Project Description

This was my first cosplay. It was an extremely quick project done in a week. I had been invited to go to DragonCon by a friend since I had been in a kind of slump and had been hesitant to attend. Of course, my friend encouraged me to go in costume since “that was the thing to do”. I decided I’d go and quickly set out to make something I wanted to wear. The whole experience changed me for the better. It got me out of my slump and gave me a new hobby to pursue.

Photography was done by Sam L. Sadly, it was just a quick ‘here’s my email address’ exchange. I don’t have a link for him yet as these have only been in my personal possession for 2 years. If I can track him down, I’ll update and link these to him!

ASSEMBLY

Armor
If you can call it armor. The wrist bands were a very quick creation. A rectangular piece of fabric with silver trim. The chestpiece took me the longest since I had never sewn anything without a pattern. At the time, I did not own a dress form which meant I was constantly putting it on myself to check the measurements. This added a significant amount of time. It secured at the nap of the neck with velcro, and I was able to just slide the chestpiece over my head to put it on. I tried to use a hook and eye in the middle of my chest, but in my rush I was struggling to make it work. It was a little too loose overall so I made a slight overlap in the front and sewed it without using a hook and eye.

The bottoms are just a pair of underwear with fabric sewn onto them.

The face mask I had to tape to my nose. I didn’t have any spirit gum at the time so I was just kind of winging it to keep it on my face!

Boot Covers
I made just a quick set of boot covers that I had to safety pin at the bottom of my shoes. I didn’t sew them correctly within the time I had. I messed up on planning how the top of the covers would stay up. They started to continuously fall down. I used tape to hold them to the tops of my thighs, but because of the constant sweating, they just wouldn’t stay. I ended up tucking them in just below the knee within 2 hours of getting to the convention. I learned an important lesson from my first cosplay – always test your stuff before you walk out the door!

Blades
I used some two inch wide crafting wood sticks from Michael’s and some blue poster board. I cut the wooden sticks to have pointed, curved edges on one side and then tapered the bottom to about a half an inch wide. I taped this tapered part as that was what I would be holding. I ran out of time to make a legit pivoting system so the blades were always fanned out. The poster board was cut in half to make two separate pieces and then folded in an accordion. Unfortunately, that meant that they weren’t very taunt when expanded.

I ended up throwing the blades away because they pretty much fell apart from being moved around a lot coupled with the fact that THEY WERE ALWAYS FANNED. Also, with the handles being wood, it dug into the sides of my fingers. I ended up damaging a nerve on the insides on my index and middle finger on my right hand. The nerve healed, but it was still a bit of a concern.

 

I really wanted to add the rune/glyph details but time just wasn’t on my side. I finished this at 4am on Saturday morning, took a quick nap, and then got to the convention around noon. I had really wanted to get there earlier, but what can you do! I may go back and really put in the effort that this cosplay deserves.