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Ahsoka Tano Cosplay - the dress pattern

9/25/2017

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So, as promised on August 21st, here I begin the chronicle of my Ahsoka Tano cosplay commission!  Though it's all done now, I wrote this project diary while working on it, so expect present tense throughout. 

Ahsoka Tano is a Star Wars character in the movie The Clones Wars and in the animated TV series.  She is a figure in Anakin Skywalker's younger years: he mentors her when she's a young Padawan, before he becomes Darth Vader.  My client C. wishes to dress as her for the Rose City Comic Con.  This requires, at minimum, a costume including a dress, belt, and gaiters.  Other accessories are the gray tights, armbands and gloves, headdress/hair, et cetera.  Our time is short (what with work and all, I only have five full days to work on it between the start of the project on August 20th and the due date of September 8th), so the priority is dress/belt/gaiters.  In a pinch, C. can improvise the rest. 

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Bias Tape and Ergonomics

9/21/2017

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As part of the Ahsoka Tano costume I made last month (more on that next week!), I made a bunch of bias tape.  I'm a fan of using bias tape as a facing for the edges of things, since it goes nicely around curves.  And this costume has lots of curves in the cut-outs on the dress and the shape of the gaiters. 

So here's a brief tutorial on making bias tape, which is very useful stuff! 
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Hibiscus Circle Skirt (March 2014)

9/18/2017

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​I moved to Portland in March 2014, and one of my goals while in my new locale was to learn to draft clothes.  This circle skirt, made with brilliantly printed cotton with a hibiscus flower pattern, was one of my very first attempts!  Lacking a sewing machine, I hand-sewed it. 

Most of my early sewing projects have long since been consigned to Goodwill, in hopes that someone else will love them more than I did, but this happy skirt has been a prominent member of my closet since I made it!  When you're learning a new skill, it's nice to have an early success, to encourage you to keep going.

​One day in 2015, my friend Dwayne and I did a photoshoot, showing off my outfit and playing with his camera. ​ More recently, I took some pics of the hand-sewing and interior construction. 
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Picture by Dwayne Purcer / 2015

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Salmon Striped Dress - update!

9/14/2017

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Here's an update on my salmon striped dress, an early experiment in pattern drafting and an entirely hand-sewn dress.  Previously, I had bemoaned my failure to get the neckline right on this pattern; the pull of my bra straps in the strap-catchers and the movement of my arms in the armscyes always drew the neckline in, and that created awkward bunching which I would have to fix by tugging the shoulders outward.  Part of the problem was the wide neckline which made the shoulder straps sit too close to the joint of my arm, and part of the problem was that I didn't interface or otherwise stabilize the neckline while sewing it, so it "grew". 

Recently, I realized that this dress was languishing unworn in my closet, even though I like it and always get compliments when I wear it.  So I fiddled with the neck and pinned out the excess into two outward-facing pleats that mimic the other pleats and darts.  I hand-sewed these pleats down, and the dress finally works! 

I also finally got pictures of myself wearing it (many thanks to a random and confused tourist whom I press-ganged into doing the job), so I can analyze the pattern a little more.  (I should subtitle this post "Finally!")

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Glengarry Cap, take 2!

9/11/2017

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Passing the Scottish Country Shop one day, I went in to see if I could examine a Glengarry cap in person.  Alas, I didn't have much time before they closed, but based on what I saw there, I have made some alterations to my pattern.  For instance, it's clear from the tartan caps like this that the base of the pattern is not a straight line, but a curve.  If you turned the cap so that grain and cross-grain are a plus sign (look at the plaid), the back of the hat is hanging down.  Another thing which is clear when I contrast my finished hat with the picture at the top of the post is that I should not have sewn around the curve at the bottom of the hat... the authentic hat is not sewn around the curve, so the curved edges flair open around the head when worn, and fold neatly when not worn.   Here's a little sketch of the revised shapes:
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Needlelace!  My work so far...

9/7/2017

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After a gap of nearly two years, I am feeling inspired to work on needlelace again!  And yet, I haven't posted anything about my past needlelace projects... let me remedy that, to give some context for what I'm doing. 

This'll be a long post, which should please any reader who is anything like me!

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Glengarry Cap, or How Not to Make a Hat

9/4/2017

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​Sometime, I fall into a hole in the internet.  No, not a time-sucking vacuum of a hole, like when I go to TVtropes.com and emerge hours later wondering where my day went; I mean a content gap of a hole, where I can't find the information I'm looking for, and I don't know if I'm using the wrong search terms of if--incredible as it may seem--the information is not there!  Such was the case when I went looking for a pattern to sew a Glengarry cap.  Plenty of info about Glengarry caps was to be found, but when I added the search term "pattern", I only got crochet patterns (not useful for sewing) and a bewildering amount of Iroquois beadwork.  Now, I like Iroquois beadwork as much as the next sewing-obsessed bead-loving person, but it does not help me turn my upholstery scraps into a cute Glengarry cap!  
[Picture by ludovic (Ludo29880) on Flickr.  Creative Commons license here.]

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    Karen Roy

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