boomshells - Tumblr blog

[boomshells]

Cheap Chainmail?

Hello friends. Today I’m going to talk to you about how I do chainmail for my cosplays!

(Photo by @droophotographer)

I am a sucker for cosplay punishment and if there is chain mail on a costume you best believe I will be wearing actual chainmail. If you’re like me you have probably done some research into ways to make it (or fake it). 

Keep reading

[boomshells]

Had several friends struggling with quilting patterns in their cosplays. This doesn’t work for /all/ patterns, but if you have a checkerboard style, this makes it so easy! I put this together in about 30 minutes. :) Hope you find it useful!

[boomshells]

COLORFUL COSPLAY GEMS IN A SUPER HURRY!

I didn’t want to mess around with casting red gems for one of my costumes; I’m in a crunch and casting colored gems that look perfectly alike is a massive pain, and I actually LIKE resin casting! Enter a hunch of mine.

iDye Poly is a type of fabric dye easily available in the United States meant for dying synthetic fabric. I had a bunch of clear acrylic cabochons. Was it possible to dye them?

You’re looking at the results of five minutes of boiling clear acrylic cabochons from TAP Plastics in rather concentrated iDye Poly. They look nice and shiny just sitting on some white paper! Bonus: this is after they have been fully washed. With dish soap.

I just HAD to share this technique because I’m pretty sure someone else can get some use from it!

[boomshells]

Tutorial: Sew a Keyhole Neckline with a Facing

Since I keep trying to explain facings to friends (and keep feeling like I’m failing miserably), I decided to do a longer tutorial, after all, about how to I use a facing to sew keyhole necklines. This is an attractive and sturdy neckline for LARP/Dagorhir/SCA garb. I’ve used it on literally hundreds of tunics.

This tutorial ended up getting pretty long and scary, but don’t worry: this is not a complicated process. It’s just hard to explain over the internet. So– let’s go!

What is a facing, anyway?

A facing is just an extra bit of fabric that you sew to the edge of your garment and fold down to conceal a raw edge. I use them on necklines, instead of folding the edge down in a traditional hem. If you don’t get the concept, @vintage-aerith has a great tutorial here. Facings produce very sturdy, flat, and non-bulky edges.

For example, this tunic has a keyhole neckline finished with a self-colored green facing. The edge of the neckline is NOT folded over and hemmed: the facing is an extra piece of fabric that was stitched on to the edge and then folded to the inside. You can see the ‘lower’ edge of the facing– it’s the darker green line about 1.5″ in from the edge. I then tacked the facing down with embroidery. It’s a very clean, unobtrusive finish.

This tunic has a very fancy external orange facing, combined with a collar! The process is very similar to above, but the facing is flipped to the outside. This is an easy way to add color to a garment. (Forgive my dork-face and overlarge tunic– this was for a customer who’s about a foot taller than me!)

You should use facings because:

Hemming necklines is a pain. The curve will not want to fold down flat. Facings, on the other hand, are exactly the same size and shape as the neckline, so they automatically lay flat.

The point at the bottom of a keyhole is a nightmare to hem, and if you hem it badly, it will fray and rip, fast.

When you fold down a neckline to hem it, your neck-hole gets bigger. When we’re talking LARP/SCA/Dagorhir garb, a bigger neck-hole always means more sunburn. If you use a facing, you’ll get a neckhole exactly the size you planned.

Hemming stretches your neckline out. The more you handle a cut piece of fabric, the more it will stretch. A stretched out neckline = more sunburn, again. This facing method minimizes handling of cut edges, so the neckline stays nice and tight.

Facings are fast and easy once you understand what you’re doing and why. I can knock one out, start to finish, in about ten minutes. No lie.

Now that I’ve convinced you that facings rock, onward!

1. Make Your Facing Pattern

You’ll first need a pattern for your facing, and to make that, you need to know what size you’d like your finished neckline to be. I recommend a neckline that’s made of a circle that’s about 5.5″ in diameter and a 3″ slit, like this. This is juuust big enough that it will pull over most heads. 

Draw your 5.5″ circle on a bit of scrap fabric. (I traced a saucer onto a sheet from a charity shop. Pure class, me.) This will be the hole your head goes through.

But, you protest, a 5.5″ circle only has a 17.25″ circumference! That’s way too small for anyone’s head! Well spotted: we’ll add a 3″ long slash down the center line so you can fit your head through. 

Now we’ll mark the center and shoulder line. Since your tunic has a front half and a back half, you’ll be sorely tempted to put half your neck-circle on the front and half on the back.

But if you do this, your tunic will be really uncomfortable! Your neckline will constantly creep forward around your shoulders. This is because most of your neck is actually in front of the shoulder seam, so 2/3rds of your circle– about 3.66″ on a 5.5″ circle– should go in front of your shoulder.

Add 1.5″ around the edge of the hole and and around the slash. 

Cut the fabric out along the outer line.

Cut out the center hole, and cut down the slash. Note that you’re just cutting the slash open with one pass of your scissors– you’re not trimming anything away. 

Now you have a mock-up for your facing. It should look something like this. (Mine is super ugly because I’m traveling and only have terrible blunt scissors with me.)

Pull it on. Can you fit this over your head? Does it lie comfortably? If you can’t get this over your head, cut the slash a tiny bit longer and try again. If that doesn’t work, make the hole a tiiiiny bit larger. Remember that a smaller neckhole is better (sunburn!).

Don’t be fooled by my weird face– I am happy, because mine fits okay! I’ll now trace my mock-up onto a bit of sturdy poster board, making sure to mark the center front, back, length of the slit, and shoulder seams with notches.

The front white piece is my facing pattern, which I use to trace out the facing piece on fabric, ie, the background piece in olive green. Note that the fabric facing does NOT have the hole cut out. This is important!

Next, we’ll…

2. Cut Out Your Facing

Lay your new pattern on a bit of your fabric. Using chalk or a fabric-marking pencil, trace it all the edges and mark all the notches. Cut along the outer line until your facing piece looks like the dark shape in the photo above.

Here’s where it gets tricky, though: you won’t cut the interior circle, yet. This is because that inner edge isn’t really an edge at all: it’s your stitching line. When you’re stitching your facing onto your tunic, your needle will follow that inner line that you’ve chalked onto your fabric. See how in the photo above there’s a line marked in yellow chalk on the dark olive green facing? That’s the stitching line, so DO NOT CUT THE CENTER HOLE OUT IN YOUR FACING.

Similarly, DO NOT CUT A HOLE IN YOUR TUNIC YET. We won’t cut either hole until the facing is stitched to the tunic. That’s right– it will look and feel really weird, but trust me, there’s a good reason for it.

3. Finish the Edge of Your Facing

The outer edge of your facing will fray if you don’t do something to prevent that, so take a moment to serge or zigzag around the edge of your facing piece. It’s way easier to do this before you stitch the facing onto your tunic.

4. Stitch Your Facing Onto Your Tunic

Okay, so. I like to start by sew the neckline on my tunic before I do anything else. That way, if I screw it up, I haven’t wasted time (or fabric) by adding sleeves and gores and stuff. 

Note how, in the picture above, no holes have been cut in the facing or the torso panel. This is not a mistake. Why aren’t you cutting the holes, you might ask? Well, fabric cut along curves stretches. Badly. This is bad news if you’re trying to match the hole you cut in your tunic to the hole you cut in your facing. Getting them to match requires a ton of pinning and fussying and delicate handling. I hate pinning and fussing, so I sew my facing to my tunic before I cut any holes. This way, everything is stabilized nothing can stretch out. Cool? Cool. Now, my torso panel is one long rectangle, which makes up the main front and back of my tunic– there’s no shoulder seam. Fold your tunic in half both ways and use your iron to crease these folds. These creases now mark your shoulder line and center lines. You’ll use them to line up your facing.

Lay your facing onto your tunic, right sides (ie, outsides) together. Make sure to match facing to the tunic’s center front, back, and shoulder seams. Remember how 2/3rds of your neckline will be on the front of your tunic? Check that, now. When your facing lays straight and flat and properly positioned on your tunic, pin it in place. You’ll now slowly stitch through both layers along the line you marked. The slash is a little different, though, so see the picture below for an explanation of how to stitch around it.

The stitching travels around the slash, with about 1/4″ to 1/8″ between the lines. The bottom of the slash should be crossed by just 1 stitch. If you use more stitches, this point will pucker when you try to flip it to the inside.

Once you’ve stitched along the entire stitching line, you’ll finally cut the neckline open.

Be extra careful cutting the slash open. You’ll cut through the gap between the two rows of stitching, stopping just shy of the stitch at the very bottom of the slash.

Okay. So, you’ve got your facing sewn to your tunic, but all the raw/cut edges are still exposed. To fix that, you’ll now fold the facing to the wrong side (ie, the inside), so the raw edge will be hidden inside the fold. This can be a little tricky, so be patient and use plenty of steam with your iron. To turn the points out, use something pointy but blunt, like a big bamboo knitting needle, to poke them right-side-out.

Once you’ve got your facing turned to the inside of your tunic, iron it well so the edge of the neckline is flat and crisp.

Hooray! All that’s left, now, is topstitching through the tunic and the facing in matching thread so your facing won’t creep back out to the right side. I like to use two lines of topstitching– one 1/8″ from the edge of the neckline, and another 1″ from the edge of the neckline. Make sure you’re catching the edge of your facing!

Hooray, you did it! That wasn’t so bad, was it? And look how sturdy and clean your tunic’s neckline now looks. That keyhole is never going to rip, I tell you that.

Huge thanks to Stellaria for writing the original tutorial that taught me how to do facings, and for putting up with my hare-brained innovations on her methods. Stell is the best. 

[boomshells]

Super Simple Silicone Molds

Tutorial by: audreyobscura Tutorial Link: http://www.instructables.com/id/Worlds-easiest-silicone-mold/

[boomshells]

Leather Straps and Edge Binding

Tutorial by:  LABRICOLEUSE Tutorial Link: http://labricoleuse.livejournal.com/4376.html

[boomshells]

PUFF SLEEVE TUTORIAL FOR COSPLAY AND PERIOD DRESS! 

Hey! There’s a lot of disjointed info out there about making puffy sleeves, and I thought it might be helpful to gather (ha) everything I’ve learned/found online in one place. Puff sleeves, more accurately known as “leg o’ mutton sleeves,” were popular between 1890 and 1906, and they’re a pretty common feature in fancy/ball gown costumes. 

Under the readmore: how to draft & sew puff sleeves and tips and tricks for maximum puff! Featuring really shitty pencil-on-Post-It diagrams by me!

Many thanks to all the people whose brains I’ve picked about this, as well as all the Internet resources I’ve trawled to make this possible.

Keep reading

[boomshells]

How I made scale mail out of faux leather, in case anyone finds this useful.  I used the same method for Morrigan’s camisole except that one I sewed instead of stapled.

Instructions are in the captions.

ETA: I did this instead of using actual metal scales because it was faster, lighter, and I had all the materials on hand.  But if you want to be more authentic, you can buy real scale mail here.

The paint can flake a little, so it would be a good idea to start with leather that was already grey or silver. More on that here.

[boomshells]

Types of lining fabrics and how to use them by Daniela Tabois

Link: https://youtu.be/2i2ha_NVLFI

[boomshells]

i love dressing up and dying

[boomshells]

Perona Umbrella Tutorial

A quick look at how I covered a bubble umbrella to look like Perona’s umbrella from One Piece.  This can work for most any type of umbrella, using all different types of fabrics.

Keep reading

[boomshells]

SEWING tutorial (by AmenoKitarou (A.K. Wirru))

This is a trimming technique a friend taught me, that we like to call “Inivisible” trims. (The official name is actually called “Stitch in the Ditch”) You know those characters who have trims on their design that have NO TOP STITCH LINES?? This is a way to do them. Notes: - to make the costume neat on the inside as well, hem the strip before moving onto step 2. - use matching colour threads. For my costume I used dark green on the top thread, and had white thread for the bobbin.  - the close you can stitch to the edge of the seam, the more *invisible* it will be. - this can be done with much thinner trims too. Of course, it would become more fiddly the thinner it is

[boomshells]

How to make puff sleeves

Making a puff sleeve is not so difficult as it may seem. There are different ways how you can make it but this is how I usually do it. You can use this technic on both short and long sleeves.

Start of with a normal pattern of a normal sleeve in your measurements and draw a cross across the pattern.

Cut among the lines and separate the four pieces so you get space between them.

With this pieces you can make different kinds of patterns depending what kind of puff sleeves you are going to make.

A) By separate the four pieces like this you will get a pattern of the classic puff sleeves. B) By connecting the upper tips of the pattern pieces you will get a sleeve that is only puffed on the lower part and normal (un-puffed) on the upper. C) By connecting the middle tips of the two lower pattern parts you will get a pattern that is puffed on your shoulder and normal (un-puffed) on the lower part of the sleeve.

Place your pieces on your fabric like you want them, draw it out and cut your sleeve out.

Zigzag around the edges and then sew the sides of the sleeve together.

To make the puff effect on the upper part of your sleeve take needle and thread and start to sew two set of lines among the markings with big stitches.

Pull the ends of the threads on both sides to get the sleeve wrinkled.

To make the lower part of the sleeve puffed I usually use elastic band. The elastic band will make it easier to take the sleeve on and off.

Measure your arm and make a ring out of the elastic band. Needle it to the lower part of the sleeve and sew it on. Remember to pull the elastic band as you sew.

Sew the sleeve on to your blouse and you are done!

~Firefly

[boomshells]

Adhesive Chart

TifaIA found this chart and posted it on her facebook page. I wanted to share it here. Also here is the link to the original source if you need to see a bigger picture.

[boomshells]

Understitching — sewing the seam allowance to the lining, working from the back and stitching as close to the seam as possible — lets you make extremely crisp edges.

On the left gif, the cape edge is understitched, so I can effortlessly fold the cape at the edge. Even without ironing it looks like a clean and neat line! The right gif isn’t under stitched; as a result I have to roll and fumble with the fabric to work the seam towards the edge, and it still looks puffy and gross.

If you want clean lines, understitch! It will pull your garment together quickly, and it’s an easy skill to pick up.

- Jenn

[boomshells]

HOW TO STEP UP YOUR WIG STYLING GAME

Before I list off my tips, I just want to include a very important piece of info! Something I learned when styling wigs is that once you accomplish your first super challenging wig…you feel like you can almost do any wig you put your heart into. Skills you get in one wig can easily be transferred into another wig. Many wigs have similar methods that you can re-use over and over again. All it takes is a little bit of confidence c:  1- Get the idea that “styling extreme wigs is like styling a real person’s hair” out of your system. You can use products like: super glue, clear caulking, hot glue, foam, fabric dye or whatever your creativity wants you to use. Look at a wig like you would look at building a prop. Envisioning a wig to be a craft project can make insane looking hairstyles seem much more possible.  2- Watch/read tutorials EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT DOING THE SAME CHARACTER THE TUTORIAL DEMONSTRATES. The info that a tutorial can provide can transferable to your own personal project or just to add to mental list of wig styling methods. Here’s a great list of tutorials: http://arda-wigs.com/pages/tutorials-articles  http://students.washington.edu/costume/wordpress/tutorials/the-basics- of-wig-styling/ http://cosplaytutorial.com/list.php#wigs 3- Learn to proportion. The character’s hair spike is about as long as their face? How long is my face? 9 inches? Ok then I am making the spike 9 inches. Oh wait. That’s too unrealistically long, I’ll re-proportion it to half the size of my face and do the same with the rest of the spikes.  Done. 4- Tools of trade? A basic starting wig styling kit should include:     -Wig head     -Comb(s)     -Got2be glued gel     -Got2be glued hair spray     -Thinning shears      -Regular shears     -Alligator clips      -Small elastic hair ties      -Foam curlers     -Blow dryer     -Straightener  (can be purchased at Sally’s beauty supply store, Walmart, online wig shops) 5- USE A MALE WIG HEAD FOR YOUR STYLING. Why? They are much more similar to the size of an actual human head. 6- Understand the differences between wig wefts, wig fibers, and lace fronts vs non lace fronts.  Here’s a good guide. 7- Do not underestimate the power of a hair blow dryer. (Especially if you work with Arda wig’s fibers). Just like a heat gun is to Worbla. You can shape, add volume, and set/dry gel with a blow dryer.  8- Familiarize yourself with wig styling lingo What does it mean to ventilate a lace front? What is stubbing?! A simple google search can open so many doors.  If this list helped you, feel free to reblog to share with your followers~ c: 

Thank you for reading! 

[boomshells]

Gauntlets (Hands)

Another armour writeup for ya. Some of these photos are repeats, but they help to explain my whole process.

1: Used cling wrap and tape method to mock up the gauntlet sections/details.

2-4: Cut apart tape gauntlet and transferred the pattern onto paper. Patterned the flared wrist extension piece by cutting a semi-circle into straight strips and taping them back together, essentially making a paper fan. The edges were cut into a webbed shape. This method of cutting and reattaching the strips was also used in the foam version of the gauntlets; each had strips that needed to be glued into shape before the whole gauntlet base got Worbla’d. 5: I carved the knuckle pieces by hand from Eva foam with scissors and attached them to the foam gauntlet bases so they would show through the Worbla.

6-8: Finger pieces. You’re looking at 15 pieces of Worbla and 15 pieces of foam per hand. They’re simple to assemble and shape, but time-consuming. Every piece had to be labelled individually and matched with its partner; I used a naming scheme of Finger-Section-Hand, e.g. “Ring 3R” for the third (lowest) section of the ring finger on the right hand.

9-10: An assembled set of gauntlets and all six gauntlet bases, which are now in the sealing stage. The little yellow pyramids are painter’s pyramids from Lee Valley, which elevate drying objects so that glue/paint doesn’t pool on your working surface.

- Kat