The Hunger Games - Hallway and Premiere Costumes!

Yes! Thank you for noticing, but we DID find a new place to Cosplay! As Science Fiction and Fantasy become the new cool, why should Star Wars and Rocky Horror fans be the only ones who get to dress up to go to the movies! We want to play too!

Back when the guests for Calgary Expo were being announced ( you can read about my rant here) I was trying to convince, someone, anyone to go with me! As I mentioned in the previous post, Dejathoris was automatically out because she has a very important wedding to attend to out of town so I started asking around. Now, what ended up happening was, Dejathoris was able to rework her schedule so that she can actually go to a little bit of Calgary Expo as well! In our excited state we realized that we only have costumes for Trios not Duos. And since Guavious wasn't going to be in town, we thought what better than to do Hunger Games on the Friday night of Calgary Expo!! "Oh!" we thought, "If we going to be doing these Hunger Games costumes anyways, why not dress up for the premiere in three weeks? They shouldn't be that hard?!?!" So lo-and-behold, we're about three weeks out from the premiere, we're already trying to mad-dash Clash of the Titans, but really, how hard could it be?

Katniss:

Katniss is pre-Hunger Games Katniss. We focused on finding the ideal Leather Jacket... This was the first piece we looked for mostly because we knew other costumers might have the same idea. Funny side note, we were the only people dressed up for our premiere, and they 10 let me bring a loaded Bow and Arrow set in with me and 2) we got pounced on by numerous under 16 year olds that wanted to take our pictures. Not going to lie, we felt pretty cool (weird).

Katniss was a compilation of numerous thrift store buys and some slight details. We already needed a bow for Medusa, so we compromised and dyed the bow brown and added some small leather lacing for detail. We then made a custom quiver out of some old belts and rivets. Lacing the belts together and adding some rivets to the tongue pieces so that they looked finished for the quiver. Unfortunately, when we were trying to build the quiver at 10pm on a Tuesday night, we didn't realized that we attached the same ends to both sides. Meaning that they wouldn't fit. So our last minute attempt to have Katniss with a quiver was to take Allestra's (Dejathoris' Steampunk character) harness belt and duct tape it onto the belt. Worked for the premiere! We picked up some brown cargo pants from Value Village after trying on about 15 pairs of pants in the search.  Part of costuming, I believe, is finding something that fits you right that belongs with the character. If you have something that fits you awful, and even if it's correct to the "style of the character" you're going to 1) look uncomfortable 2) look out of character because it doesn't fit. The top was a loose fitting dark green tank top. And the shoes were actually Indira's (Mrs Spiderman's Steampunk character). All that was really the work was the braid and the makeup. Word of advice, if you practice with slightly oily hair (unwashed) don't wash your hair the night before you need to 'present'! I was panicking because it took over 30 minutes to get the initial braid started!!! Makeup was the "natural look" with a load of eyeliner to make my eyes 'pop' in pictures. Make sure you try to get as close to the eye as possible!!!

Effie: Effie in our world has two incarnations. One before the premiere and one after once we saw the stills that are (Spoiler Alert) non-pink focused. We worked off of the main picture of Effie which involved the Paperself Doe eyelashes. We tried to work in a lovely pink ruched suit dress, but unfortunately, our  main sewing machine was not having ANY OF IT. It was actually eating the fabric it was so mad. Dejathoris sewed an entire new outfit two days before the premier after finding a super steal at Fabricland!! The Premiere wig was a blonde Wig in a 60's Fro style. We then attached at large complimentary pink flower to imitate the stills we were seeing. The flower that was pinned in was super pink, so we used these "air brush felt pens" to blow some darker purples and blues onto the flowers to mimic the new updated fabric. This worked for the premiere really well. The newer version of the wig is a slightly smaller blond 'fro, with a more colour coordinated flower. Also of note is the first wig was WAY TO HOT to wear. It had some foam padding to hold the shape up and when wearing it, it made Dejathoris a million degrees too warm too fast... Some learnings here (and a past learning from Dune) is to wear around your wigs to get comfortable in them first... That way there are less surprises when the big 'presentation' day arrives. One of our proudest "attention to detail' moments regarding Effie's costume (and there are a lot I tell ya!) are the boots. We lined the inside of Effies super steal pink boots with the dress fabric, so that they matched, because if anything, Effie is coordinated from head to toe! Another small detail was we purchased some falsie nails to coordinate with the super pink costume... Since we went with more purples, Dejathoris painted her own nails with details that matched her outfit!

This didn't end up being a Duo costume for long.... On our way to Norwescon we last minue put together an easy-peasy Peeta costume for Guavious. Khaki pants, White t-shirt, white apron and little mini rolling pin..... Guavious was having none of that... After watching the movie, he decided that the best option would be.... Cato. Red and Black track suit and his Sword from Perseus (Clash of the Titans)... So IN SEATTLE we went to WalMart and picked up and entire hallway cosplay outfit! And most of it was on sale! Score!

I made a Jayne Hat!

I Made a Jayne Hat!

Original Jayne Hat

 So Mr Dejathoris (for lack of a better code name) sometimes reminds us of Jayne Cobb. And we tend to watch a lot of Firefly because it’s the only consistently awesome thing on Canadian Netflix. So amongst our random cosplay over the summer, Dejathoris asked me to make him a Jayne hat. I’ve been working on getting back into my knitting so I thought ‘Why not?’ she bought the supplies and I could do this in front of the TV.

Starting the Yellow

There are a TON and I mean a TON of Jayne Hat patterns on the internet, and most of them involve circular needles. This is why I had to start over so many times. As much as I hate sewing seams on knit garments, I did not get the hang of. So I gave up and switched to regular needles so I modified the pattern to match that.

I used 6.5 gauge needles, and bright yellow, bright orange, and rusty red coloured yarn. I don’t know the brand because Dejathoris ripped off the labels to make the pompom. (She knows not of Yarn etiquette, so sad). Casting on about 72 made the hat slightly too big for my head so I’m hoping that it fits Mr Dejathors well... If not, I do have enough yarn to start over.

Post stitching together

Most of the patterns involved knitting the entire hat as if it were one piece. And because I couldn’t figure out the circulars I knit it flat knowing I’d sew it together.  I knit about 1 ½ Inches of Ribbing in Orange, then 3 ½ inches of stockinette in Orange. I switched to the Yellow and did another 3 ½ inches. I then started to decrease the stitches k2tog on the RS, and Purl the whole WS. I repeated the last two steps until I had about 7 stitches left and then attached the Pompom to those. I then sewed the whole hat together.

Starting the Earflaps

Rather than try to attach the ear flaps to the hat right away, I made them separately and attached them. Casting on about 22 in the Rusty red, I knit about 4 ½ inches in the stockinette and then started to decrease to round out the sides. I would k2tog the first and last stitches on the RS and P2tog the first and last stitches on the WS. I repeated this until there was one stitch left and ran the yarn through it.

Completed Hat!

Overall the project took me about an afternoon. I loved how quick and easy it was, and I loved how I could modify it to fit my capabilities. I highly recommend anyone to try this one out!

Not my Picture - A wonderful Mashup by Karen Hallion

Terminology:

WR – Wrong Side

RS – Right Side

K2tog – Knit two stitches together

P2tog – Purl two stitches together

Stockinette – Knit entire row on right side, Purl entire row on wrong side

Shrek Headpiece Tutorial - Dejathoris

Hi Everyone!

With Halloween around the corner I'm hoping to get a few blog posts in... And on top of that, Dejathoris is looking to get in on some writing fun! She sent me this post because she actually remembered to take pictures of her progress. Yay! Enjoy!

Shrek Headpiece Tutorial

Halloween 2012 is closing in fast, and Dejathoris is planning on painting herself and her man green to rock a Shrek and Princess Fiona look.  Understandably, shaving one’s head for a single night of Halloween fun is a big commitment – so instead of asking Mr. Dejathoris to go the full cue ball route, we were experimenting with the idea of using a traditional bald cap.  While effective, these can be time consuming, messy (spirit gum in your hair, anyone?) and uncomfortable.  Luckily, a quick stop at the local Good Will thrift store provided the perfect solution for the low, low price of only $1.99.

Original thrift store rubber Witch mask

It didn’t look very much like Shrek in the thrift store bin... but a half hour of cutting and sewing was all that was needed to transform this Witch into an Ogre! 

Creating a green rubber skull cap

The first step was to cut out face portion.  The remaining cap will be turned inside-out to use the green underside as a base for the new headpiece.

Remaining sections cut from front of mask

The next step was to cut the ear flaps, using the extended chin piece to create the fluted tubes needed to form the shape of Ogre ears.   We saved the face portion for future costuming needs.  After all, you never know when you'll need a rubber Witch nose.

Ready to sew ear flaps

Starting from the narrowest end, each piece was folded in half and sewn upwards about two thirds of the way, then turned inside out.  After sewing a dart into the back centre of the rubber cap to customize the fit, the final step was to sew the stems of ear tubes to the sides, using a solid zig-zag seam to anchor them securely. 

Completed Shrek headpiece!

And viola, DIY Shrek on a budget!

Protips for working with rubber:

·         Using a specialised leather needle, available at any sewing or crafting store, will make sewing the thick rubber much easier.  

·         You will need to manually feed the material through the sewing machine, as rubber will “grip” your feeding foot and tends to stick in place quite easily.

·         Use a heavier thread – such as embroidery or upholstery thread – and a medium to long stitch length on a lighter tension setting in order to ensure that your stitches don’t bite through the rubber.