Melisandre out at night

 This weekend the county museum, Dalarnas museum, organised "Dalarna fantasy and folklore festival" and for the Saturday evening the Cosplay Dalarna group was inviter to mingla in costumes that fit the theme.

I really just have one fantasy costume so of course I brought Melisandre. I even upgraded my torch with some red LED lighta that I simply hid at the base of the flames. 

The best indoor photo setting was the preserved library of Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature. 

I did take a selfie with the best of Selma outside the room.

Most fun though was to take photos outside in the dark, even if it was quite cold in this costume.

After all the night is dark and filled with terrorn.

Närcon 2019 meet-up photos

This is a dump of photos from the two meet-ups that I was part of: Game of Thrones and Star Wars.

Photos from AvestaCon

The last weekend in October was AvestaCon, a small local con that was held for the second year. I wad down sick, but I still went. I had promised to be a judge at the Dalarna Cosplay Championships, which is the regional championship that is there to encourage people to try out cosplay, and it was also a chance to take some photos of my costumes. It did end up with me loosing two days of work afterwards though, since I was home with a fever.

I had finally finished my TLJ Leia and wore it as a judge for the cosplay contest. I loved walking around with it and just swosh with my big coat. Photo by: Tom Larsson

Being down sick I spent most of my time in Hogwarts uniform, since it's so comfy and easy to wear. Photo by: Tom Larsson

Another of my very comfortable costumes is Melisandre. It's like wearing a nice and comfy bathrobe, and with my own hair. And when Anne-Sofie had bought an Elsa cosplay, we felt that we needed to take some fun photos.

Ice vs. Fire

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

The location of AvestaCon is gorgeous for dramatic photos. I haven't really decided if this is Melisandre at the wall or at Storm's End

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

The big plan for AvestaCon was to finally assemble our Pokemon superhero team, but we think that it must be cursed, we simply can't all be in costume at the same time. This time our Captain Carp was down sick, but Bellossom Girl, Umbreon and Togepi was there at least.

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

ComicCon Stockholm 2018

ComicCon Stockholm took place the weekend 14th to 16th of September. It bills itself as the largest popculture event in the Nordic Countries, and that is probably true. It has grown out of an earlier game convenction (Gamex) and it has had problems finding a balance between games and general popculture. It's still not perfect, but I felt that it was better than some years, unfortunately it's also now sponsored by one specific store, which has lead to other stores selling popculture stuff not being invited. The merchandise is limited to the one sponsor (and now special con prizes) and smaller independent traders.

Anyway this year I wasn't motivated at all for the convention. If I hadn't booked my hotel in May I would probably not have gone. I felt that I only had my old costumes, nothing new to bring. The dye for my Melisandre coat and hood didn't show up in time so I would not be able to bring the full costume. I stressed to get TLJ Leia done, got it into a wearable but not finished state, only to forget the undergown at home.

In the end it turned out to be one of my best conventions in a long time, and a big part of that was that I had people around that could take a lot of funny photos during the weekend.

Cosplay Dalarna had it's biggest group photo so far on a convention.

 On Friday I wore my X-wing pilot first, and I couldn't resist climbing on the the big airplane wing that was in the main hall. Ingeli, who took the photo, said she was a really good friend since she didn't film what it looked like when I tried to get onto the wing. (I basically needed to be pushed over it by two people)

Looking S-foils in attack position

 AFter my stint in X-wing I quickly changed to Mon Mothma, and of course I had to take my photo on the Iron throne that HBO had in its area. If I can't rule the galaxy I guess Westeros will do.

The real reason I switched was because Mads Mikkelsen was there and got inducted as an honorary member of the 501st legion, and I wanted to wear a costume that was a bit connected with Rogue One.

The day after I also made sure to have him sign my "A Royal Affaire" DVD.

The three days of ComicCon all have very different atmospheres. On Friday it's quite easy going and you have time to check out all the stands, and if you are interested in games that's the day you have time to test play them without any lines. Saturday was really crowded though. The Nordic Legions had their stand outside the main hall, and after I had gotten my autograph I didn't go in to the main hall for the rest of the day. I did my shifts in the stand and walked the parades, but there was too much people to do anything else.

The R2 builders had invited Simon Wilkie as C3P-0 and I got my photo with him, as you can see the stitches on my white over poncho had unraveled so I need to fix that before the next time I wear it.

Sunday is a family day, with less people, but a lot of kids everywhere. I had brought my Melisandre costume and I used the time to take photos in the HBO area.

As a child I dreamt of a red motorcycle, here I could at least mount a motorcycle in a big red gown.

I finished the con in my X-wing pilot costume again, and finally we managed to be three orange pilots in costume at the same time, thanks to Aiwei from Norway. It was really fun to be in a group and goof around.

So it was a really fun convention, and it shows that you don't need new costumes to have fun, the important thing is to hang around with fun people.

A bag for Melisandre and a pilgrim

With a heatwave raging, and temperatures soaring to 35 Celsius, being able to carry water is essential. I wanted to be able to carry a bottle of water, but being discrete about it, which ruled out any of my normal bags.

I made a simple bag out of the left overs from the dress. Really all the white lining that you can see was taken from the scraps left over when I cut out the dress, that also dictated the size of the bag.

I started with two rectangles for the back and front. The bottom and side was one continous piece of fabric
I sewed one rectangle to the bottom/side.

I also added a divider in the middle of the bag, so that the water bottle want fall down, and it will be eaiser to carry other stuff in it. When it was added I sewed the other rectangle to the bottom/sides as well. The bottom of the divider was fastened to the bottom piece with some hand stitches.

I now had a white bag.

I then made the strap, by sandwiching more of the cotton lining in between the red fabric.

I also reinforced the strap with some top stitching along the whole strap.

I sewed the strap to the lining.

I then sewed another bag in the red fabric, but without the divider and slipped it over the lining. The red fabric was folded over the lining to hide the raw edges of both fabrics.

Now I had a functionable bag, but I felt that it was missing something so I decided to make a top flap for it. I cut out a piece in both lining and red fabric. I also quilted the top part to give it a bit more structure, and because it looked nice.

I bound the edge with bias tape.

I then attached the flap to the side of the bag. Tada, a finished bag.

Inside of the bag

The bag worked great at NärCon, and it was so nice to be able to carry stuff with me. It wasn't as discrete as I had hoped though, since I also carried a white parasol hanging from it.

This kind of bag is similar to medieval pilgrim bags.

They are usually trapezoid in shape and made in what seams to be leather or coloured fabric. I made similar bag to the Melisandre bag, out of the leftover of the green wool. I had a larger piece of fabric, so instead of a separate flap I made the main fabric piece so long that I could fold it over the opening. Since the wool is sturdier than the poly dupioni I used for Melisandre I also didn't line this bag, it's just in one layer. Finally I added three tassels of wool yarn at the bottom, which seems to have been a very popular decoration. Now I had a more medieval-like bag to wear at Medieval Week in Visby.

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.