All The Cosplay!

I wanted to chronicle the making of my second cosplay piece and my very first sewn garment (gasp!). I also figured this would be a good use of my blog.

I present Daphne Blake from Scooby-Doo!

While I don't feel a super-close connection with this character (one, I was only an occasional viewer of the cartoon and two, when I did, I related much more to Velma), my friend does a really nice version of Velma and who doesn't love group cosplay?! Plus, as far as putting this together, it seems a lot more low-key than a lot of other things I want to do.

Perhaps by documenting my successes (hopefully), I can encourage other newbie cosplayers and beginner seamstresses to hit the ground running!

I bought a great vintage pattern (1969) from Cedar Closet's Etsy shop, McCall's 2087. Nothing says vintage like a package that lists a price of 75 cents, heh. It's actually a really cute dress (and I'm not one for dresses, but I do like A-line styles.)

I already mocked up a muslin per the Sewing Powers That Be (that took me a month or two, but I don't really have a deadline for this) and it was worth it! I discovered that the pattern as-is made it look like I was wearing a sack. Not fitted at all as shown on the package. I wasn't really sure what to do, take in the seams? Alter the darts? Redraw the design? All of the above???

Well as it turns out, it was just a matter of adjusting the darts!! I added a half inch all around the existing darts on the front piece only (back fit was fine) and the end result looked Much Better. Sassy, even. No adjustments to the seams or redrawing of the whole pattern. Darts are amazing!

The sleeves are a little bit of a different story. Set-in sleeves are a PAIN. I've done set-in sleeves in my sweater knitting, so I knew the basic principles, but for some reason yarn eases so much easier (heh) than fabric does. I even ripped out and tried again, and did both sleeves for my muslin, and I still get strange little tucks at the shoulders. The sleeves are also not very fitted, but they look decent, and honestly, if I try to get perfection, I will never actually get this done. So decent is fine with me.

The pattern also calls for a collar. For the life of me, I cannot figure out the instructions for the collar. Many hours of internet searches and watching You Tube videos and I still can't figure it out. But you know what? Daphne wears a green scarf so no one is going to see the collar anyway. I decided to make my own facings for the neckline instead. Plenty of good tutorials on the Interwebz for that. Take that, Collar. Now you don't get to be on the dress :P That's what you get for being difficult.

Oh, and this is also the first time I'm trying an invisible zipper. I've only done a regular zipper once (and it came out really nicely!) I found this great video tutorial for using your regular zipper foot instead of buying a specialized invisible zipper foot. The zipper came out pretty well on the muslin, you could only see a little bit of the tape and when it actually matches the fabric, it'll be fine.

Finally went and got my fabric today! Washed and iron and ready to go for tomorrow for cutting!

Wish me luck and minimal tears for this project ;)