Duct Tape Dress

Difficulty: Medium
Time: 12 hours
Price: $15

I've wanted to wear a duct tape dress to a formal-ish event for a while. And not once of those colored-duct-tape-prom-contest-creations. I wanted to go the real route: use good old hardware store duct tape and make fashion happen from there.

To start the dress, I sewed a base out of cheap black fabric from a pattern. Since this was getting covered up, it was pretty ugly. I also made a fleecy top to go between the dress and my upper body to make it more comfortable.

Next, I enlisted the help of my brother to tape up the top. Wearing the black, he taped over the top until all of the black was covered up and also self supportive. Then, we cut me out of the dress top from the behind. To make the back close again, I used grommets and lace to make a corset back.

I wanted to make an architectural skirt. To pattern it, I put the dress on my duct tape dress form and balanced it on a stool and a few Harry Potter books until it was the same height as me. I used poster paper to make the skirt pieces.

Then, I just taped over the skirt pieces to cover the paper. The hardest part here was making the duct tape strips parallel and determining how little of the backs needed to be covered without leaving any visible paper. Easy as that! It only required two rolls of tape.

First panel: _____________________ All but the last:

My mom said it looked like a Frank Gehry building - I don't really disagree.

I wore the finished dress to a prom themed party. Getting into it required an assistant. Once it was on, I had no problems dancing!

The only problem with the dress was getting up stairs. This was more or less impossible, because the dress was basically an inflexible cone around my legs and I couldn't lift it up. My friend's boyfriend decided to remedy the situation by carrying me up the stairs. Amazingly, he didn't damage the dress, so points for durability?

My friend and I did a photoshoot of the dress in my garage to go with the hardware store theme of the dress. Unfortunately, the lighting wasn't great, and all we had was a point-and-shoot, but I'm still happy with the results. Also, it was my first time with non-costume makeup!

Organization XIII Coat & Zexion Cosplay

Difficulty: Hard
Time: 40-50 hours
Price: $60

Organization coats are awesome. However, they are quite a task to actually make – especially without a for-real pattern. There’s some of nasty detail work you could, of course skip, but the end result is pretty awesome with it. And the finished coat looks better than most of the coats you can buy online or at cons. Plus, in the end, your Thermo textbook becomes far more awesome.

I like my cosplay stuff to be functional in the real world, so I decided to make my coat fully lined. This, and n00bishly having to do the double seams twice, added many hours to the making of the coat. However, once it cools down again, I will be wearing this to classes. Yay for campuses where weird is normal. I don’t know what I’ll do when I graduate.

So, I actually don’t have a lot to say about how to make a coat, because another cosplayer has already prepared an amazing tutorial. Same goes for the book - it's just using paint or fabric to turn a book black and applying decals.

I can, however give tips.

1. Make a mock up and tailor it to yourself. That way, your coat fits you like a dream. Also, get friends to help you pin yourself.

2. The double seams are nasty. The best way to do them is to use chalk and draw lines to pin and sew along so your stitching comes out even. Also, sewing from the corner out prevents random bunching of the fabric.

3. Pockets are super fun. They were my favorite part of the coat.

4. Attaching the hood is nasty. I’d suggest finding another pattern for help on attaching a hood instead of free-handing it.

Photos Galore!

Some random notes on supplies: For the hardware on the coat, I had fun at home depot. I used fan pulls for the dangles and browsed the plumbing isle for something that would be a suitable bead – what I wound up using was called a ‘nipple’. The chain was from Micheal’s. The zipper came from here. I used special effects hair dye for my hair.

As for fun Con stories – I’m tall as it is and I had 3.75” boots on with this costume. One person I met at artists alley said it was as if my character had been sent through a taffy machine. I also had fun showing off nasty thermo equations in my book. Too bad it wasn’t for a class I was taking this term – the masquerade line was long, but we got good seats. ^_^

Cosplaying during school is exhausting. Thanks to Omega and Puffin for the photos and to Red for being an extra set of hands during tailoring and for being brave enough to give me the strange haircut.