a basic flour and water mixture, boiled. You can find a million recipes for it online. Incidentally the little round thing is a clear plastic Christmas ornament I found at a craft store and it will be my Garnet Orb in the staff. It's covered in papier mache because I want to paint it and I didn't think paint would stick to the plastic very well. 

This is the step I'm at now, these pieces are still sitting on my kitchen table drying. I want to add a few more layers of papier mache just for strength, then everything will be sanded smooth, sprayed with Plasti-Dip and then painted. I'm going to be making paper clay for some of the details on the staff, but I'll document that more when I actually do it. 

I have all the pieces for the rest of the staff ready to go as well.

There's supposed to be one more segment at the bottom, I forgot about it before taking this picture. Basically I will be drilling holes through everything and gluing those metal bolts in the holes to connect everything as firmly as possible. I'm very proud of those key shaped bits too.

I just used lined notebook paper, a ruler and some close up reference pictures of those pieces of the staff and kind of drew it out by hand until I liked the way it looked and felt like it matched the staff pretty well. I traced those onto a plank of wood I bought from the craft store with vague intentions of cutting them out with my Dremel or a hacksaw, but it took all of 30 seconds of trying that to realize that super wasn't going to work. Luckily, my stepdad is very handy and owns just ALL the tools, so I took the stuff over there and he cut it out for me with his jig saw.

They still need some sanding and refining of course, but I'm pretty pleased with how they came out. My stepdad also cut my wooden dowel into the segments I needed, which saved me all kinds of time and effort. Man, I need to get my own power saw...

Anyways, that's where we're at now. I'll be doing more papier mache tonight, and either some drilling or wig sewing. Probably drilling. I can bring the wig to work with me and do it there, but I can't do the drilling.  And somewhere in here I have to find time to finish my daughter's Sailor Chibi Moon costume. Sigh. And here I thought I was gonna have plenty of time. That's what I get for moving too slowly on things.

Sailor Pluto Progress

So, I'm very slowly making progress on my Sailor Pluto costume. It doesn't go very quickly, which is why I started now even though I intend for it to be a Halloween costume.

First, I finished my leotard.

It fits perfectly. I realize it looks a little awkward in the picture, I had not yet sewn in the snaps in the crotch, I was just checking fit. This it with the slimming leotard underneath as well. I was able to put the seam at the bust line like I wanted to give the illusion of the breastplate thing, and I actually added a few layers of quilt batting to the top part just to emphasize it. Also when I actually wear this costume I will be wearing an absurdly padded bra just to get me closer to that anime style bust size. :P

I also tried adding an actual corset underneath everything:

I mean, obviously it adds some weird lines at the bottom, and there are ridges where the bones of the corset are, but I don't think that bothers me. And adding the corset tucks in my waist to also got me closer to those anime proportions. So I will probably go ahead and wear a corset with this costume. The collar is done too, but I forgot to take pictures of it.

So, when I first started planning this costume, I was going to be doing it with my friend Sheali who was going to be Sailor Saturn. So we decided to do the super sailor version just to make her life easier, because regular Sailor Saturn has that crazy crystal brooch and winged sleeve thingies. All the super sailors have simple heart shaped brooches and just the little extra sheer bit added to the sleeves, not to difficult. But since I'm now doing this on my own, I don't want to do the super version. But I'd already bought the heart shaped brooch. I attempted to sand it into a round shape, but it was going to end up too small. And take eight million years to get it to look nice again.  So I just bought a new one:

Starlit Creations on Etsy, just a great shop. It's the same one where I bought the heart shaped ones to begin with. I'm very happy with it. 

Also the little bottles you see in the background are my tinted contact lenses:

The boots came out really nicely, too.  So, like I said earlier, I was just going to cut down a pair of thigh high boots to the correct shape:

To create the white trim I used bias tape, but the stuff I had wasn't wide enough, so I ironed it flat and then refolded it to the width I wanted.

The fabric was rather thin and see through, plus I immediately had concerns about stains and general grunginess that is attracted to white fabric. So I added a coat of clear polycrylic, which of course made it more see through, so I then painted over it with a layer of white acrylic paint, and then another coat of polycrylic. The white cuffs are now very stiff, but after lining the inside with some satin ribbon, it's not uncomfortable. And my white borders are stain proof, which is the main goal. It took much longer than I felt like it should have to get the fabric arranged and sew on, but the end result is good.

Sigh. I just hate pointed toe shoes. I feel like the look weird. They don't, as far as I can tell, I'm pretty sure its just the view from above that looks weird to me, but no one else. I'm just crazy. And the pointed toe is probably good, because it's supposed to make your legs look longer, and those anime sailor scouts are like 90% leg.

The skirt is in progress now, this is the fabric with all the pleats pinned down:

However, it's too long. I was just going to leave the pleats as they were and cut the skirt shorter, but then that messes with the precise measuring I did for the width of each pleat, so I think I'm going to have to cut the fabric down and then just repleat it, which is mildly annoying. But I want it to be right, I want to make sure the skirt is full enough. I'm fully prepared to make a mini petticoat if I must to fill it out. I have black tulle even. Reality defying anime outfits are so annoying! And this one isn't even one of the most difficult ones. I'm just picky.

I'm also gradually, very gradually, working on the staff. The picture on the left is a general pile of supplies, wooden board for the key parts, wooden balls for the round parts, etc. I even found the correct hardware to install screw parts in the staff so it can be taken apart if necessary. The picture on the right is my paper pattern for the head, along with my notes on the size and shape of each segment of the staff. There's a whole second page of those you can't see. The paper pattern will be transferred to cardboard which will be sprayed with expanding foam, carved, covered in paper mache and painted. I don't yet have all the orb parts for the head of the staff, I'm not quite sure how I'm doing that yet. 

The gloves are done as well:

I now understand why people use cording to fill the cuffs. I did quilt batting, and while it seems puffy enough, it flattens out when I wear it. Sewing channels around cording just seems so annoying though! Sigh. But there's a decent chance I'm gonna redo this if I have enough fabric left, which it looks like I will. Fuller puffs will just look so much nicer. This isn't bad, but I can probably do better. But if I redo it, it will be after absolutely everything else is done and I just have some time left, because this is fine. It just could be better. 

However, while making the gloves I tried to make my serger finish the edges, with like four layers of quilt batting in there. The end result was my serger freaked the hell out and something got knocked way, way out of alignment, making my serger unusable. So my serger is in the shop right now and I've kind of put sewing on hold until I get it back. I can redo the skirt pleats and whatnot without it, but I really want it for finishing. So my attention is shifting towards the staff right now, since I don't need the serger to do that. I'm making progress....

Too much downtime? Time to blog again I suppose.

I'm a sporadic blogger. You know this. Don't judge me.

Anyways.

I do have a few new projects to blog about. This first one is nearly a year old... haha, oops.

So I needed a Christmas gift for my boyfriend. I'd known him for a little while now, but this was the first gift giving opportunity I'd had for him. Well, technically the second, but I let his birthday slip by, and then of course he got me a fantastic gift for my birthday, a little stuffed beefalo from Don't Starve, that I just love to pieces.

See? There he is, hanging out with Chester on my desk at work. I named him Bill. Beefalo Bill. And of course then I felt bad for not getting him a birthday present, so I wanted to make the Christmas gift awesome.

So, Stu loves older classic video games, he likes to watch a lot of speedruns and things like that, and one of his favorites is Mega Man. I had previously seen other things where people would crochet afghans of 8 bit characters using granny squares for the pixels, and I'd always wanted to try it. So I found a good image of classic Mega Man, and using Excel I drew it out, and filled the blocks with the corresponding colors so I would know how many blocks of each color I needed to make. The pattern, if you want it, looks like this:

I was shooting for a roughly full/queen sized blanket. I found a simple pattern online for a solid block granny square, and left off the last round so each square ended up about 2" across. I thought about making the squares bigger, but the blanket would have ended up massive and taken way longer and way way way more yarn. As it was I severely underestimated how long it would take to make it. I knew Stu was going to visit his parents for Christmas and wouldn't be home until a little bit after that, so I had a grace period, but as the time came, it turns out I only had the squares for Mega Man himself done, hadn't even started the background yet. He looked great, all sewn together, but I knew I'd be at this for months if I made squares for the background too. So I ended up just doing endless row upon row of solid double crochets for the backdrop. Still took a while, but much less time. And it made him stand out a bit more. I completed him right around New Year's.

Stu loved it, and still uses it every night as his comforter at home. :D

So, I am also starting a new project. Well, I say starting, it's one that's been half in the works for years, but I've never been able to finish it.

This bitch.

That's right, I've finally decided that this year is when I will finally finish my Sailor Pluto costume and achieve my dream of having a sailor senshi costume.

I intended to do it last year, but when October hit I was too busy doing things like getting divorced and moving out to my own place to be able to do something like create a detailed costume for myself. I had already bought a brooch and some gloves and a wig, so at least that stuff is already done this year. Although that isn't much, there's still a lot to do. I have some plans, and I'm going to put it all here just to organize my thoughts in my head.

Boots- I have a pair of black thigh high boots that I bought several years ago and have worn exactly zero times. Turns out without a specific costume in mind there's really no reason for me to own thigh high boots. So I'm going to cut them down and add the white stripe and they'll be perfect.

Gloves- bought last year, as I said. Hilariously enough it took three tries to get the right gloves. I wanted them matte, not shiny satin and apparently lots of sellers think matte means "SUPER SHINY NASTY CHEAP LOOKING SATIN."I had some disagreements with some merchants. But I did finally find a good pair, I just need to add the black cuffs to them, which will maybe take me a half hour, if I do it in slow motion. :P

Leotard- this is a two phase thing. part one is actually a white body shaper leotard that I have purchased. At the time I bought it because of my self consciousness with my weight, I thought I could use it to slim down a bit and look better. I have since lost a bunch of weight (more on that later) and am less worried about it, but I'm still going to use it just for smoothing everything. The second part is a white leotard I'm going to make. I can't just wear the body shaper because it's too sheer. I have started on this, I'll provide more details on what I'm doing once I'm done with this list.

Skirt- I'm going to sew this. I have this really nice matte part cotton part satin fabric that's thick and lovely and I am very excited to see how it turns out.

Collar- Same.

Bows- Same. I have some burgundy of the exact same fabric that's just perfect.

Choker- I mean, it's really just a ribbon. Not a big issue. Although it occurs to me that I don't actually have any black ribbon... Haha. Might have to go get that. For the gem on the choker I intended to find something at the craft store but I found an Etsy seller who makes really nice looking gems intended for Sailor Pluto, so I decided to just go with that.

Earrings- Pluto's are fairly distinctive. I found a youtube video with a very detailed walkthrough to make them out of oven bake clay, which I have done and was fairly pleased with them. I think I made them too small though, I might redo it. We'll see.

Tiara- I was going to make one out of foam, but I found an Etsy seller- the same one I bought the choker gem from- that makes really lovely ones out of brass. I do not have the capability to work with metal, and these ones are so pretty. Which how much this costume means to me and how perfect I want it to be, I decided to splurge and go ahead and buy it. It's in the mail now, I can't wait to see it.

Brooch- purchased off of Etsy last year. Pretty sure I know where it is...

Hair- Like I said, I bought a wig. And then just a few weeks ago I found the same wig for much cheaper. So I bought it again. I have a tutorial for how to take a wig apart and sew it into another wig to make it thicker and nicer, and in every picture, Pluto's hair is impossibly thick. I know I won't get it anywhere near hers because I have to live in reality where we have physics, but that doesn't mean I can't try and make my hair a little thicker at least. Plus with adding more hair I can style it better.

Eyes- I have bought some burgundy tinted contact lenses just to make sure I get every detail right.

The Time Key Staff- Ooooohhhh this is the big one. But if I'm going to do this I'm gonna do it right. I'm pretty sure this is doable. Wooden dowel for the main part, cut in segments with steel rods and screws added so that it can be twisted apart for easy storage and transportation. Details will be created out of foam covered in paper mache for sturdiness, I think, and the top part will be carved foam and probably some kind of Christmas ornament for the orb. My plan is still very vague for this part, and I think a lot of it will depend on what I can find.

So, I said I had started on the leotard. Now, I've done EXTENSIVE research on techniques and tutorials and patterns and whatnot for this pattern. There is one particular pattern that is recommended time and time again for sailor scout outfits, but of course it's an old discontinued pattern and not super easy to find. I'm sure I could find something, but turns out I'm too cheap if I think I can do it myself. So I'm starting with trying to make my own pattern.

I started with an old swimsuit:

Still fits and everything, it just got all faded in the sun so I quit wearing it. So I cut it to pieces.

Removed the bit of ruched fabric in front, the elastic from the butt, and cut across the middle to lengthen the whole thing, due to my white fabric not having enough stretch vertically. I have concerns about my fabric not being quite right, but we'll see what happens. I cut that out and sewed the pieces together to come up with something that fit almost perfectly. Still too short for my torso, but everything else was good.

I took the white fabric pieces apart, and in the interest of symmetry cut them in half and traced one half onto paper (adding two inches of length in the middle) twice, flipped one side over and taped them together for a reasonably functional looking pattern.

Uhg. Not gonna lie, I hate how wide that pattern looks. But it does have to stretch all the way around me. And it really did fit nicely in the mockup. I've cut out the actual pieces now and will sew them together soon to see how it looks.

The problem I've run into now is that I don't have enough fabric to make the breastplate thing.

You know, that thing. The top part of the leotard. Most cosplayers interpret that as a whole second piece that they make and attach over top. I do not have enough fabric left to do that and I don't really want to go get more. So I'm hoping that the extra two inches of length I added to the patterns will be just slightly too long so I can just cut a seam there and sew it back together to make that line. If not I suppose I'll just have to go get more fabric.

So! Another thing. I mentioned I lost a bunch of weight. Well, I have had a few previous posts on this blog where I've complained about my weight. (Oh, 162 lb Jessica, how silly and naive you were.) Well, I continued to gain weight. All my attempts to fix it were half assed and quickly petered out. But then my marriage started falling apart. I realized I wanted to leave but it took me about another year to do so. And in that year the stress of it went and doubled my weight gain. Not my weight, my weight gain. I weighed in at one point at 194 pounds. Then I finally moved out and all that stress lifted and I realized that this whole thing was bullshit and it was time to get real. I hated my body, but I was starting to annoy myself by complaining about it. My opinion was if you're not doing anything to fix it, then quit bitching about it. 

I started collecting workout videos on Pinterest and I bought a kettlebell. Just a little 15 pounder. And somehow, I'm really not sure how, I came up with the willpower to get up early before work and workout. I've always been so, so bad at it. It was patchy there for a bit. Anytime I was hungover, or just really tired I'd skip the workout. But then I started getting stronger.

I think the real tipping point was near the beginning of March I did a 2 week clean eating challenge, one that had all the meals planned out and a grocery shopping list and everything. I followed it pretty closely, not perfectly but any subs I made were within the basic guidelines of the plan. And I focused really hard on my workouts. As a result I learned of a lot of healthy foods I liked, quinoa, kale, sweet potatoes, chickpeas. And I started to get some momentum on my workouts, I got on a streak. And I didn't want to break that streak. I don't remember if I missed any workouts in March, but I don't think so. And I lost 8 pounds that month. 

Since then my workout streak has remained unbroken. I workout every day I go to work. Holidays are an exception, I get an extra rest day then, and I don't workout on weekends. Eating healthy has gotten easier, and I still allow indulgences on weekends. I couldn't keep up that weight loss pace and still keep my sanity, but I've settled at a pretty solid 3 or so pounds a month. I've lost more than 20 pounds and gained muscles I forgot I had. I had to buy heavier kettlebells, twice! And I can do push ups again! Like, 4 or 5 maybe, but still! I was only able to do that in high school when I was in color guard. 

I have a few before and after pictures, but no really good current ones, I'll post something once I get those taken. But there is a very visible difference, I fit into my clothes again and I feel amazing. Basically, everything is awesome right now. :)

Muffins!

Applesauce Oatmeal Muffins
Yield: 12 muffins

Ingredients:
3 tbsp Oil
1/2 cup Milk
1/2 cup Brown sugar
1/2 cup Oatmeal
1 1/4 cup Flour
3/4 tsp Cinnamon
1 Egg
1 tsp Baking powder
3/4 tsp Baking soda
1 cup Applesauce
1/2 cup Oatmeal, topping
2 tbsp Brown sugar, topping
1/4 tsp Cinnamon, topping
2 tbsp Butter, melted, topping

Instructions:
Mix batter ingredients, do not overmix. Spoon into muffin pan.
Mix topping ingredients, top muffins before baking.
Bake at 400° for 15 min.