2025 recap part 2 - the cosplay projects

 I am not as productive when it comes to cosplay, but that is also because when I make a cosplay project just one project involves everything from top to toe, so it's hard to make just small and quick cosplay projects. For 2025 my plan was to finish my female tusken raider and to make a Toadette cosplay from Supermario. 

The tusken female had been an on and off project for more than a decade, so it was really time to finish it. I got it done in early spring and had it approved in both legions by the summer, so that I could use it for trooping for the first time at Stockholm Comiccon. I really like the costume and it is quite comfortable for being a masked costume. There are quite a lot of posts about the projects here.

The plan to make Toadette for NärCon turned out to be a bigger project than I had planned when my husband agreed to come with me to NärCon and to wear cosplay for the first time. The whole project ballooned, literally when it came to our hats, and in the end it wasn't such a small and easy project, but it was fun and my husband loved it and wore his Toadbert costume more than I wore Toadette. The project posts are here

My husband even got so hooked on cosplay that for comiccon he wanted to go in cosplay, even if I couldn't fit the Toadbert hats in our luggage. The answer was for him to grab his bathrobe, a towel and a tea mug and go as Arthur Dent from Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. And yes he proved more popular and people recognized him more in his 5 minute closet cosplay than my painstakingly researched and quite expensive Tusken.

Toad hat covering

 The hats are of course not meant to be white, it was time for them to get a fabric covering. By now the hats had grown so large, both with the raising of the foam and the wadding, so I decided to make a new pattern for the fabric, rather than trying to use the old one.

I simply added a piece of pattern tissue on top of the hat and while feeling with my fingers where the seams were on the inside I traced it on the outside.

Here is a comparison of the original pattern for the foam, and the finished fabric pattern. It is pointier in the top where it will go together, while the bottom is more blunt since that will go to the head opening.

For fabric I used a sports lycra, the kind you use for swimwear. The fourway stretch is very forgiving, and I also liked the sheen of the fabric. When I cut the pieces I didn't add any seam allowance, but then when sewing them together I used 1,5 cm. This was perfect to make the fabric stretch over the hat and take away any bumps.

It still looks bumpy and and uneven here, but that is because I haven't closed the top. I can't do what until I have installed some way of helping with wearing the hat, and I can't do that without my husband since I need to fit that on him. Since I still haven't got the fabric for my own hat that means that I have to make a halt in this costume project. A good thing is that I could just eke out the hat pieces from just 1 m of fabric, so now I know how much I will have to order for myself, since the fabric is quite expensive and I can't see myself using it for anything else I don't want to buy extra fabric just in case.

Raising the hats

 So when I last posted about the Toad hats I had cut them in half because I wasn't happy with the proportions.

The original hats

To make the hats taller I added around 10 cm of a foam where I had cut them up. 

I didn't just glue a piece of foam in the gap, I glued the foam strip to a larger foam strip, and it is mostly that one that is glued to the inside of the hat that keeps the foam strong enough. An unexpected result of this extra piece was that it helped to make the hats more round.

I think the husband actually looks a bit scared of the hat.

The next step was to cover the hats in wadding, to hide all the ridges in the foam. I started with glueing the wadding sheet to the middle of the hat. I used wood glue for this, worked perfectly.

I then folded the fabric over the edges, and where there was extra fabric I pinched it, like when you make a fabric dart, and simply cut the excess fabric off.

With the increase in height and the extra wadding the hats are now quite heavy, so I've stalled the project. I need to come up with a good way of fitting the hats to our heads as comfortable and stable as possible, while also making sure that we don't stress the hats too much when wearing them, or taking them off.

And here are the hats in their current state.

I couldn't even fit the hat in the frame when I took a selfie.

Supermario toad hats

 So I am making Toadette and Toadbert for me and my husband, from Supermario.

This weekend our cosplay group had a build weekend, meaning the whole Saturday and Sunday could be dedicated to making stuff, and I decided to start with our hats.

The pattern for the hat was developed from a paper patern for making sphere in six parts. I had previously started with making paper versions to see if I could get the shape that I wanted.

This was me trying to get the proportions right from the paper pattern.

This was the shape that I felt happy with in the smal scale. That V-cut out was very important to shape the top and bottom part of the "donut".

After this it was time scale up the pattern, and I did that in cardboard.

Here are the steps in scaling up the pattern, with the pattern getting bigger and bigger. Then it was time to work with foam. I used 5 mm EVA foam to craft the hats. I started with the hat for my husband, and it was definitely a learning curve. For him I made the V cutouts fairly short and wide and it was hard for me to close them.  For my own hat I made the V cutouts longer and thinner. It was much easier, but I felt that I lost some of the shape that I wanted to have.

This was the final results, but I was not happy with them. They feel too much like hats, or squashed donuts, not the tall rounded shape. It is hard to work with proportions for such a non-proportional character like a Supermario toad, but I defintitely felt that I wouldn't be happy with this. 

So for now I have cut the hats in half in the middle, and my plan is to insert a strip of foam there to make them taller. I am out of foam though so I will have to wait until I can buy more before I continue. I am also a bit worried about the hats staying on. They will catch a lot of wind in this size, and even they feel good when we are standing, i amthinkint that we need to be able to attach them to our heads more securely, but not using a strap under the chin or something like that.

The plan after that is to cover them in felt/soft foam before covering them in fabric to get the finished result.

Stockholm comicon report

 After almost 2 years it was finally time for proper convention again! There were fewer tickets, so the crowds were smaller, and you had to have a vaccine pass or negative test to get in, but otherwise it was as before. It was so much fun being back together with cosplay friends from Nordic Legions and just others you meet anyway.

One of the guests was Evanna Lync, Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter, so of course I brought my Luna with me and had my photo taken with her. These kinds of photoshoot are one second affair, so you have to be prepared beforehand. I got a bit surprised when there was no plexiglass between us, so I lost some time and didn't exactly get the photo that I wanted, but it is good enough. She was really kind and it was she who placed herself really close to me and put her arm around me.

The rest of the Harry Potter cosplayers from Dalarna took a few round around the hall before I was going to be in the Nordic Legions' booth. I was in the booth with my jedi, but I kept the Luna wig since my hair wouldn't exactly look the best after quite a few hours under a wig.

I thought the blone looked quite ok as well. The jedi was really comfortable to wear at a convention. The only bad thing was that I had forgotten the belt that I hang my pouch from so I couldn't wear it. 

Saturday I started off as a jedi again, but this time in my own hair so no wig. We had some Nordic Base photos taken, and then a huge group photo in front of the replica of the Millenium Falcon (The Swedish Falcon) that premiered at the convention.

Then after lunch I switched to Princess Daisy, and it was soo much fun. She was fun to pose with, easy to wear, and it was pretty fun to take photos with more "serious" princesses.

On Sunday it was Daisy again, and now my friend Tom went as Luigi, we actually found quite a few cosplayers from Nintendo. Even if there were generally fewer cosplayers on Sunday than on Saturday.

All in all Daisy was a success, and it was sooooo great meeting all friends from the Nordic Legions again. I also managed to have three costumes, that all had very comfortable shoes. Daisy's orange sneakers were the best though.

Feet get tired even in comfy shoes though, and Milou was a bit sceptic when it came to the smell. Can't be worse than the stormtrooper armours in the changing room though.

Daisy crown and jewellery

 Of course Daisy needs a crown, earrings and brooch. This is where I got a lot of helps from my friends.  First Tom printed the crown, after a thingiverse design.

He also helped with finalizing the scale of the crown. Then I had to come up with a way to keep the crown on the head. My solution was to drill holes in the crown and attach thread loops through them. Then  I made a fingerloop braid that goes through the loops and that I can pin to through to fix it to my head. In hindsight I should have put the holes a bit further down on the crown, but I was worried that I would crack it if I put them too close to the edge.

This was a quick test to prove that it would work. Inside the crown I also have a hair donut, so I started with pinning that to my head, then I squeezd the crown over the donut, and the last pins are through the braid and into the donut. 

My friend Robin helped with casting the jewels in resin. The flowers are made out of 2 mm foam that were simply painted white. For the large brooch I reinforced it with a layer of worbla in the back, and I sandwiched a magnet between the worbla and the foam so that I can attach it to the dress. 

Finally the crown was painted gold with acrylic paint.

I also made a travelbox from cardboard and duct tape to keep it in.

Presenting Princess Daisy

I posted earlier that one of my plans of the year is to make Princess Daisy from the Super Mario universe. The idea was born on the way home from NärCon and definitely inspired by woodsling's Luigi.

My favorite Daisy outfit is her winter outfit.

But then last week happened and I had a bunch of pieces of a bright and lovely yellow-orange silk velvet. A colour that would be perfect for the more traditional outfit for Daisy.

I would not have enough fabric to get a full length skirt, but Daisy also has an early tennis dress that looks like this.

And that's the style I decided to go for, with some changes. First of all I want the skirt to be longer, so I can be comfortable in it. I'm also going to go for Daisy's regular teal jewels instead of the blue ones that she's wearing in this version. I also don't think I have enough fabric to be able to make full puffed sleeves.

On Thursday I whipped up a quick mock-up for a short full-skirted dress.

The bodice is my standard stretch dress pattern, but I added a couple of cm on each seam, because I want to be really comfortable and not have a tight fitting dress. I managed to get a bodice out of the silk velvet.

Silk velvet is really slippery and should be tacked down everywhere, or at least use a lot of pins. I chose to construct the bodice like I did my Lady Poe bodice. That is I first sewed the lining, and then I mounted the outer silk fabric to the lining. I then found a couple of meters of a cotton voile in my stash, and I gathered three lengths together to make the underlayer of the skirt.

The skirt was also sewn to the lining, not to the velvet. I also added pieces of cotton tape that I will use to hike up the skirt, everything to avoid having to attach anything to the slk velvet.

In the back I added a zipper, also to the lining, and then I handsewed the silk fabric edge to edge with the zipper. Overall the silk velvet is handsewn, it's so much easier to keep the fabric from slipping and controlling the tension compared to when I tried to sew it on the machine. The skirt consists of as many square pieces of fabric that I could cut out rom the silk velvet and then sewn to the lining. I finsihed by folding the outer fabric of the bodice over the skirt and hand sewing it down.

On the photo above I have just tied a white ribbon over the waist and pinned up the velvet skirt. Next steps are to make a proper waistband and sleeves, and then it's time to permanently fasten the skirt. I also want to make the skirt poufier. In this photo I have one of my tuille petticoats under the dress, but I'm thinking that I need more petticoats or tuille to get the shape I want.

A helmet for Obelix

Obelix needed a helmet and during our cosplay weekend I managed to almost finish it. This was my first time working with foam in a real build way, and that's why it was good doing at the weekend when I could get help and borrow tools, and not the least get encouragement.

The helmet is made in four parts from a pattern from Templatemaker.nl. I got it from one of our group that had used it to make a sphere, and I simply just used half the pattern pieces to make a half sphere. I had to cut out the points of each bit to make it totally flat in the bottom. The helmet is made in 5 mm high density foam, that I heated with a heat gun and then bent slightly. The dark spots above is where I heated it a bit too much. They are glued together with contact cement.

The helmet was still very angular so I borrowed a dremel and filed off the ridges where the pieces were glued together.

I used foam glay as a filler in the seams, and then I sanded them down with a very fine grit sandpaper. The top globe was freehanded in foam clay, and the horn holders were strips of the same foam that I rolled together. Then I decided to go away a bit from being accurate. I added the strip around the bottom of the helmet, and it looked a lot better even if Obelix helmet doesn't have one. I used googly eyes to mimic small bolts. When all the extra piecs were added I used wood glue, thinned with a little bit of water, to seal the foam and prime the helmet. In total I used four layers of glue.

I painted the helmet with spray paint and it is painted with one layer of grey primer, one layer of silvergrey paint, two layers of metallic and a clear top coat. The last thing I did was to add the horns, which are also made from foam clay and glued with contact cement to the helmet.

I want to weather the helmet a bit, not much, but just enough to take away some of the sheen, I also need to come up with a way of actually attaching it to my head, since it falls off when I move my head as it is right now. I'm thinking that I will add some kind of comb to it.

A fake torch for Melisandre

It is always easier to pose for photos or interact with people if you have a prop. I wanted Melisandre to be more than just a pretty dress, so I needed to come up with something. Melisandre is known for burning people at the stake, so I figured that a torch would be a good prop.

This feels like a really new development from me. I'm actually making props, not just sewing clothes.

The foundation for the torch was a wooden dowel. I cut strips of EVA-foam and glued them to the dowel with contact glue.

I finished this stage by wrapping a thin piece of foam around the torch to make it look like it's hold together by something.

Then I primed everything with a lot of layers of watered down wood glue.

I painted the foam with acrylic paint. The base layers was quite a light brown, then I added a darker brown at the top, where it should look like soot, and on some spots I used the dark brown with added black for a very burnt look. The wrap is painted in the dark brown paint, with some black to get it even darker.

I was really happy with the painted torch, but the torch needed to look like it was burning, not as if it was burnt out. To create the flames I cut out a lot of flame like shapes in more transparent worbla.

I then made a dye bath using iDye poly orange and threw in the worbla.

 The heat from the dye bath softened the worbla, but it didn't melt. I let the worbla lie in the dye for around 40 minutes.

For the smaller pieces of worbla I had made a yellow dye bath as well, but it wasn't strong enough in colour. I then mixed the yellow and orange dye bath and put the the smaller pieces in that new dye batch, but just for a couple of minutes.

Here are the dried pieces of dyed worbla.

Then it was just a question of glueing the flames to the torch. The distortion that the worbla had gone through in the dye bath actually helped the flames to look more natureal. You can use a heat gun to shape the worbla more, but I was happy with this result.