Toothless Photoshoot

Hey Guys! Here are the photos from our How to Train Your Dragon (HTTYD) photo-shoot 2014. All but the last picture taken buy the beautiful Alphonze191 . For this photo-shoot we had to leave really early because we wanted some fog and overcast sky in our shots. Plus it was the middle of winter so we were freezing our bums off but it was so much fun.

We wanted to pay tribute to the amazing HTTYD movie by replicating the bonding moment between Hiccup and Toothless.

I made the fish myself and I will be posting a tutorial on how I did it. It was really easy, I made it the day before the shoot.

This is my best bud who cosplayed Queen Chrysalis in the Discord photo-shoot. Here's a link to her deviant art page BeeBee561 and her cosplay page DeBri. It was so cold between shots we shared a blanket. Plus she wore the leftover fur from her boots as a scarf. I want to show a few pictures of her costume because we all worked really hard on our costumes.

I love this shot! We took it before we got to the location because the sun was in the perfect position. 

This photo was taken at an event called Cosplay On Ice, where our group won best group cosplay! Sadly on this day though I was bending over to put on my skates and the seam for my right sleeve ripped. :( I haven't gotten around to repairing it yet because it was extremely difficult to sew in the first place because the jacket is too heavy for my sewing machine. Maybe one day I'll do it.

Toothless Cosplay Part 3 - Head Piece

Hey guys! I'm so sorry that I havn't updated in such a long time but I have lots of cosplay stuff to post and lots of new ideas for cosplay.

Today i'm finishing my Toothless cosplay with the head piece. This took me about two or three days to make and it was an experience for me. I've never done this before and it was a lot of guess work.

Things you'll need:
- masking tape
- glad wrap
- craft foam sheets
- (for mine I needed some thicker foam as well)
- the same fabric as your jacket
- Black felt
- hot glue
- paper and pen for patterns

First thing I did, it seems a little weird but it works was to cover my forehead and nose with glad wrap. Yes I could breath through my mouth and it was only lose over my nose. Then with masking tape I marked out how I wanted it to look and made a patter.

As you can see in the pictures I had it go half way over my head. Down my nose and over my eyebrows, then down my temple and over my ears. My plan was to keep it on via it hooking over my ears and resting on my nose.

In order to get the idea for how to do this I researched how other people made foam helmets on Youtube.

Next I marked out where I was going to cut and which piece was which and cut them out.

I placed the patterns on the craft foam and then cut these out. As you can see with the middle piece I had to cut darts because the pattern piece was curved and so when I glue it together it will all be bent.

I don't have a picture of the next part but I glued the darts and the left and right piece to the middle one and then I had the basic helmet.

I made a mistake with my design so I demonstrated it with a picture. In the top picture I drew a design on paper for the spikes of Toothless' head and I kind of made them all the same shape. I tried this and it didn't work very well so I took off the lower spikes but kept the top ones. The bottom drawing is my second plan to have three rounded spikes on the sides.

So the explain more when cutting out the top largest spikes make the design wider than needed so you can curve the craft foam and give the spike more shape. The other spikes I left flat.

Here you can see I kept the top spikes and they are slightly curved. Also when I was removing the bottom spikes I wasn't being very careful so I accidentally ripped the foam on one side. This was easy enough to fix with fabric later on but please be care full! If I couldn't have fixed this I would have had to start all over. You can also see on the left picture that I had started adding the fabric which I cut out using the same pattern I used for the foam helmet but I made it 1cm larger around the whole perimeter so that I could fold is over the edge. I secured it all down with hot glue.

You can't really see it in the photo but when I put the mask on it kept slipping forward down my nose. To counter this I got some couch foam and added it to the nose to make it thicker. (I later covered this with black felt)

I just wanted to warn you to be REALLY careful with hot glue, I burnt myself multiple times with it.

Here you can see I cut out some paper patterns of the lower spikes and decided to only make two. I traced this onto the foam, cut them out and glued them on. I finished adding the fabric to the sides of the mask as well.

On the lower spikes I decided to cover them with felt which is different from the larger top ones which have a front covered with the pleather fabric. I covered both sides with the felt and this made them look darker and further back than the top spikes. I think this makes the mask look like it has more dimension. 

Here I finished covering the spikes with fabric.

Here is the finished mask/head piece on the top spike I covered the back with felt and if you can see I added zig zag bumps in the outer edge of one side. This is because you can see similar bumps on Toothless' spikes.

After this I also finished the jacket by adding the other sleeve. I did this because my friends and I wanted to finish our costumes for the movie sequel. We had lots of fun seeing the movie in costume. 

Purple Overdress Part 2

This is part 2 of a random sewing project I did inbetween costumes. Part 1 included information on the fabrics and the pattern. As well as the cutting of the fabric pieces. What I did not mension was that for this project I also followed a tutorial on the sewing process like that of the one I used for my Toothless jacket. Here is a link to the tutorial - Simplicity Pattern 1773 - Medieval Dress - Overdress. On this post I will be going over the steps I took to sew the overdress.

Taking the two front bodice pieces and the ribbon I cut 14 pieces of 4cm ribbon.

I then folded the ribbon in half wrong sides together and pinned 7 to each side according to the dots marked on the pattern pieces.

After this I sewed a length of ribbon vertically from the top of each fabric piece to the bottom. I made sure the long piece of ribbon covered the raw edges of each loop. Though I love the colour clashes I think using the crushed velvet was a bad idea, because sewing the ribbon on the stretch fabric made it pucker a little and not sit very straight. Note I am mostly self taught so this was a learning experience for me on the properties of fabrics.
I then sewed all the bodice sides together to make one long piece and then separately did the same for the lining pieces. Then on both pieces I pressed the seams flat.

Next on the lining piece I measured out the boning strips. I trimmed 5mm off the boning and curved the ends so that the wouldn't poke in my sides. I chose to buy boning with pre-made sleeves to make the process easier.

I then pinned all pieces on the lining and sewed all the way around leaving the top end open.

I had some trouble with the tension while sewing. It turned out that at some point when my bobbin snapped a small piece of thread got caught on the inside and stuffed up my tension. I was easily able to clear up the problem by removing the caught thread. I then re-sewed over the existing lines.

I then inserted all the boning back into the sleeves and sewed the top ends closed.

I sewed the sleeves right sides together to the front bodice pieces. Then rights sides together I sewed the bodices lining and fabric together and turned it right side out. I then sewed the skirt pieces together following the patterns instructions and added it to the bodices then finally hand sewing the back of the sleeves to the bodice after adjusting the length.

I added the final touch of the ribbon that holds the bodice closed which was too long in the photos I will trim it later and my side project was done. Next post will be another side project which is a black dress.

Purple Overdress Part 1

I wasn't sure what to call this post because I didn't make this for any particular purpose I just had a pattern lying around and just bought some nice new fabric so I made it. The pattern I had was a medieval dress pattern by Simplicity, the number is 1773. The fabric I used was a dark purple crushed velvet and a cheap dark blue cotton. This project also needed boning and light weight fusible interfacing. I probably spent about three or four days on this dress because it involved boning and I had never done this before.

This is what the dress looked like when it was finished. I am not going to keep the excess ribbon that I wrapped around my waist in the photo. I accidentally over measured how much I would need.

Here is what the dress pattern looked like. I made the over dress which is pattern B on the package. You can also see an example on the front of the envelope my dress was the brown over dress. As you can probably see I altered the pattern so that I would just have shoulder straps instead of the whole arm loop things.

These are the fabrics I used (plus the interfacing)

The crushed fabric looked like this. I was kind of a purpley-blue in real life.

I used this cheap $3 cotton for the lining because lining is just as expensive as  the main fabric. Plus it does a fine job anyway.

This is the 1/4 inch ribbon I used. I wanted the colours to really clash and stand out. That is why I picked a fluorescent green.

Following the patterns instructions I cut out the pieces for the overdress bodice and skirt out of the main fabric. I then did the same for the interfacing and lining. But for these I did not cut out the skirt patterns again. then on the interfacing I trimmed about half an inch off of the perimeter and then fused the interfacing to the corresponding lining pieces.

That is it for part 1 of the over dress post. On the next post I will talk about the sewing part.

Toothless Cosplay Part 2 - Jacket

Ok onto the Toothless jacket, this is the main feature of the costume I wanted to kind of look like I was a human toothless. So in order to make the jacket I needed the right materials. I took the long drive to Spotlight and bought a fake leather fabric. This particular fabric was black and had a big scale pattern. It was fairly expensive fabric and I needed a lot of it so I was glad that I was using my birthday money to pay for it. Next I drove to Lincraft and found a crushed velvet fabric that I wanted to use for the lining of the jacket. (Note for future reference don't use a very stretchy fabric with a fabric that doesn't stretch at all. Though the end result looks nice I am afraid to wash it because I think the velvet will over stretch and hang loose from the fake leather.) I bought two different colours a black and a light red. This was to symbolize Toothless' tail when he gets the new fin, you can only see a small part of the red so I think it looks fabulous. Though if I make this jacket again I would go with a woven red and black fabric.

Using the pattern mentioned in the Toothless design post I cut out the pieces for the jacket. But in doing this I altered the pattern so that it would suit my character and fabric. I got rid of neck ruffle and altered the sleeves so the fitted part of the sleeve finished at the elbow. Then I measured the end of the sleeve marked it on the fabric and made is flare out into a wide tube. I did this to symbolize the thickening of Toothless' arms.

If you plan to make the jacket this way you'll need:
- paper clips
- zip foot/roller foot (I found for most of it though my normal foot was fine)
- patience

These are all the pieces cut out. To sew the pieces together I followed a tutorial on YouTube. I did this because at the time I was not very good at sewing. I am mostly self taught. Here is a link to the tutorial if you are interested - Simplicity Pattern 2172 - Steampunk Coat it is a very good tutorial and you can find other tutorials that help follow through the rest of this pattern, showing the bodice and the skirt.

These are pictures of most of the jacket sewn together. It is still missing the lining and the sleeves. Since I was using fake leather I could not use pins so I researched online and found that paper clips work and no they! They are the best way to pin leather together especially if you have a box with different size paper clips. Note, since my fake leather was patterned I could not iron the seams down without damaging the pattern. In order to overcome this I did something like a jean seam stitch where I reinforced all seams with another stitch to get it to sit flat. On the side seams I sewed them down facing toward the back and on the back seam I laid the seam flat and sewed on either side.

Here is a picture of the lining installed. Though I do not like leather and velvet together I think that the velvet by itself would have made a very nice jacket or dress. This is because it had a nice flow and weight to it.

This is what I have finished of the jacket I still need to add the other sleeve. I plan on added the other sleeve and then shortening both because they are a little too long and adding Velcro instead of buttons to the front. I think that this will look neater for the cosplay and buttons I think just wouldn't work with fake leather. This is probably the most frustrating costume I've made because the jacket is just too heavy for the machine. This is why I have been procrastinating on finishing the last sleeve.

Anyway I plan to have it finished for when the second movie is released in cinemas. I might have some pictures after that. I am currently starting to work on the head piece and should have that finished soon. My next few posts will be on random sewing projects that I have been working on lately. So yeah, I am really happy with how the jacket looks even if is was a pain to make and is uncomfortable. Well if it is FOR COSPLAY! I can deal with being uncomfortable as long as the costume is pretty.