This past weekend my step-dad took my boyfriend and me to Comicon at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. It was my first Comicon and I always wanted to dress up; cosplay. Cosplay is like dressing up for Halloween but you do your best to look like a character from a tv, movie, book, show, etc. I sewed costumes for my boyfriend and myself by hand because I don’t have a sewing machine. My dress was my mom’s but it looked like it was definitely from the 80s and it needed to be modified if I wanted to go as the character I picked.
We went as Cinder Fall and Roman Torchwick, villains from the online show called RWBY.
His costume was easier to make once we could find a white coat. Once I had that I just added a few things to it. His character also has a cane that works as a shot gun but I just bought a wooden cane and painted to look like the weapon. Comicon has strict rules when it comes to props and weapons so I kept it super safe with the cane. I ordered a derby hat but it never came in on time so we improvised by using a fedora and I just added a ribbon and feather to it.
My cosplay was not so easy; the dress my mom gave me was really big on me so I had to sew it to fit me. There were also giant shoulder pads that I had to cut completely off. Next, the sleeves were too big for my arms so I had to make them tighter if I wanted to sleeves to stay a little off of my shoulders but not fall completely down. Then there was the back of the dress which I had to cut apart and add a piece fabric from the skirt to the back of the dress. The skirt had to be cut anyway so I had a lot of left over fabric. I ordered spandex shorts and cut the side apart and added a black ribbon to make the lace up effect on the side of the leg. Then for the feather piece I bought floral feathers and hot glued them to a felt piece with a blue diamond. I later sewed a safety pin onto the back of the piece so that I could pin it to the shorts later. Finally, there were the final touches like adding lace to the bottom of the skirt, making the jewelry, and painting the designs onto the dress.
The day of the show we left at six in the morning to get there for one. It was a long drive but we managed to get hair and make up done. My boyfriend has super dark hair so we used hair spray paint in the parking lot to try and turn it orange. It turned out decent but I feel a wig would not have worked that well on him with the hat. He also drew the tattoo on my pack with a temporary tattoo marker so it stayed on for a decent amount of time.
I feel I did the best that I could with the time I had now that I work forty plus hours with my new job. The biggest pay off was that people knew who we were and asked to take pictures. No one believed it was our first comicon when we told them. They just loved the costumes and it made it all worth it in the end.
Featured image: https://goo.gl/images/QpuChu
