Hi! I have boobs and I make...

[Rosalita]

Hi Longtime lurker & sometimes-poster with other sites. This thread looks like it turned into a who's-who of ladies whose work I've long admired!

I'm learning to sew, would LOVE to learn about casting, sculpting, and molding. Right now, I'm only really good at beading, but I've done some pretty good work on my SO's costume efforts.

 

[Darth Mule]

First off. This thread is full of win. So cool to see so many of our female costumers coming out of the woodwork, and seeing you all together makes me realize that some of my favorite work on the RPF has come from the ladies on this board.

We have a cheap sewing machine but it really isn't heavy duty..
So do you have any suggestions for a good model that could maybe handle light seeing all the way to stitching stuff like leather?

There have already been several great suggestions made here, but my suggestion is to look for a machine that's made of metal.
I own a Bernina 1008 and I love it. Now, it's a bit of an investment at the now $1000.00 mark, but I have talked dealerships down as low as $799.00 (got mine for $600.00 about 10 years ago).

Alternatively, and this especially goes for people wanting to get their first machine and don't want to invest too much money in it until they're sure they want to pursue it. Go to thrift stores. Look for those old, heavy metal, belt driven machines. If it works, and runs you less than $20 bucks, get it. Try it out. If you like it you can even get it serviced to make it run even better.

then we ran into Gizka and I felt a MILLION times better being able to hang with her while she was in her bikini too. Thanks again, Angelle!

A) I totally remember that. I was up in your room while you were drumming up the courage. An Lauren was in super vulgar even for her mode. Hilarious!
B) Angelle is here??? *Waves*

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Bernina machines yet. ...I know Darth Mule here on the RPF has found them for his costume shop like that.

Actually picked up a 1006 on eBay for right at $600.00

I personally have a mid/top of the line Bernina that I ADORE. She's a Bernina Aurora 430 and I treat her like a Queen...and she returns the favor.

Until Skynet comes online...

(Kev is as I type this purchasing our airline tickets!! I can't believe it... )

What! Guri is returning to Dragon Con? Tis a special day indeed.

 

[Kearstin]

There are sooo many beautiful women in here!

 

[Sedulous Studios]

I'm so impressed by everyone here! I'm also of the female persuasion (my name gives it away), and have done a bit of costuming in the past--mostly sewing: a few corsets, an awesome leather coat (I get told it's awesome every time I wear it anywhere, so it must be, right?), Ren Faire-type stuff, a bit of steampunk, etc. Right now I'm working on an Iron Man suit--I was feeling like guys get the best costumes, so who says I can't wear a guy's costume? I'm not yet that comfortable with a skin-baring outfit, which seems somewhat limiting as far as awesome women's costumes go. I think I'm going to make/re-make a Bellatrix costume though, that's a fun one. I'm going to D*C for the first time this year so I'm really rushing to get things finished in time.

I have a Bernina 1130--an older machine, but it's still running strong. I inherited it from my grandmother (after it spent many years with my mother) and I love it. Pricey when new, but it will sew several layers of upholstery leather with minimal complaints!

 

[Gizka]

B) Angelle is here??? *Waves*

Yes, I'm here, usually just lurking. *waves to Chris*

 

[Darth Mule]

I forgot to mention. For those of you interested in learning more about different costuming techniques that will be attending Dragon Con, check us out in the costume track. We'll be teaching panels all weekend on various topics ranging from the sewing oriented to leather, hats, masks, and armor.

I'll be doing several myself, including one on fabric types and one focusing on patterning with my good friend Cathy of GSTQ fashions who was mentioned in this thread earlier. You may even see Kristina Leigh in one or two.

 

[SomewhatSavvy]

^THIS! I have such issues with this! I think it has to do with my science and research background. I'll decide I love a costume, either for myself for my hubby, then spend hours researching the heck out of it, tracking down where to get parts, planning in my head how to do it, etc. Then I'll look at my current project list and decide I don't have time to do it. Meanwhile I've wasted so many hours that could have been used to be productive! :facepalm

^YES. ALL. THE. TIME.
And on that note, I often look at others' costumes either on here or on cosplay.com, and I'm finding a LOT of you ladies are the ones I have so often admired! (And from other forums. I used to be on the 300DC forum and came up with all these 3D female spartan renderings that never became anything :rolleyes)

Has anyone else ever, when researching, found the EXACT piece (boots or something) used for a costume and been discouraged that it was out of your price range? I will scour the internet for ages to see if a particular piece exists, only to find that when I finally locate it, it's so darn expensive I get totally put off about doing the costume because it'll never be totally accurate. Maybe it's really silly and nit-picky of me, but it happens all the time (Katniss boots, Lara Croft ice ax, things like that).

Also, most of the costumes I've been looking into doing lately don't have a lot of "building" to them as much as "finding" so I don't really post on here about them. I'm searching for pieces to do a Tomb Raider Turning Point Lara, Fauxlivia (or Bolivia) from Fringe, and a good Katniss leather hunting jacket.

There's also the problem of photos. The only decent photos I have of costumes are either from other photographers that happened to be somewhere I was wearing a costume or some I've done myself (a time-consuming process of setting my camera on a tripod, adjusting settings, guessing at whether or not I'm in the frame, and using a remote I have to keep hidden in the photo, then repeating). So, I end up with NO photos when I'm in costume usually.

Though, as per request, I'll try to dig up what I DO have and post them.

 

[Lora]

The only time I ever got any flak for a costume was when I was dressed as Haldir in Canada and was being interviewed - they wanted to know why a woman would dress as a male elf when there were female elf costumes. I was like - uh, did you see how cool this armor is? Why wouldn't I want to wear it??

Agreed. ^^ I want to wear costumes I like, not just costumes other people think I should do. Though I do take suggestions. Like I said in my first post here, one of my dream costumes is a Richard the Warlock costume. Now that's a male costume, but I just love the character and like the little details of his costume, so I want to do that one day. I'm already thinking about how to hide the fact I have breasts, lol.
But I also don't mind the sexy costumes. Another costume I want to do fall in this category, and hopefully I'll get to it at some point. Both are comic costumes.
Currently I focus on Star Wars since I use those costumes with the Rebel Legion and local fan community, but I definitely want to branch out.

 

[MaulWalker]

Expanding on my first post...

As far as body image – now that I am on the other side of middle-aged, I find I don’t really worry about it anymore. Although I do find parts moving South faster than I can prop them up. All the more reason to wear corsets! I never wanted to wear skin-tight or sexy. Many of my current costumes portray strong women – Mon Mothma, Rosie the Riveter, All American Girls Professional Baseball League player, a 1915 suffragette, and the Wicked Witch of the West.


My current obsession is historical costuming (I do historical from the skin out.) That can lead to some rather “obscure” costumes. I have what I call my 1943 civilian that was inspired by a vintage hat – had to make an outfit to go with it. My pride and joy is a Blackfoot Indian woman’s ceremonial outfit, circa 1910. The dress is a replica of one in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian collections. Everything is completely hand-sewn (the owner was not a wealthy woman; wealthy women would have had access to a sewing machine. And I enjoy hand-sewing.) The bodice is beaded on the front and back and then there are leggings that are beaded with seed beads. This costume won Best in Show at the CostumeCon28 Historical Masquerade. The next historical costume will be a WWI munitions worker. Yes, rather obscure! I found out about these women when I was researching Rosie the Riveter.

In addition, I choose costumes that “speak” to me somehow. One of my costumes is cross-play – Ringo’s Sgt. Pepper uniform from the album cover. Ringo was always my favorite Beatle and the costume is bright pink satin and gold braid. The only way it could have been better is if it had been purple (my favorite color!) This costume even fooled my dad. He told me I sent him a picture of some guy.

I also try to learn a new technique from each costume – millinery, shoe making, corset making, bead work, leather work, etc. Now, I am working on a costume that requires me to work with mohair fabric and I will need to learn to do basic electronics.

My costuming weaknesses are sculpting and drawing. I sculpted my Mothma Chandrillian Freedom medal and shoulder sculpts. Luckily, the designs are organic, so symmetry was not a concern. But the first version was huge – about the size of a Kennedy half dollar when the medal is supposed to be about the size of a quarter. I also can’t draw at all. Mostly, the costume is an image in my head.

I am on my second Dremel (the easiest way to make rings for chain maille is a Dremel) and my second sewing machine. We can no longer maintain the timing on my old Singer from the 1970s. I currently use a Baby Lock.

For those of you who are intimidated by corsets, don’t be. A well fitted corset is a joy to wear. They only require basic sewing skills (straight or gently curved seams, topstitching, and bias binding.) You must make a muslin for fitting – use basting stitches and either put the corset on wrong side out or baste the seams wrong sides together.
You also don’t need lots of fancy materials/supplies. Yes, you will need a busk but you can fake bones and coutil. You can substitute light-weight denim for the coutil. For straight steel bones, you can substitute thick plastic cable ties from the hardware store (the ones you need are about 36” long) or go to where the paving blocks are and ask for the metal strapping. If you are going to do corset training, or tight-lacing, you will need the metal strapping. Unfortunatly, curved bones will require you to buy spiral steel.

Lynn

 

[Darth Mule]

MAULWALKER!!!

I'm going to go out on a limb here (even after all the hubub earlier) and say that your post is useless without pics. :behave

Seriously... We've chatted back and forth on here for years and I've still only seen a fraction of your stuff. I would love to see some of your historical costumes. I remember the Sgt Pepper, and I believe we've discussed your Wicked Witch at one point and tiem. Didn't you enter it in the Friday Night Costume Contest at Dragon Con a few years back? I think we talked about this before... You had a couple of Winkies with you???

And yes ladies. I'm totally stalking the "I have boobs" thread. It's the only one where people aren't talking about frakkin pepakura and Iron Man.

Maybe I should start a "I have moobs and I sew" thread just to see who else chimes in. Matter of fact...

 

[MaulWalker]

All right - pictures of some of my costumes

All American Girls Professional Baseball League
Groups get far more attention at DragonCon than singles, so we did four of them. I figured out how to modify a modern wrap dress pattern and each woman made her own. Since this picture was taken, I learned to knit and made four pair of regulation baseball stockings. I'm second from the right.

View attachment 106454


Rosie the Riveter
My first historical costume. The pants pattern is from Folkwear. The shirt I frankenpatterned from a couple of other patterns. The pins, with the exception of the ID badge, are vintage. The ID badge is based on an original Republic Aviation badge. (With Mon Mothma being Supreme Commander of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, Republic Aviation seemed appropriate. My ID number is 1138.) I could not find the correct sized polka dot fabric for the bandana, so I stencilled my own fabric and then hemmed it the fabric.

View attachment 106458

1915 Suffragette
My second historical costume. The blouse is made from a McCalls historical pattern, the skirt is my own pattern. The purse is vintage and the hat from a flea market. Modern, but it is similar to hats of the era.

View attachment 106457

Ringo's Sgt. Pepper
Really my favorite costume, partly because I can pull it off. (If anyone wants a suggestion on a major masher sports bra, just ask.) And a close up - yes my nose is almost as big as Ringo's.

View attachment 106456
View attachment 106459

Blackfoot Woman
I was asked to write an article for the Silicon Web Costumer's Guild quarterly newsletter about this costume. It is an 11-page long build thread if you will. At the end of the article is a link to the video of my presentation.

http://www.siwcostumers.org/newslet...-I1-2012/VirtCostV10-I1-2012_27-blackfoot.pdf
View attachment 106455
Somewhere on the RPF is a pic of Wicked Witch of the West and two Winkies. Yes, we entered the Friday night Costume Contest at Dragon and won Best Novice and Audience Favorite.
Lynn

 

[DoubleD]

Wow, that's some great work Maulwalker! It's very cool to see baseball suits that were the same type worn in the movie A League of Their Own. Your Rosie the Riveter is aces, too.

 

[MaulWalker]

Wow, that's some great work Maulwalker! It's very cool to see baseball suits that were the same type worn in the movie A League of Their Own. Your Rosie the Riveter is aces, too.

We took a more historical approach to the baseball uniforms than the movie did. One of our troop interviewed a couple of the players and asked them what fabrics were used in the uniforms. All of them said cotton twill dresses and satin shorts. The movie used polyester for the dresses. One of the movie uniforms is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame. All of the original uniforms from the first season were stored in a warehouse at the end of the season. And the warehouse burned down.

We purchased the hats from a company licensed to make the uniforms. They sell both the historically accurate hat (which we went with) and the movie version.

 

[iycis]

MaulWalker, I have been a fan of your attention to detail for a number of years. Well done on your wonderful costumes as always.

 

[Darth Mule]

Great stuff Lynn! Love the skirt on the suffragette. Love it all really... So cool to see someone doing all these semi-obscure costumes.

And the Sgt Pepper is a little freaky. In a good way of course.

 

[FANGS]

Here's a few of mine:

Burton version Catwoman

This is a picture of the corset that is worn by the character Sonia in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.

This is my version.

Ultraviolet and the soft parts for the Hazard Guards (friends of mine are responsible for the creation of the weapons. The guns have the blades that hide)

Here's some of the work on my Zam costume which was never 100% finished and is now getting torn apart to do an almost complete redo. This was the first costume that I did a lot of weathering and leather work and dying so I learned SO much but now that I know more, it needs to be redone before it goes in for approval. I didn't make any of the parts - I covered them in leather, rub'n'buffed and weathered/painted them and of course assembled them were necessary.

This is also the longest I've worked on a single costume. This piece alone being one of the big time users:

195 squares of tooling leather in 7 different sizes and all individually hand dyed. 780 holes punched in those squares. 90 feet of kangaroo leather to lace those squares together. And like a crazy person, I want to redo it. I'm not at all happy with any of my colours. After I put the leather protector on, the colour changed drastically. I love this dang costume though.....I can't wait to have it where I want it to be....

Alice from Resident Evil - and a perfect example of why to look for a photographer who pays a little more attention to detail.....stupid droopy thigh holsters....

Phoenix - this is from 2008 and my first attempt at making an all spandex costume, including the evil, evil gloves.

This is Queen Gorgo from 300 - it's a concept dress that never made it to the movie.

One of my all time favorite obscure costumes. This is the White ***** from the uber horrible movie, Epic Movie.

This is the Amazonia version of Wonder Woman. It was my first stab at making a corset out of leather.

This is the armor that Alice wears in the Burton version of Alice in Wonderland. The armor is a light gage steel and made by Mitch from Valentine Armories. I made the undersuit and the leather "skirt". The individual leather scales have since been removed and painted by my friend Erin to give them some depth. I still have work to do on the front of the skirt (there is a woven chain that the leather straps feed through) and need to add some leather to the neck area. Once I do I'll get better pictures of the whole costume. The Underworld Elder (worn by Steve Anderson) is also made by Mitch at Valentine Armories - they are the company that did lots of the armor for the movie. Beautiful work!

These dresses are based on series of dolls created by Robert Tonner. I made mine (far left), the top on the mostly white one and all of the one on the far right along with the tiaras (which you can't see well in this picture) that all of us are wearing and the symbols on each of our dresses.

The Magdalena - a friend made the armor for me. I made the soft parts(undersuit and cloak), rigged everything and embroidered the cloak.

 

[RoseyLady]

Well well well... so many beautiful ladies, it's been too much fun to follow this thread I've been too distracted to actually chime in.

I'll try and make this as simple as possible..

My name is Rose and I'm the daughter of an Electrical Engineer (Geek) and a Hippie.
I was raised going to Star Trek conventions and self-taught myself how to use the sewing machine at age 12.
I started going to anime conventions in 1999 with a group a friends, entered some masquerade contests, won a few awards here and there.
Worked as stage hand and Lead Prop Mistress for the Knoxville Opera here in TN for 4 seasons, that was AMAZING!
Married Jon (saxe_coburg) in a costumed wedding, him as Boba Fett and I as Sarah from Labyrinth's ballroom scene. Jeremy Bulloch (with the help of our 501st friends) surprised us IN costume with permission from Lucasfilm.
I LOVE my Star Wars and Boba Fett costuming family, they're a huge part of my life!
Jon and I have extensive collections in HR Giger/Alien related items, Chronicles of Riddick Necromonger screen used costumes, Starship Trooper screen used costumes and props, Boba Fett/Clone Trooper/and female character Star Wars related items.
I've spent the last 2 years on stage as a Burlesque performer and will be actually performing A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE/Game of Thrones number at this years Dragon*Con Burlesque Showcase.

The one thing I've never been very good at is making sure to get decent pictures of my costumes. Something I've been working hard to remedy recently.

OH, and I've been making a living with my film/television/prop knowledge the past 2 years selling production art and screen used items for clients.

This year I'll be attending SWCVI and DCon with a boat-load of new costumes, and I can't wait to see everyone I've been making friends with here and on facebook. It's a good time to be a costumer!

"Nightmare Before Christmas" Burlesque

Daenerys Mother of Dragons Burlesque

Steampunk Queen Victoria

Labyrinth - Sarah Ballgown (my wedding dress)

 

[PrincessZelda]

My oh my! There are a BUTT TON of talented ladies in this forum! I'm a little intimidated to even show my costumes

BTW, herro! I'm Jackie, I just joined the chaos here on RPF and my favorite color is blue ^_^ OH! I make mostly video game costumes, but also some anime/comic book characters

 

[MattMunson]

Welcome to the RPF, PrincessZelda! I'm looking forward to seeing some of your work

 

[Galacticat]

I'm so amazed by all the talent in here!

I'm Megan, and I've been lurking around here for a bit. I've been making costumes for several years now, but up until last year they were just things I threw together for theme parties and Halloween, usually comprised of things found at Goodwill. I only learned to use a sewing machine last year, so before that I did everything by hand. Terribly. :lol

My very first from-scratch costume was a set of duty blues from Battlestar Galactica, made for my boyfriend for Dragon*Con last year. NOT the best costume to start with as a novice (especially since the pattern wasn't very good), but they did turn out decently. And even though I haven't gotten a lot more experience with sewing, I am completely redoing the blues from scratch for this year's D*C. I don't know what I'm doing half the time, but I'm being a lot more nitpicky about it and think this version will turn out ten times better.

I really need to find more occasions to dress up so I can make more costumes. I actually bought a costume this year for D*C (a BSG flightsuit!!! which I'm glad I didn't have to end up making...), and I've been spending all my time working on the blues, so unfortunately I've not gotten to work on anything for me. And it makes me sad. Hopefully I can start attending more cons, as well as make more friends who're into costuming. This is probably a good place to start.