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Posts Tagged ‘costuming’

seeking a hat

Some of you may recall that for my book tour last year, I had a Victorian dress made (in dark red, black, and grey). Well, I need a hat to go with it — and while I could have one made custom, it seems a bit silly to drop that much money on a piece of headgear I will almost never wear.

So: please recommend to me your favorite Victorian-style milliners! My requirements are:

  • late Victorian in style
  • designed to perch atop my head, rather than settling down over it (I will have a rather large bun getting in the way of the latter style)
  • not too expensive — less than $100 would be ideal
  • either black or grey (I doubt I can match the red without a lot of hassle)

Any suggestions?

thoughts while packing for Sirens

SELF: Oh, noes! I cannot wear the costume I wanted to bring for the Sirens ball, because I have gained too much weight!

REST OF SELF: Well, we’re not eighteen anymore.

SELF: No, we’re not. <is tragic>

REST OF SELF: . . . hang on a sec. We have gained something in the waist and hips, yes. But this outfit is cut such that it actually still fits just fine through the waist and hips.

SELF: BUT IT DOESN’T FIT.

REST OF SELF: . . . through the ribcage. I somehow don’t think we’ve gained large amounts of weight in the ribcage. I think we’ve just grown. Seeing as how this was sewn for us when we were eighteen, and we are now thirty-two.

SELF: Wait, that’s almost worse. We can pretend we might lose weight someday, but we can’t really pretend our bones are going to shrink back to teenaged levels.

REST OF SELF: I’m going to ignore that weight-loss comment and point out that this is why someone invented corsets.

SELF: HOORAY THE DAY IS SAVED!

(I actually have to wait for kniedzw to get home and help me get dressed to see if this solution will work. If it doesn’t, then I should probably let go of the dress, since yeah — it not fitting is a function more of my skeleton than anything else. But I think it will; the dress only just barely doesn’t fit.)

Two reminders

1) The first of teleidoplex‘s costume auctions are ending soon — like, in about six hours. (Others have a bit longer to run.) Take a look, bid while you can, help her go to Clarion West!

2) I’m reading at SF in SF tomorrow night, with Ysabeau Wilce and Erin Hoffman. Hope to see some of you there!

Costume sale! For a good cause!

My friend teleidoplex has won herself a place in Clarion West, which is totally awesome.

But Clarion, regardless of direction, is kind of expensive — and that is not so awesome.

But! You can be awesome and help!

In addition to being a writer of much talent, teleidoplex is a veteran costumer. (In fact, she’s one of the people that infected me with the costuming bug when I started LARPing.) And she’s created an eBay store to sell off some of her hoard of outfits, wigs, shoes, and more, with proceeds going toward paying her way to Clarion. Some of the stuff is very costume-y; other stuff is perfectly legitimate street clothing. I heartily encourage you all (at least, all of you with a use for women’s clothing) to browse through it and see if there’s anything you might be interested in.

And if you don’t want stuff, but do want to help her out, there’s a donation button on her website, where you can chip in directly.

because ordering from Japan is expensive

I don’t suppose anybody has any clever tips for how to find kimono and obi (and I do mean kimono, not yukata) for non-obscene prices? I’m looking either for stores in the Bay Area or for websites, but between the exchange rate and shipping costs, ordering from Japan tends to make prices obscene pretty quickly — I’d prefer something more, er, local.

This query has been brought to you by eBay’s utter failure to contain what I want, and Rakuten’s tendency to make my eyes bleed with machine-translated Japanese.

I promised to post it ages ago . . . .

. . . so here it is at last, my costume from Sirens last year:

This was for both the masquerade ball at the end of the conference, and the A Star Shall Fall launch party beforehand. I described it as “non-specifically Lune,” in that it’s her colors and an Elizabethan style, but not me trying to actually dress as her.

(The other person in the photo, incidentally, was one of my two frontrunners for winner of the costume contest, until somebody solved my problem by mentioning that she was staff and therefore ineligible. Alas, I can’t seem to find a shot of the actual winner, who dressed as an aspen fairy, and was gorgeous. But the one you see there — her armor! It’s made from a cut-up-basketball! And she brought a RAPIER!!! <swoon>)

So yeah. That was my costume. I paid somebody to make it for me; I’ve had the fabric and design planned for ages, but never had the time (nor quite the gumption) to attempt something that difficult. This, my friends, is why god invented SCA costumers. 🙂

Now I just need to find more excuses to wear it . . . .

a sewing question for the internets

I keep feeling there’s some obvious way to make this simpler, but I don’t know what. Maybe you, O Ever-Wise Internets, do.

I have a circular piece of fabric that needs be sewn onto the surface of another, larger piece. The circle is small (diameter ~3 inches) and has raw edges. Dealing with those is the issue at hand. Bonus points for a solution that minimizes the hassle if I have to remove the circle at a later date and transfer it to a new piece of fabric.

Here are the possible solutions I've thought up.

save me from my “friends”

So I fear it may have been lost in the DDoS attacks on LJ, but I’m looking for suggestions as to what costume I should wear to the Sirens masquerade ball. The theme is “monsters,” and so far, the only idea proposed — by some people who claim to be my friends <g> — is that I should dress up as Sarah Palin. I therefore look to you, oh Other LJ Readers Besides Those Two, to give me some better alternatives.

I like costuming a lot; I just don’t have any good ideas right now. And depending on what I settle on, I’ll need some lead time to prepare it, hence asking now. Any thoughts?

Two things about Sirens

shveta_thakrar is hiring herself out as a copyeditor and proofreader to raise money to go to Sirens this fall; read her post for more details. (You can also just donate directly if you wish.) You all know I think Sirens is a wonderful, wonderful event, and I’m going back this year myself, so if those services sound useful to you, pop on over there and let her know.

Which brings me to the second thing. Just yesterday I was bemoaning the fact that I have so few costuming opportunities these days, compared to when I lived in Bloomington. Then it occurred to me that I have an absolutely smashing opportunity coming up this fall: the masquerade ball at Sirens!

The theme for Sirens this year is “monsters.” I could costume as one of those, or as somebody who hunts the same. The sensible thing to do would be to raid my closet and re-use a costume I already have — but who wants to be sensible? And really, the only monster-type thing I have is my old Hel costume, but I am damned if I’m going to repeat the makeup and hair you see in that icon; it was a bad idea once, and I’m not stupid enough to do it twice. I have a couple of other options, but one isn’t exciting and the other doesn’t count as “re-using a costume” so much as “re-using an accessory and buying a new costume to go with it.”

This is where you, my faithful LJ readers, come in. Who or what should I dress up as? Get as creative as you like; just remember that a) I’m not going to cut or dye my hair and b) whatever I do has to be easily transportable via plane. Suggest as many things as you feel inspired to, and let me know if you think somebody else’s suggestions sound good. I promise there will be pictures afterward. (And, er, I’ll get around to posting the pics I have from last year. I swear I will.)

Have at it!

a question for the embroiderers

I know I have people reading this blog who spin, crochet, weave, knit, and sew; I figure odds are good at least a couple of you embroider.

How would you recommend going about embroidering this figure?

Assume a smallish size — maybe two inches in diameter. I’d love to hear what types of stitch you would use where, in what order, and bonus points for specifying whether it’s what an experienced embroiderer would do, or what a hypothetical embroiderer who used to know about three stitches fifteen years ago might have an easier time with. (Not that we know anybody fitting that description, nosirree.) I’m mostly concerned with making the end result look good; cutting corners to make it less of a pain in the ass is not necessary. 🙂

I’m not even sure how to effectively transfer the design to the material (which is dark grey, and will be embroidered in white) — I’m almost tempted to print it onto thin paper and then just stitch straight over that. Is this a bad idea?

(The whole project is probably a bad idea, for the aforementioned reason of three stitches semi-mastered fifteen years ago. But it’s not like I’ve ever done anything crazy in the textiles department before. kurayami_hime, remember the Greek key belt?)